7 ms·

I think this bug report is an excellent example of how not to interact with your users. 1. Remove a long-existing feature without telling anyone, hidden in a m

by Udo 13y ago

I think this bug report is an excellent example of how not to interact with your users. 1. Remove a long-existing feature without telling anyone, hidden in a minor update 2. A user reports it in a friendly and informative manner. Persch [dev] closes with a single word "No". That alone should make any user furious. 3. A discussion ensues with someone finally (and understandably) concluding that this was done intentionally. To which Mueller [dev] responds: "Please don't. Please give https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct https://live.gnome.org/CodeOfConduct a read. And please consider that this bugzilla is not meant to be a discussion forum but rather a place where actual bugs are kept." Holy crap, so we are to conclude that it was not done intentionally but it should not be fixed either and that nobody is supposed to complain because the developers' code of conduct states that they always mean well by definition. 4. Another user sheds light on the backstory by pretty much proving this was done on purpose (contradicting Mueller). To which a third developer responds indignantly that the "official" workaround for this issue is sufficient and that the user should head over to the corresponding wiki page and improve the workaround description. He then closes again with a statement about how all devs are well-meaning (just for the added cognitive dissonance I suppose). What takes the cake: from reading their description, the suggested "workaround" seems to make the whole window transparent, including the terminal text.

Glyptodon 13y ago
Gnome has always been this way. It's kind of sad, but if it was that way in 2006 and 2008 and 2010 it's hardly surprising that it's still that way in 2013. :/ In general, Gnome tends to make decisions internally and then refuse to communicate what's behind said decisions to the broader community. That said, I don't think I agree with the people who seem to think of transparent terminals as massively important feature, though I do find them nice.
- Udo 13y ago
  I'm with you. I'm not a Gnome user, nor is my terminal background (semi-)transparent. I just thought this was a great window into the attitude among the project's developers.
- adregan 13y ago
  I often read discussions asking for designers to get involved in open source software, but maybe some PR folks are needed as well.
- laureny 13y ago
  > I don't think I agree with the people who seem to think of transparent terminals as massively important feature, though I do find them nice. I don't like transparent terminals myself but the bottom line is that Linux users spend a lot of time in their terminal. Terminals are the #1 productivity tools for Linux. You just can't remove features from such tools willy nilly without consulting with your users.
  - Someone 13y ago
    On the other hand, http://www.gnome.org/ http://www.gnome.org/ describes itself as: "GNOME 3: Ease, comfort and control GNOME 3 is an easy and elegant way to use your computer. It is designed to put you in control and bring freedom to everybody." From that, I don't think they aim to support the group of users that "spend a lot of time in their terminal". They might even look forward to the day they manage to ship a system without a terminal.
    - pyre 13y ago
      If that's their stated goal, then they should just come out with it and let all of the users that spend a good majority of their time in terminals migrate to something else. I have a sneaking suspicion that GNOME usage would take a nosedive if they were to do this.
      - mpyne 13y ago
        Honestly I don't think that would happen even if they plainly stated it. At this point the writing has been on the wall for years and yet the "power users" who would care about this still haven't switched. Whether it's Stockholm syndrome, or self-blaming, or "oh, that wouldn't happen to me" I don't know, but it's getting increasing harder to blame the GNOME devs... they've made their opinion very clear and they're the ones driving the ship. If you're a passenger and you think you see icebergs you need to abandon ship, not whine with the Captain about where to steer.
        juhanima 13y ago
- foobarian 13y ago
  It's kind of ironic that a project with a non-transparent development process decides to remove transparency features in this manner.
vault_ 13y ago
Mueller wasn't saying that it wasn't done intentionally. He was saying not to assume that its removal had been maliciously hidden.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
  - claudius 13y ago
    ‘this’ refers to hiding the removal, not the removal itself.
    - Udo 13y ago
      I stand corrected. However, Tobias Wolf shows that it was indeed intentional. Which makes sense to me as an outside observer, because if it wasn't intentional then why close it pertly as WONTFIX, why not just come out and say that this feature was scheduled to be removed?
      - claudius 13y ago
        It is obvious that the removal of the feature was intentional. This easily justifies closing a bug as WONTFIX. Whether or not this was intentionally done in a particularly nasty/hidden way is not obvious, and while the commenter claimed that it was intentional, there is little proof, and even if there was proof, it wouldn’t change anything, hence why he was pointed at the CoC. Am I really defending the GNOME project now? ó.Ò
Udo 13y ago
Also, the original title of this thread was about a thousand times more informative.
- coherentpony 13y ago
  Yes. This title changing business is infuriating.
  - jabo 13y ago
    I agree. Changing titles decreases the quality of the submission since they are almost always uninformative and mundane compared to the originally submitted titles. And this thread is case in point. Edit: I'm tempted to write a bot that will catch title changes and post the original title as a comment in the thread automatically.
    - MichaelApproved 13y ago
      I tried something like that once. HNers were not fans of novilty accounts, even a useful one that added content like yours would. Though, I'd be in favor of you trying and seeing the result. My test was limited and short lived so it may not be indicative of the full community.
      - plorkyeran 13y ago
        The bot which automatically posted links to previous submissions of the same URL was also received pretty poorly despite often being useful, so I wouldn't have high hopes.
    - beedogs 13y ago
      You'll probably be shadow-banned; there's another dirty little HN secret. The moderation here is pretty horrifyingly bad.
  - stefantalpalaru 13y ago
    It's probably a social experiment.
anonymous 13y ago
And this is why I haven't been running gnome since 2.2
SCdF 13y ago
Is it me or has comments 19-24 been deleted? I'm guessing that's where the Mueller response used to be, but I don't see anything.
- towolf 13y ago
  I just looked at the bug again and it’s been sanitized. I commented 2 or 3 times in the linked bug to add backstory. Those comments are gone now. The attachment I added is still there. Funny story, they banned me now because they think I submitted this HN story. I didn’t, I came here way later. http://i.imgur.com/wCTh0MZ.png http://i.imgur.com/wCTh0MZ.png Makes you think, doesn’t it? (The warnings refer to another bug a few months ago, where I tried to make another developer explain his removals, and good discussion and a full blog post resulted. All in all a good result. But still they said I was out of line because I named names)
  - rorrr2 13y ago
    It's like a North Korea of development. Any dissent, real or imaginary, and you're gone.
    - mercurial 13y ago
      More like 1984. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
  - shmageggy 13y ago
    Wow... that is so weak. Their attitude makes me want to switch to another desktop even more so that the software itself.
  - bhitov 13y ago
    > to add backstory. Didn't you accuse them of intentionally mixing up commits to make the changes hard to reverse? Calling that adding backstory is dishonest and the comment was entirely inappropriate. (Sincere apologies if I am mis-attributing this comment to you.)
beedogs 13y ago
Stuff like this seems to be endemic to the Gnome project. It helps explain the lack of direction the project has taken in the past 2 years. Gnome has suffered greatly in many ways because of this.
- vidarh 13y ago
  Past two years? Gnome has been messed up beyond belief for much longer than that. I used to strongly support Gnome, but these days I'm just happy Canonical largely do their own thing with Ubuntu (for now they happen to do stuff that gives me a better environment than Gnome, but I'm ready to jump if they start doing stupid stuff too). Gnome is quickly making themselves obsolete.

