5 ms·

But it's not constructive criticism, but humor. I agree that sarcasm provides for poor constructive criticism to get a point across, but the intent was mockery

But it's not constructive criticism, but humor. I agree that sarcasm provides for poor constructive criticism to get a point across, but the intent was mockery, not being helpful. I certainly do not believe that GNOME would take the advice of an H.N. post, and they are well aware of these criticisms to begin with, as they are commonly levied against them.

cycloptic 6y ago
I don't mean criticism, we (HN users) all have heard all the criticism a hundred times before. I mean actual actionable feedback that someone is able to work with, e.g. if there are problems with the design then we can bring some concrete data that shows new, reliable information. That means taking honest efforts to establish two-way communication where there is none.
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > I mean actual actionable feedback that someone is able to work with Is this not what “constructive criticism”, as I called it, is? GNOME is not going to listen to an H.N. comment an change it's ways, and it was never my intent to reach them or otherwise inspire change in them. My intent was simply to be humorous.
  - cycloptic 6y ago
    Please don't discount yourself like that, by resigning to the usual HN snark. I think you're smart and capable of much more. If there is new, important and relevant information brought to them, they will listen to that. (This applies to most big projects I've seen, not any one in particular. The smaller niche ones that commit to having their small narrow audience are the ones I've seen that tend to be resistant to new ideas)
    - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
      I doubt they scan H.N. comments for input or come across them. If I had wanted to reach them, I would certainly do wiser to simply send them a feature requæst bug report.
      - inetknght 6y ago
        Many developers and executives do participate in social media including Hacker News. I have seen plenty of tech-related fixes and features that come directly from Hacker News comments. In all I think the best feedback I can give you would have been to include a `/s` to indicate sarcasm and jest.
        Dylan16807 6y ago
        > Many developers and executives do participate in social media including Hacker News. I have seen plenty of tech-related fixes and features that come directly from Hacker News comments. But the comment wasn't bringing up anything new about GNOME. There is no information someone from GNOME could get from that post, no matter how it was worded. It is not a constructive vs. snark situation. > In all I think the best feedback I can give you would have been to include a `/s` to indicate sarcasm and jest. It seems like the same argument would have happened anyway, so eh.
        cycloptic 6y ago
        To be clear, my request is to avoid rehashing old arguments that have gone nowhere, and stick to providing new information when we can.
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        I am sorry if I'm being pushy, it just gets extremely tiring to see all the same type of comments for years on places like here and on /r/linux. You don't have to listen to me if you don't want, it's just my humble plea.
        traverseda 6y ago
    - traverseda 6y ago
      >they will listen to that Citation needed Gnome deserves whatever bad reputation it's getting, lest people make the mistake of building stuff on top of it.
      - cycloptic 6y ago
        >lest people make the mistake of building stuff on top of it. This is the kind of hyperbole I'm talking about... As with any open source, you don't have to use the parts you don't want. GNOME as a whole is a pretty big project, and like most projects, some of its parts are stable and up-to-date, and some aren't. Lots of other desktops build on pieces of GNOME technologies because they work, and replace the parts they're unhappy with. So I'm sorry if you feel a particular component made a mistake, but it really does not have to be a mistake that affects you, if you handle things the right way. Can you be more specific about what kind of citation you're looking for?
        traverseda 6y ago
        > you don't have to use the parts you don't want. I don't want to use systemd-logind or the gnome search services. Right now not using either of those requires a whole lot of work. It's actually pretty hard to use GTK apps with only the GTK toolkit and not a bunch of other software daemons. Hell, in a perfect would I'd even get rid of dconf and gnome's weird registry, but I recognize that as pretty integral to the toolkit.
        cycloptic 6y ago
        I'll try to respond to each of these: AFAIK the only component that really relies on logind is GDM. If you don't want GDM and are comfortable using another display manager to launch your GNOME session, that should work fine, although I haven't tested this in a while. You may also be able to launch your session manually the old way, without a session manager, although that will probably require you to use setuid X which comes with the usual caveats. It's probably a total no-no if you're using wayland. If you decide you want GDM and wayland then you still don't need systemd-logind for session management, you can use elogind, or you can grab BSD's patches for consolekit support. The real issue there is that GDM requires some kind of session management, if you want to do this without any other daemons whatsoever, then you will have to reimplement parts of logind/consolekit inside GDM. With the search services, there is a switch for that in settings under "Search." With dconf, that is not actually integral to the toolkit. The API that applications use is GSettings, which requires a backend to actually store the settings, and dconf is just one of those backends. You can disable the dconf backend and just use the one that writes ini files to your home directory, or use some other backend. Technically apps can try to force the dconf backend but I've never seen one that does this.

