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Posts like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. Whatever value they have as a signal boost is a rounding error compared to the harm they cause to

Posts like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. Whatever value they have as a signal boost is a rounding error compared to the harm they cause to individuals as well as to the culture as a whole. Please don't ever post things like this. If you're this frustrated that the people who make free things for you aren't donating their time to you in the way you'd prefer, grab a drink with a friend and vent to them in private instead.

brabel 5y ago
As I maintainter myself, I completely disagree. It's a fair complaint that everyone contributing to open source will eventually suffer from. > Please don't ever post things like this. What the hell, is this against any HN policy? Or you think no one should post their point of view here if it's against yours? EDIT: I think it's important to note that burnout is a result of you having an issue within yourself (at least in the context of voluntary projects), it's not something others do to you... you can choose to ignore all pull requests, for example, or say in your README that you won't accept any (I've done that myself to projects I wanted to keep in a certain "permanent" state for reasons). If you choose to engage in discussions, that's your call.
- atoav 5y ago
  > I think it's important to note that burnout is a result of you having an issue within yourself I think this is an oversimplification. You can be perfectly happy with yourself, but if your environment creates a neverending treadmill of situations that drains your soul, you will get burnout if you cannot find any mechanism to cope with it, to avoid it or to deal with it. And in open source we are each others environment. If you have 100 well researched issues written in a friendly tone you will certainly feel a different motivation to tackle that backlog than if it are 100 toxic spitting well-researched issues. The same goes for how we talk about each other in public. If you think a PR should have been merged, just talk to the maintainers in a non-public setting (Chat or whatever) and explain why you want it merged, what you would be willing to do for it and how they could see this happen. If they still don't like to do it, just fork it and do it yourself.
  - brabel 5y ago
    > you will get burnout if you cannot find any mechanism to cope with it, to avoid it or to deal with it. I agree with you it's more complicated than that, but you seem to be supporting my point by saying this :) ... you will get burnout if --> *you* cannot find a way to cope... --> *you* cannot deal with it. It's like offense... it must be taken to work... I know, I know... sometimes you cannot avoid taking it and bringing it with you because you care about others thinking you should be offended, or that they feel offended on your behalf even (with seems to be a common feeling today), but I find it great that the English language uses the term "take offense", as it is so accurate: if you don't take it, it simply evaporates, no one can offend you and force you to take offense if you choose to not do it. Same with burnout.
doteka 5y ago
Nope, sorry. Maintainers are not above criticism just like anyone else, and this post did so in a respectful way. It’s a real problem and e.g. the reason we have stopped trying to upstream any fixes to OSS libraries at work - it’s in no way worth the effort to jump through these hoops, take our bugfix or leave it.
- martinhath 5y ago
  > take our bugfix or leave it. Why do you think people should unconditionally accept code into their own codebase? Your wording also suggests that you think the maintainers are somehow leading you on to doing more work. Have you considered how much work doing proper review is?
Veen 5y ago
The world does not owe maintainers protection from negative feedback. They are not high priests of open source whose behaviour is above criticism because they "make free things". It sucks to be criticized, even as politely as in the gist, but it's part of being an adult operating alongside other adults in a complex domain where disagreement is inevitable.
- jeroenhd 5y ago
  I agree, but only partially. Anyone doing anything in public opens themselves to criticism, but the criticism has to be well-intentioned and valid. In this case, requirements about code quality and even refusal of code likely to introduce bugs is being called "gatekeeping" which is complete nonsense. If you refuse a merge request for good reason, you don't deserve to get shit on by some salty contributor who doesn't want to bring their PR up to your standards. This article seems to indicate that any PR intended to be helpful must be merged, whatever the cost in maintenance, because otherwise you're gatekeeping. If you refuse a PR for bad reasons ("I don't accept contributions from Chile because I had a bad holiday there once" and more racist/sexist variants thereof) then you definitely deserve criticism. What's happening here isn't really criticism, though, it's childish ranting about other people not putting in enough free work for the author and how that is somehow damaging to the volunteers, disguised behind polite words. I think the world owes maintainers no protection from real, useful negative feedback, but a lot of negative feedback is just people being angry that they don't get their way. In a civil internet, that kind of behaviour has no place being called "criticism" and being assumed to just be par for the course of open source. I've decided I never want to be an open source maintainer exactly because of the entitled people who write these articles, and I don't think I'm the only one being pushed away from open source for this reason.
  - Veen 5y ago
    > In this case, requirements about code quality and even refusal of code likely to introduce bugs is being called "gatekeeping" which is complete nonsense. I strongly agree with you. I know gatekeeping has negative connotations and has become a sort of generalized boo word in some circles. But I'm glad maintainers act as gate keepers. Some code is crap and some coders aren't very good. Or, at least, their abilities don't match their ambitions. Someone has to keep low-quality work out of open source projects, and it's not a job I would want. Nevertheless, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The real problem with gate-keeping is when the gate-keepers aren't accountable. Criticism is one of the ways we can keep them accountable. It's the same many areas. I want engineering schools and guilds to gate-keep so bridges don't fall down when I'm driving across them. I want news and book editors to gate-keep so I don't have to wade through acres of dross to find worthwhile content. And I want maintainers to gate-keep so open source software works when I need it.
Karunamon 5y ago
Maintainer attitudes like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. A look through the linked PR is about 50/50 solid technical criticism and nitpicky bikeshedding. The Rust community seems toxic, in the Wikipedian way of being unwelcoming and unfriendly without ever dropping into incivility.
indymike 5y ago
> Posts like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. Lack of contributors also causes maintainer burnout. The best way I know to have zero help is to treat a contributor poorly. Sometimes it cannot be helped, for example, when a contributor sends unusable code or a contribution forces a decision the maintainer isn't ready to make. Most scorned contributors will do exactly what Frederick did in this case, vent and then find a similar project to contribute to. In this case the similar project is Kitty, which is a fantastic piece of software. > Please don't ever post things like this. Asking people to shut up, not matter how politely you do it, rarely works. The problem will remain, and people will still complain about it.