by Udo 13y ago

Glyptodon 13y ago

Gnome has always been this way. It's kind of sad, but if it was that way in 2006 and 2008 and 2010 it's hardly surprising that it's still that way in 2013. :/ In general, Gnome tends to make decisions internally and then refuse to communicate what's behind said decisions to the broader community. That said, I don't think I agree with the people who seem to think of transparent terminals as massively important feature, though I do find them nice.

Udo 13y ago
I'm with you. I'm not a Gnome user, nor is my terminal background (semi-)transparent. I just thought this was a great window into the attitude among the project's developers.
adregan 13y ago
I often read discussions asking for designers to get involved in open source software, but maybe some PR folks are needed as well.
laureny 13y ago
> I don't think I agree with the people who seem to think of transparent terminals as massively important feature, though I do find them nice. I don't like transparent terminals myself but the bottom line is that Linux users spend a lot of time in their terminal. Terminals are the #1 productivity tools for Linux. You just can't remove features from such tools willy nilly without consulting with your users.
- Someone 13y ago
  On the other hand, http://www.gnome.org/ http://www.gnome.org/ describes itself as: "GNOME 3: Ease, comfort and control GNOME 3 is an easy and elegant way to use your computer. It is designed to put you in control and bring freedom to everybody." From that, I don't think they aim to support the group of users that "spend a lot of time in their terminal". They might even look forward to the day they manage to ship a system without a terminal.
  - pyre 13y ago
    If that's their stated goal, then they should just come out with it and let all of the users that spend a good majority of their time in terminals migrate to something else. I have a sneaking suspicion that GNOME usage would take a nosedive if they were to do this.
    - mpyne 13y ago
      Honestly I don't think that would happen even if they plainly stated it. At this point the writing has been on the wall for years and yet the "power users" who would care about this still haven't switched. Whether it's Stockholm syndrome, or self-blaming, or "oh, that wouldn't happen to me" I don't know, but it's getting increasing harder to blame the GNOME devs... they've made their opinion very clear and they're the ones driving the ship. If you're a passenger and you think you see icebergs you need to abandon ship, not whine with the Captain about where to steer.
      - juhanima 13y ago
foobarian 13y ago
It's kind of ironic that a project with a non-transparent development process decides to remove transparency features in this manner.