cycloptic 6y ago

I don't mean criticism, we (HN users) all have heard all the criticism a hundred times before. I mean actual actionable feedback that someone is able to work with, e.g. if there are problems with the design then we can bring some concrete data that shows new, reliable information. That means taking honest efforts to establish two-way communication where there is none.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago
> I mean actual actionable feedback that someone is able to work with Is this not what “constructive criticism”, as I called it, is? GNOME is not going to listen to an H.N. comment an change it's ways, and it was never my intent to reach them or otherwise inspire change in them. My intent was simply to be humorous.
- cycloptic 6y ago
  Please don't discount yourself like that, by resigning to the usual HN snark. I think you're smart and capable of much more. If there is new, important and relevant information brought to them, they will listen to that. (This applies to most big projects I've seen, not any one in particular. The smaller niche ones that commit to having their small narrow audience are the ones I've seen that tend to be resistant to new ideas)
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    I doubt they scan H.N. comments for input or come across them. If I had wanted to reach them, I would certainly do wiser to simply send them a feature requæst bug report.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      Many developers and executives do participate in social media including Hacker News. I have seen plenty of tech-related fixes and features that come directly from Hacker News comments. In all I think the best feedback I can give you would have been to include a `/s` to indicate sarcasm and jest.
      - Dylan16807 6y ago
        > Many developers and executives do participate in social media including Hacker News. I have seen plenty of tech-related fixes and features that come directly from Hacker News comments. But the comment wasn't bringing up anything new about GNOME. There is no information someone from GNOME could get from that post, no matter how it was worded. It is not a constructive vs. snark situation. > In all I think the best feedback I can give you would have been to include a `/s` to indicate sarcasm and jest. It seems like the same argument would have happened anyway, so eh.
        cycloptic 6y ago
        To be clear, my request is to avoid rehashing old arguments that have gone nowhere, and stick to providing new information when we can.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      I am sorry if I'm being pushy, it just gets extremely tiring to see all the same type of comments for years on places like here and on /r/linux. You don't have to listen to me if you don't want, it's just my humble plea.
      - traverseda 6y ago
  - traverseda 6y ago
    >they will listen to that Citation needed Gnome deserves whatever bad reputation it's getting, lest people make the mistake of building stuff on top of it.
    - cycloptic 6y ago
      >lest people make the mistake of building stuff on top of it. This is the kind of hyperbole I'm talking about... As with any open source, you don't have to use the parts you don't want. GNOME as a whole is a pretty big project, and like most projects, some of its parts are stable and up-to-date, and some aren't. Lots of other desktops build on pieces of GNOME technologies because they work, and replace the parts they're unhappy with. So I'm sorry if you feel a particular component made a mistake, but it really does not have to be a mistake that affects you, if you handle things the right way. Can you be more specific about what kind of citation you're looking for?
      - traverseda 6y ago
        > you don't have to use the parts you don't want. I don't want to use systemd-logind or the gnome search services. Right now not using either of those requires a whole lot of work. It's actually pretty hard to use GTK apps with only the GTK toolkit and not a bunch of other software daemons. Hell, in a perfect would I'd even get rid of dconf and gnome's weird registry, but I recognize that as pretty integral to the toolkit.
        cycloptic 6y ago
        I'll try to respond to each of these: AFAIK the only component that really relies on logind is GDM. If you don't want GDM and are comfortable using another display manager to launch your GNOME session, that should work fine, although I haven't tested this in a while. You may also be able to launch your session manually the old way, without a session manager, although that will probably require you to use setuid X which comes with the usual caveats. It's probably a total no-no if you're using wayland. If you decide you want GDM and wayland then you still don't need systemd-logind for session management, you can use elogind, or you can grab BSD's patches for consolekit support. The real issue there is that GDM requires some kind of session management, if you want to do this without any other daemons whatsoever, then you will have to reimplement parts of logind/consolekit inside GDM. With the search services, there is a switch for that in settings under "Search." With dconf, that is not actually integral to the toolkit. The API that applications use is GSettings, which requires a backend to actually store the settings, and dconf is just one of those backends. You can disable the dconf backend and just use the one that writes ini files to your home directory, or use some other backend. Technically apps can try to force the dconf backend but I've never seen one that does this.