brabel 5y ago

As I maintainter myself, I completely disagree. It's a fair complaint that everyone contributing to open source will eventually suffer from. > Please don't ever post things like this. What the hell, is this against any HN policy? Or you think no one should post their point of view here if it's against yours? EDIT: I think it's important to note that burnout is a result of you having an issue within yourself (at least in the context of voluntary projects), it's not something others do to you... you can choose to ignore all pull requests, for example, or say in your README that you won't accept any (I've done that myself to projects I wanted to keep in a certain "permanent" state for reasons). If you choose to engage in discussions, that's your call.

atoav 5y ago
> I think it's important to note that burnout is a result of you having an issue within yourself I think this is an oversimplification. You can be perfectly happy with yourself, but if your environment creates a neverending treadmill of situations that drains your soul, you will get burnout if you cannot find any mechanism to cope with it, to avoid it or to deal with it. And in open source we are each others environment. If you have 100 well researched issues written in a friendly tone you will certainly feel a different motivation to tackle that backlog than if it are 100 toxic spitting well-researched issues. The same goes for how we talk about each other in public. If you think a PR should have been merged, just talk to the maintainers in a non-public setting (Chat or whatever) and explain why you want it merged, what you would be willing to do for it and how they could see this happen. If they still don't like to do it, just fork it and do it yourself.
- brabel 5y ago
  > you will get burnout if you cannot find any mechanism to cope with it, to avoid it or to deal with it. I agree with you it's more complicated than that, but you seem to be supporting my point by saying this :) ... you will get burnout if --> *you* cannot find a way to cope... --> *you* cannot deal with it. It's like offense... it must be taken to work... I know, I know... sometimes you cannot avoid taking it and bringing it with you because you care about others thinking you should be offended, or that they feel offended on your behalf even (with seems to be a common feeling today), but I find it great that the English language uses the term "take offense", as it is so accurate: if you don't take it, it simply evaporates, no one can offend you and force you to take offense if you choose to not do it. Same with burnout.

