
Why I didn’t fix your bug - davidgerard
http://magnusmanske.de/wordpress/?p=518
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ktpsns
FYI Magnus Manske wrote the first version of MediaWiki, the PHP software which
is underlying Wikipedia. It is constantly evolving and nowadays still a state-
of-the-art code with a mature code base, a great documentation, API,
extendability. Ontop of MediaWiki, people built WikiData or the semantic
MediaWiki extension which can be used in a way to write complex web
applications right ontop of a wiki with a minimum of code (wrote a video
portal once based on SMW).

Having that said, the wikipedia ecosystem lives from a number of seperate
tools which query the wikipedia database. One of the early well-known tools
was the editcounter which allowed people to count their edits on wikipedia,
for instance.

I think it is fair enough to let these tools be tools. Either they work for
you or they don't. Many of them are open sourced and you can go on, fork and
host them on your own.

Instead, this tells nothing about the quality of MediaWiki, IMHO. There are a
number of maintainers keeping up quality and progress in MediaWiki itself.

~~~
jorvi
Their API and documentation is pretty great. It allowed me to whip up a script
to access WikiPedia in my shell in no time.

([https://github.com/jorvi/shiki](https://github.com/jorvi/shiki), in case
anyone wants it)

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oaiey
His time calculation is more than friendly to the community! Dedicate 6 hours
to non work coding is insane.

Take care of you!

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phatbyte
> -2h private (eat, exercise, shower, read, girlfriend, etc.)

How to manage to do all of this in 2h? Just for Gym it's always around 40-50m,
not counting the time to get there and back. Eat unless you always order out
it takes also 40-50 (prep and eat).

~~~
makemoniesonlin
Many people can (prep and) eat in much less time than 40-50 minutes.

~~~
antisthenes
I'm a slow eater. It would take me 40 minutes just to finish the meal, without
counting prep and cook.

I frequently wish I didn't have to eat at all - it would more than double my
productivity and free time.

~~~
jeffstephens
That wish was the itch that Soylent was built to scratch. I've gone back and
forth on it, but in the end I found that mixing the powder up wasn't _that_
much easier than just making a sandwich. The bottled version is a really quick
way to get some sustenance but it generates a lot of waste...

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Sir_Cmpwn
Very good article. I always reiterate that I and everyone else involved in my
open source communities are volunteers. Everyone has their own agenda and
unless they explicitly ask me for direction, they work on what they want.
Maybe you can convince them to take on your bug, but if it doesn't affect them
then it's probably not going to get looked at expediently, if at all. Send a
patch!

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jasonmaydie
What a strange way to categorize whose bug it is.

~~~
oneeyedpigeon
Are you referring to "Why I didn't fix _your_ bug"? Because that struck me
too. I agree with the thrust of the article, but it's a shame the title
implies a slightly misguided attitude. I say "implies", because it's probably
a 'mistype', but it's certainly one worth addressing for future readers, IMO.

~~~
hermitdev
I think it's just poorly phrased. He's referring to the proverbial "you" and
the bug "you" reported, not the bug "you" introduced.

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whatyoucantsay
The tortured protagonist is a core online archetype.

~~~
dullgiulio
Read the article. He talks about things to do in his private time.

I don't know about you, but working after a full day of work is not really
pleasing in the long run.

You hear this often because it's a common problem in Open Source.

~~~
whatyoucantsay
I did read it. It fit the archetype.

A high agency individual looks for and finds solutions. Sidekiq is a great
example. So is WordPress. Even Github was. Watch Tom Preston-Werner's Mixergy
interview and you'll see that he specifically put thought into making sure it
would generate revenue in a sustainable fashion if it were to become popular.

~~~
aidenn0
Is your argument that it's the author's fault that the bugs aren't being fixed
because he volunteers on open source software when he instead should have
found a way to get paid to work on it?

~~~
whatyoucantsay
All three examples I shared _were_ open source.

To answer your question a bit more directly, yes. He doesn't like the
consequences of running a reasonably large, unmonetized project. It isn't
precisely a _fault_ , but it is a situation he's not happy with and one that
flows from his own decisions.

He's not a passive victim of the internet. He's an intelligent actor with the
power to take different actions and get different results. He's also free to
continue down the current path, but he doesn't appear to enjoy it.

~~~
aidenn0
Thanks for your response!

> All three examples I shared were open source.

Indeed; I was making a distinction between volunteer and paid.

> To answer your question a bit more directly, yes. He doesn't like the
> consequences of running a reasonably large, unmonetized project. It isn't
> precisely a fault, but it is a situation he's not happy with and one that
> flows from his own decisions.

I didn't read it as him being at all unhappy with the consequences. He is
merely communicating the consequences of it to other people on the internet
who _are_ unhappy with it.

> He's not a passive victim of the internet. He's an intelligent actor with
> the power to take different actions and get different results. He's also
> free to continue down the current path, but he doesn't appear to enjoy it.

And this is where we read the article differently. To me, he seems perfectly
happy with the state of affairs, with a 9-5 job that pays the bills and
several hours on a volunteer project that he gets some other satisfaction out
of.

I guess I tend to give other people the benefit of the doubt when it comes to
agency. I interpret "I don't have time for X" to mean "I have other things I
am doing that are more important to me than X" which assumes the person is
assuming responsibility for their choices.