vault_ 13y ago

Mueller wasn't saying that it wasn't done intentionally. He was saying not to assume that its removal had been maliciously hidden.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
- claudius 13y ago
  ‘this’ refers to hiding the removal, not the removal itself.
  - Udo 13y ago
    I stand corrected. However, Tobias Wolf shows that it was indeed intentional. Which makes sense to me as an outside observer, because if it wasn't intentional then why close it pertly as WONTFIX, why not just come out and say that this feature was scheduled to be removed?
    - claudius 13y ago
      It is obvious that the removal of the feature was intentional. This easily justifies closing a bug as WONTFIX. Whether or not this was intentionally done in a particularly nasty/hidden way is not obvious, and while the commenter claimed that it was intentional, there is little proof, and even if there was proof, it wouldn’t change anything, hence why he was pointed at the CoC. Am I really defending the GNOME project now? ó.Ò

Udo 13y ago

Also, the original title of this thread was about a thousand times more informative.

coherentpony 13y ago
Yes. This title changing business is infuriating.
- jabo 13y ago
  I agree. Changing titles decreases the quality of the submission since they are almost always uninformative and mundane compared to the originally submitted titles. And this thread is case in point. Edit: I'm tempted to write a bot that will catch title changes and post the original title as a comment in the thread automatically.
  - MichaelApproved 13y ago
    I tried something like that once. HNers were not fans of novilty accounts, even a useful one that added content like yours would. Though, I'd be in favor of you trying and seeing the result. My test was limited and short lived so it may not be indicative of the full community.
    - plorkyeran 13y ago
      The bot which automatically posted links to previous submissions of the same URL was also received pretty poorly despite often being useful, so I wouldn't have high hopes.
  - beedogs 13y ago
    You'll probably be shadow-banned; there's another dirty little HN secret. The moderation here is pretty horrifyingly bad.
- stefantalpalaru 13y ago
  It's probably a social experiment.

anonymous 13y ago

And this is why I haven't been running gnome since 2.2

SCdF 13y ago

Is it me or has comments 19-24 been deleted? I'm guessing that's where the Mueller response used to be, but I don't see anything.

towolf 13y ago
I just looked at the bug again and it’s been sanitized. I commented 2 or 3 times in the linked bug to add backstory. Those comments are gone now. The attachment I added is still there. Funny story, they banned me now because they think I submitted this HN story. I didn’t, I came here way later. http://i.imgur.com/wCTh0MZ.png http://i.imgur.com/wCTh0MZ.png Makes you think, doesn’t it? (The warnings refer to another bug a few months ago, where I tried to make another developer explain his removals, and good discussion and a full blog post resulted. All in all a good result. But still they said I was out of line because I named names)
- rorrr2 13y ago
  It's like a North Korea of development. Any dissent, real or imaginary, and you're gone.
  - mercurial 13y ago
    More like 1984. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia.
- shmageggy 13y ago
  Wow... that is so weak. Their attitude makes me want to switch to another desktop even more so that the software itself.
- bhitov 13y ago
  > to add backstory. Didn't you accuse them of intentionally mixing up commits to make the changes hard to reverse? Calling that adding backstory is dishonest and the comment was entirely inappropriate. (Sincere apologies if I am mis-attributing this comment to you.)

beedogs 13y ago

Stuff like this seems to be endemic to the Gnome project. It helps explain the lack of direction the project has taken in the past 2 years. Gnome has suffered greatly in many ways because of this.

vidarh 13y ago
Past two years? Gnome has been messed up beyond belief for much longer than that. I used to strongly support Gnome, but these days I'm just happy Canonical largely do their own thing with Ubuntu (for now they happen to do stuff that gives me a better environment than Gnome, but I'm ready to jump if they start doing stupid stuff too). Gnome is quickly making themselves obsolete.