4 ms·

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative fee

by sprash 7y ago

> So what to do with that? Negative feedback is the only form of valueable feedback. If you want to make your software better you should listen to negative feedback. Of course negative feedback often comes with emotional baggage but you should be above that kind of thing. The right strategy is actually to ignore positive feedback (because it is mostly worthless) and ask the people that give you negative feedback for more specifics and to be more precise about what they don't like.

lordgrenville 7y ago
No, being abused by someone is not valuable and even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. Negative feedback is helpful if presented politely or neutrally. Otherwise the form destroys the value of the content. (And by the way, positive feedback can be very valuable as well.)
- sprash 7y ago
  > even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. One of the defining qualities of being "mature" and "confident" is to be able to fade out the emotional components and concentrate on the substance. This is the essential quality that seperates children from adults. If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. > positive feedback can be very valuable as well. Only for marketing, which you won't need if your product is good anyways. For example nobody did any "marketing" for git (except that Linus called his competitors "stupid and ugly" which was actually more like anit-marketing) but git is used by everybody because it is generally really good.
  - mmmrk 7y ago
    > If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. Not sure if you're trying to troll here, but being fazed by negativity is a perfectly normal human response. Framing it as a matter of maturity or confidence seems disingenuous to me. One can be trained to handle it better and turn it around or into something productive (i.e. conflict training for health care professionals) but the response remains.
imtringued 7y ago
Why does negative feedback come with an obligation to slave away for a person that doesn't even care about what you are doing?
- sprash 7y ago
  If you want your product to be good you have the "obligation" to listen to negative feedback. But you don't have the "obligation" to make a good product. If you don't care about your product you are going to ignore the feedback anyways. > a person that doesn't even care This is a misconception. People giving emotially loaded negative feedback actually "care" about your product much more than the average user.
  - unionpivo 7y ago
    > Your product sucks is not "negative feedback". It useless statement. If you are paid and want to go fish to see if you can turn that into actual feedback, go ahead. It will take a lot of time and energy to pull something out, that will be useful. Posting your project to hn, various reddits or just twitter will get you a lot of more constructive feedback for less effort. Besides I don't like rude people, responding to them just validates to them, that rudeness pays.
hnlmorg 7y ago
Negative feedback can fall into two categories: * constructive - which are polite and informative * deconstructive - which are basically just someone being an arsehole. The former stuff can be great at time but the examples being discussed fall firmly in the latter category.
- sprash 7y ago
  Getting actually constructive feedback is super rare. When you ask emotionally engaged poeple to be more specific and precise about their problem they usually rationalize their anger and stop being angry when they actually notice what exactly they are angry about.
  - hnlmorg 7y ago
    Constructive feedback shouldn't be angry nor emotionally charged. That's just bad feedback. I also don't think constructive feedback is super rare either. But I guess it depends on the project. eg some projects might have an appeal to different communities who are less often less patient with maintainers. I think it's also worth remembering that maintainers do also need to be patient with the community. Sometimes I've seen maintainers not handle themselves well even when that feedback is PR fixing a bug or security vulnerability and there's no comment, suggestion nor anything else about the existing code base. In those instances you either just have to accept the maintainers vision (even when you disagree with it) or fork their project and maintain it yourself (which I've had to do before). Ultimately though, most people I interact within OSS are friendly enough.

by sprash 7y ago

lordgrenville 7y ago

No, being abused by someone is not valuable and even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. Negative feedback is helpful if presented politely or neutrally. Otherwise the form destroys the value of the content. (And by the way, positive feedback can be very valuable as well.)

sprash 7y ago
> even very mature, confident people find it hard to handle emotionally. One of the defining qualities of being "mature" and "confident" is to be able to fade out the emotional components and concentrate on the substance. This is the essential quality that seperates children from adults. If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. > positive feedback can be very valuable as well. Only for marketing, which you won't need if your product is good anyways. For example nobody did any "marketing" for git (except that Linus called his competitors "stupid and ugly" which was actually more like anit-marketing) but git is used by everybody because it is generally really good.
- mmmrk 7y ago
  > If you are fazed by some comments of random people on the internet then you are neither "mature" nor "confident". You either got to grow up or you will have a hard time. Not sure if you're trying to troll here, but being fazed by negativity is a perfectly normal human response. Framing it as a matter of maturity or confidence seems disingenuous to me. One can be trained to handle it better and turn it around or into something productive (i.e. conflict training for health care professionals) but the response remains.

imtringued 7y ago

Why does negative feedback come with an obligation to slave away for a person that doesn't even care about what you are doing?

sprash 7y ago
If you want your product to be good you have the "obligation" to listen to negative feedback. But you don't have the "obligation" to make a good product. If you don't care about your product you are going to ignore the feedback anyways. > a person that doesn't even care This is a misconception. People giving emotially loaded negative feedback actually "care" about your product much more than the average user.
- unionpivo 7y ago
  > Your product sucks is not "negative feedback". It useless statement. If you are paid and want to go fish to see if you can turn that into actual feedback, go ahead. It will take a lot of time and energy to pull something out, that will be useful. Posting your project to hn, various reddits or just twitter will get you a lot of more constructive feedback for less effort. Besides I don't like rude people, responding to them just validates to them, that rudeness pays.

hnlmorg 7y ago

Negative feedback can fall into two categories: * constructive - which are polite and informative * deconstructive - which are basically just someone being an arsehole. The former stuff can be great at time but the examples being discussed fall firmly in the latter category.

sprash 7y ago
Getting actually constructive feedback is super rare. When you ask emotionally engaged poeple to be more specific and precise about their problem they usually rationalize their anger and stop being angry when they actually notice what exactly they are angry about.
- hnlmorg 7y ago
  Constructive feedback shouldn't be angry nor emotionally charged. That's just bad feedback. I also don't think constructive feedback is super rare either. But I guess it depends on the project. eg some projects might have an appeal to different communities who are less often less patient with maintainers. I think it's also worth remembering that maintainers do also need to be patient with the community. Sometimes I've seen maintainers not handle themselves well even when that feedback is PR fixing a bug or security vulnerability and there's no comment, suggestion nor anything else about the existing code base. In those instances you either just have to accept the maintainers vision (even when you disagree with it) or fork their project and maintain it yourself (which I've had to do before). Ultimately though, most people I interact within OSS are friendly enough.