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I mean, you still read them though, right? And you somewhat sort out the ones based on how much of a buffoon the user is? Maybe someone with excellent writing s

I mean, you still read them though, right? And you somewhat sort out the ones based on how much of a buffoon the user is? Maybe someone with excellent writing skills and having demonstrated reading all the documentation and FAQs is still asking for help in a respectful and intelligent way, and so maybe you engage. All of that is mental tax. And it gets tiring, even if you're mostly ignoring the request. It's still tiring even when you're in the mood for it. Just saying, it's a hard thing and I definitely sympathize for the way which open source / open project / volunteer collaborators get treated.

AshamedCaptain 3y ago
> Maybe someone with excellent writing skills and having demonstrated reading all the documentation and FAQs is still asking for help in a respectful and intelligent way, and so maybe you engage. You mean it gets tiring to find the entertaining messages instead of the random trash? Because it doesn't matter how much effort the sender has put, or how intelligent his request/question/contribution/comment is. If I'm not in the mood, I will ignore it. I'm doing it for the fun, not to provide free support, so I will only read stuff that is fun to me. Obviously being an intelligent question is likely to add points, but it's not always the case. It's not like this is race to see who is the least Torvalds-like of the bunch. It's 100% OK to just ignore everything. The people who complain "I had to moderate comments while my mother was in the hospital!" look like they have an addiction, or a runaway hobby. I even have an online board for this sort of requests and generally I just read the subject lines. Fortunately for them, once your software is popular enough, a lot of people seem to like to reply to other people's questions, for some reason.
- taftster 3y ago
  Maybe you can ignore it? And that's great, if so. But I know I can't. I'm perfectly fine ignoring the buffoons. But I feel much anxiety over ignoring an insightful request or comment that would benefit both myself and the user if I were to engage. If I'm passionate about a project (in whatever form of contribution), I definitely want to help people who are genuinely looking for help. The problem is the signal to noise is way out of line, heavy skewed the wrong direction. For me it's a mental tax to wade through and find the good requests sorting them out from the bad ones. And it causes anxiety to miss the good ones.
  - Ferret7446 3y ago
    Some people just aren't suited for certain jobs. There's nothing wrong with the person, and there's nothing wrong with the job (in this case, the job "just is").
  - blooalien 3y ago
    > "For me it's a mental tax to wade through and find the good requests sorting them out from the bad ones." This might be one of those very valid use-cases for an "A.I." / LLM to classify "hostile" messages into some sort of "junk bin" and maybe flag ones it's not entirely certain about for human review. Could fairly dramatically cut down on the garbage hopefully, leaving only the stuff worth reading.
PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago
> I mean, you still read them though, right? no? am I the only one with the super power of leaving a discussion and never going back?

AshamedCaptain 3y ago

> Maybe someone with excellent writing skills and having demonstrated reading all the documentation and FAQs is still asking for help in a respectful and intelligent way, and so maybe you engage. You mean it gets tiring to find the entertaining messages instead of the random trash? Because it doesn't matter how much effort the sender has put, or how intelligent his request/question/contribution/comment is. If I'm not in the mood, I will ignore it. I'm doing it for the fun, not to provide free support, so I will only read stuff that is fun to me. Obviously being an intelligent question is likely to add points, but it's not always the case. It's not like this is race to see who is the least Torvalds-like of the bunch. It's 100% OK to just ignore everything. The people who complain "I had to moderate comments while my mother was in the hospital!" look like they have an addiction, or a runaway hobby. I even have an online board for this sort of requests and generally I just read the subject lines. Fortunately for them, once your software is popular enough, a lot of people seem to like to reply to other people's questions, for some reason.

taftster 3y ago
Maybe you can ignore it? And that's great, if so. But I know I can't. I'm perfectly fine ignoring the buffoons. But I feel much anxiety over ignoring an insightful request or comment that would benefit both myself and the user if I were to engage. If I'm passionate about a project (in whatever form of contribution), I definitely want to help people who are genuinely looking for help. The problem is the signal to noise is way out of line, heavy skewed the wrong direction. For me it's a mental tax to wade through and find the good requests sorting them out from the bad ones. And it causes anxiety to miss the good ones.
- Ferret7446 3y ago
  Some people just aren't suited for certain jobs. There's nothing wrong with the person, and there's nothing wrong with the job (in this case, the job "just is").
- blooalien 3y ago
  > "For me it's a mental tax to wade through and find the good requests sorting them out from the bad ones." This might be one of those very valid use-cases for an "A.I." / LLM to classify "hostile" messages into some sort of "junk bin" and maybe flag ones it's not entirely certain about for human review. Could fairly dramatically cut down on the garbage hopefully, leaving only the stuff worth reading.

PH95VuimJjqBqy 3y ago

> I mean, you still read them though, right? no? am I the only one with the super power of leaving a discussion and never going back?