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You dont need to wonder. Any long term maintainer of even semi popular open source projects will tell you that engaging with the peanut gallery is completely co

You dont need to wonder. Any long term maintainer of even semi popular open source projects will tell you that engaging with the peanut gallery is completely counter productive. Engage with people that have earned it in your eyes, whether by contributing to your project via code, assets, bug triage, writing a good and effortful bug report, whatever. Just ignore what the larger internet has to say about you and your creations.

graemep 3y ago
I think this is a wider social problem of the internet. Most people want to be helpful to others. This works fine when it is with a limited no of in real life interactions with mostly reasonable people. It can get wrecked by one or two unreasonable people, but the more fundamental problem is that it does not scale well, and the internet takes it to a far greater scale. It is one reason so many of us essentially work for free for FB and the like: we do things to help others (advice and information), and the side effect is creating content and data for FB.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
- littlestymaar 3y ago
  > Most people want to be helpful to others. This works fine when it is with a limited no of in real life interactions with mostly reasonable people. I don't think it has anything to do with the internet (whose scale pose many problems but not this one): anyone that founded a product/start up can tell you that people will give you “advices” and “suggestions” all the time when you talk about your project, and “don't listen to random suggestions from people you've just met” is one of the first advice you're being given when you're talking to other founders. It doesn't even need to scale above a handful of people to be a nuisance that harm your project if you listen to them.
  - lobocinza 3y ago
    I'm always wary of people that freely give advice/suggestions because they probably: * lack information * have a conflicting vision * are being dishonest I'm not a founder but I imagine that being integral to your own vision is the way to go. Attempting to cater to the conflicting needs of a diverse set of users isn't feasible for a startup. But anyway this isn't valid only for founders but also to life, friends and family.
ninkendo 3y ago
What form should this ignoring take, in your eyes? I’ve never maintained an open source project but I’d imagine this is the hard part, how to politely decline the peanut gallery’s feedback. Do you disable GH issues? Leave them open and ignore them? Decline with some boilerplate language? How do you stop people from being mad that you’re ignoring them? (IME these types of people are likely to take things personally and start harassing you or complaining loudly in other forums…) These are the kind of things that stress me out just thinking about it, if a project of mine actually got popular.
- aumerle 3y ago
  Say no, politely, with your reasons. If they continue to argue: 1) Unwatch the issue/block emails realted to the issue (setup tooling for this) 2) If they continue to harass just block them, they are a waste of your precious time and energy And yes they will go cry on reddit or HN or their own blogs and call you names. Ignore it. Be happy in the knowledge of the thousands or millions of people whose lives you have improved by your labor. Most of them wont bother to say thank you, but a few will, rememebr those. And be happy in the knowledge that the worlds is a better place because you exist in it, in however small a way. The key is to realize that human psychology is by default not well equipped to deal with the internet. We tend to react much more strongly to criticism than praise. Recognize that in yourself, and gradually change it.
  - bennyhill 3y ago
    This is certainly a good idea for the individual who is running a FOSS project.. But I think the projects with maintainers who bend over backwards for people are more often the ones that end up chosen and kept as dependencies when there are for example hundreds of compression libraries to choose from. The distribution game is kind of stacked for the most likely to burn out to be the most likely to be important in the stack and in desperate need of help.
    - bee_rider 3y ago
      It makes sense that this could have been an easy mistake to make in the past. Responsive people seem more interested and engaged. But I wonder if it would be best seen as imprudent now? If highly responsive maintainers are susceptible to burnout, then maybe people should consider those other algorithms. Especially considering the responsiveness here is responsiveness to the peanut gallery. It would probably be good for the maintainers too. If being responsive is seen as a way to have a bigger impact, people might be inclined to become more responsive and burn out.

graemep 3y ago

I think this is a wider social problem of the internet. Most people want to be helpful to others. This works fine when it is with a limited no of in real life interactions with mostly reasonable people. It can get wrecked by one or two unreasonable people, but the more fundamental problem is that it does not scale well, and the internet takes it to a far greater scale. It is one reason so many of us essentially work for free for FB and the like: we do things to help others (advice and information), and the side effect is creating content and data for FB.

deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
littlestymaar 3y ago
> Most people want to be helpful to others. This works fine when it is with a limited no of in real life interactions with mostly reasonable people. I don't think it has anything to do with the internet (whose scale pose many problems but not this one): anyone that founded a product/start up can tell you that people will give you “advices” and “suggestions” all the time when you talk about your project, and “don't listen to random suggestions from people you've just met” is one of the first advice you're being given when you're talking to other founders. It doesn't even need to scale above a handful of people to be a nuisance that harm your project if you listen to them.
- lobocinza 3y ago
  I'm always wary of people that freely give advice/suggestions because they probably: * lack information * have a conflicting vision * are being dishonest I'm not a founder but I imagine that being integral to your own vision is the way to go. Attempting to cater to the conflicting needs of a diverse set of users isn't feasible for a startup. But anyway this isn't valid only for founders but also to life, friends and family.

ninkendo 3y ago

What form should this ignoring take, in your eyes? I’ve never maintained an open source project but I’d imagine this is the hard part, how to politely decline the peanut gallery’s feedback. Do you disable GH issues? Leave them open and ignore them? Decline with some boilerplate language? How do you stop people from being mad that you’re ignoring them? (IME these types of people are likely to take things personally and start harassing you or complaining loudly in other forums…) These are the kind of things that stress me out just thinking about it, if a project of mine actually got popular.

aumerle 3y ago
Say no, politely, with your reasons. If they continue to argue: 1) Unwatch the issue/block emails realted to the issue (setup tooling for this) 2) If they continue to harass just block them, they are a waste of your precious time and energy And yes they will go cry on reddit or HN or their own blogs and call you names. Ignore it. Be happy in the knowledge of the thousands or millions of people whose lives you have improved by your labor. Most of them wont bother to say thank you, but a few will, rememebr those. And be happy in the knowledge that the worlds is a better place because you exist in it, in however small a way. The key is to realize that human psychology is by default not well equipped to deal with the internet. We tend to react much more strongly to criticism than praise. Recognize that in yourself, and gradually change it.
- bennyhill 3y ago
  This is certainly a good idea for the individual who is running a FOSS project.. But I think the projects with maintainers who bend over backwards for people are more often the ones that end up chosen and kept as dependencies when there are for example hundreds of compression libraries to choose from. The distribution game is kind of stacked for the most likely to burn out to be the most likely to be important in the stack and in desperate need of help.
  - bee_rider 3y ago
    It makes sense that this could have been an easy mistake to make in the past. Responsive people seem more interested and engaged. But I wonder if it would be best seen as imprudent now? If highly responsive maintainers are susceptible to burnout, then maybe people should consider those other algorithms. Especially considering the responsiveness here is responsiveness to the peanut gallery. It would probably be good for the maintainers too. If being responsive is seen as a way to have a bigger impact, people might be inclined to become more responsive and burn out.