doteka 5y ago

Nope, sorry. Maintainers are not above criticism just like anyone else, and this post did so in a respectful way. It’s a real problem and e.g. the reason we have stopped trying to upstream any fixes to OSS libraries at work - it’s in no way worth the effort to jump through these hoops, take our bugfix or leave it.

martinhath 5y ago
> take our bugfix or leave it. Why do you think people should unconditionally accept code into their own codebase? Your wording also suggests that you think the maintainers are somehow leading you on to doing more work. Have you considered how much work doing proper review is?

Veen 5y ago

The world does not owe maintainers protection from negative feedback. They are not high priests of open source whose behaviour is above criticism because they "make free things". It sucks to be criticized, even as politely as in the gist, but it's part of being an adult operating alongside other adults in a complex domain where disagreement is inevitable.

jeroenhd 5y ago
I agree, but only partially. Anyone doing anything in public opens themselves to criticism, but the criticism has to be well-intentioned and valid. In this case, requirements about code quality and even refusal of code likely to introduce bugs is being called "gatekeeping" which is complete nonsense. If you refuse a merge request for good reason, you don't deserve to get shit on by some salty contributor who doesn't want to bring their PR up to your standards. This article seems to indicate that any PR intended to be helpful must be merged, whatever the cost in maintenance, because otherwise you're gatekeeping. If you refuse a PR for bad reasons ("I don't accept contributions from Chile because I had a bad holiday there once" and more racist/sexist variants thereof) then you definitely deserve criticism. What's happening here isn't really criticism, though, it's childish ranting about other people not putting in enough free work for the author and how that is somehow damaging to the volunteers, disguised behind polite words. I think the world owes maintainers no protection from real, useful negative feedback, but a lot of negative feedback is just people being angry that they don't get their way. In a civil internet, that kind of behaviour has no place being called "criticism" and being assumed to just be par for the course of open source. I've decided I never want to be an open source maintainer exactly because of the entitled people who write these articles, and I don't think I'm the only one being pushed away from open source for this reason.
- Veen 5y ago
  > In this case, requirements about code quality and even refusal of code likely to introduce bugs is being called "gatekeeping" which is complete nonsense. I strongly agree with you. I know gatekeeping has negative connotations and has become a sort of generalized boo word in some circles. But I'm glad maintainers act as gate keepers. Some code is crap and some coders aren't very good. Or, at least, their abilities don't match their ambitions. Someone has to keep low-quality work out of open source projects, and it's not a job I would want. Nevertheless, quis custodiet ipsos custodes? The real problem with gate-keeping is when the gate-keepers aren't accountable. Criticism is one of the ways we can keep them accountable. It's the same many areas. I want engineering schools and guilds to gate-keep so bridges don't fall down when I'm driving across them. I want news and book editors to gate-keep so I don't have to wade through acres of dross to find worthwhile content. And I want maintainers to gate-keep so open source software works when I need it.

Karunamon 5y ago

Maintainer attitudes like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. A look through the linked PR is about 50/50 solid technical criticism and nitpicky bikeshedding. The Rust community seems toxic, in the Wikipedian way of being unwelcoming and unfriendly without ever dropping into incivility.

indymike 5y ago

> Posts like this are major contributors to maintainer burnout. Lack of contributors also causes maintainer burnout. The best way I know to have zero help is to treat a contributor poorly. Sometimes it cannot be helped, for example, when a contributor sends unusable code or a contribution forces a decision the maintainer isn't ready to make. Most scorned contributors will do exactly what Frederick did in this case, vent and then find a similar project to contribute to. In this case the similar project is Kitty, which is a fantastic piece of software. > Please don't ever post things like this. Asking people to shut up, not matter how politely you do it, rarely works. The problem will remain, and people will still complain about it.