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> This is just basic human decency. If someone puts in effort to help you or contribute to something you've created, just be a decent person and respond to them

by daeken 6y ago

> This is just basic human decency. If someone puts in effort to help you or contribute to something you've created, just be a decent person and respond to them. It costs you nothing. There's a difference between being entitled to something and just doing something because it's the right thing to do. The idea that this costs them nothing is, well, garbage. It costs time and energy, of which many have a very limited supply. What might take you 5 minutes might take another an hour and leave them utterly drained.

hombre_fatal 6y ago
I get a dozen issues a day across my projects. I used to respond to all of them daily, then I was so burned out from that chore that I don’t even read my notifications anymore. Funny how people here think it’s just basic human decency to spend an hour of my time each day responding to people who managed to click a submit button. For every HNer here bragging about how thoughtful their issues are, there are 100s of low effort issues from people who won’t even respond to a follow up. Running popular projects has shown me there’s no “free” in open source just because literal money isn’t exchanging hands. It’s basically a ddos of your time. Github needs a feature where you can attach a tip to your issue to compensate the maintainer. I get so much low effort garbage that I would set a $10 minimum on my most popular projects. People here think bug reports are free labor. What they would know if they ran a project is that most bug reports, even with an issue template, are “it doesnt work wtf.”
gpanders 6y ago
To be clear, I was responding to the situation where someone clearly puts effort in creating a high-quality contribution (a PR or bug report) and the maintainer simply ignores them. I think it is the right thing to do to at least acknowledge it and say "Thank you for your contribution! I will review it when I have time". I don't disagree with you or others on ignoring low-quality, low-effort contributions. I get that people have finite energy and time. Taking 5 seconds to say "thank you" when someone has clearly put in the effort, though, is a no-brainer.

by daeken 6y ago

hombre_fatal 6y ago

I get a dozen issues a day across my projects. I used to respond to all of them daily, then I was so burned out from that chore that I don’t even read my notifications anymore. Funny how people here think it’s just basic human decency to spend an hour of my time each day responding to people who managed to click a submit button. For every HNer here bragging about how thoughtful their issues are, there are 100s of low effort issues from people who won’t even respond to a follow up. Running popular projects has shown me there’s no “free” in open source just because literal money isn’t exchanging hands. It’s basically a ddos of your time. Github needs a feature where you can attach a tip to your issue to compensate the maintainer. I get so much low effort garbage that I would set a $10 minimum on my most popular projects. People here think bug reports are free labor. What they would know if they ran a project is that most bug reports, even with an issue template, are “it doesnt work wtf.”

gpanders 6y ago

To be clear, I was responding to the situation where someone clearly puts effort in creating a high-quality contribution (a PR or bug report) and the maintainer simply ignores them. I think it is the right thing to do to at least acknowledge it and say "Thank you for your contribution! I will review it when I have time". I don't disagree with you or others on ignoring low-quality, low-effort contributions. I get that people have finite energy and time. Taking 5 seconds to say "thank you" when someone has clearly put in the effort, though, is a no-brainer.