

Another user/developer banned from GNOME's bugzilla without any warning - felipec
http://felipec.wordpress.com/2011/09/23/no-gnome-doesnt-want-user-feedback-how-i-argued-in-favor-of-voting-in-bugzilla-and-got-banned-as-a-result/

======
merlish
Felipe, I'm completely unsurprised you got banned. This post is just
continuation of the behaviour you can't see.

People are human. It doesn't matter if you're technically in the right, or
that you think things should be some way - if you piss people off, they are
going to tell you to stop pissing them off and then eventually they will do
something rash.

In this post you just drag out the dirty laundry again and go through it
painstakingly, and then post it to a public forum (HN) for everyone to see.

Just learn to let things go, for God's sake. You wouldn't have been banned if
you just said 'sorry' or 'ok, let's agree to disagree' and started talking
constructively.

Your goal is to talk them round to your point of view, not make them never
want to talk to you again for fear of you blowing things way out of
proportion.

~~~
brazzy
He _was_ talking constructively, up until the point where the admin go pissy
in a way that made it impossible to be constructive.

~~~
jasonlotito
He wasn't. He was acting the part of a self-entitle, self-centered know-it-
all. Hell, if he held himself to his own standards, he'd have called himself
out for being a hypocritical liar.

~~~
seanc722
Supporting having user's feedback in a project is self-centered?

~~~
jasonlotito
Not at all, and I didn't even remotely suggest as such. Supporting having
user's feedback is an idea. Acting self-centered is the way you act, your
attitude. One has nothing to do with the other.

~~~
seanc722
Ah all I have read is the comments and the post. Based on that he did not come
off that way to me. Though there is always more to stories.

------
cdmoyer
"Just stop" sounds like a warning to me.

Olav's comment about google plus and mailing lists suggest to me that Felipe
has been on a crusade about this topic and using and soap box he could find.
As any sort of community or project admin, the behavior of being told no and
the constantly raising the issue and trying to drum up support is really
annoying and likely to result in this type of situation.

I mean, I haven't used gnome in years or followed the community, but just
reading the OP's post defending himself made me want to ban him. We can argue
all day about a platonic world of argument and enlightenment where tone
doesn't matter... But we live in the real world with real people.

~~~
sgift
> I mean, I haven't used gnome in years or followed the community, but just
> reading the OP's post defending himself made me want to ban him. We can
> argue all day about a platonic world of argument and enlightenment where
> tone doesn't matter... But we live in the real world with real people.

And that is the moment someone who knows how to handle such a situation takes
his fingers of the keyboard, gets a tea, takes a stroll or does whatever he
needs to do to be able to handle the situation rationally later. The others?
They behave like a three year old: "I will NEVER play with you again!!!!" and
swing the ban hammer.

~~~
jre
To be fair, they should both have taken your advice.

Felipe made is point in hist first post, refuting the arguments that needed to
be. The following posts (by both Olav and Felipe) are just noise. The whole
thread turns into a silly "I want the last word" dispute.

~~~
sgift
Yes, I didn't want to imply that Felipe is without fault here, but a ban is a
real drastic measure, which should stay reserved for situations where there's
no other way. And even then I stand by my assertion: Never ban in an
emotionally charged situation. Taking a break and handling the situation later
will almost always give better results.

(Just in case anyone wonders: I was - as far as I know - never on the
receiving end of a ban hammer, but more than once on the giving end.)

~~~
bkor
A ban is not drastic at all. GNOME Bugzilla is for bugreports. There is no
freedom of speech. If someone mostly contributes noise, does not want to
listen, he's asked multiple times to please change his attitude, still
continues, then the person will get banned.

Felipe is suggesting in some other comment that this should all be per
conversation method. E.g. warn him very clearly on this topic in GNOME
Bugzilla separately from private email, mailing lists as well as Google+.
Wrong expectation to have.

------
_ak
Well, what did you expect? GNOME's processes and communication with users
exactly represents the general state of the project, it's an uninspired big
pile of shit, it always has been, it always will be.

And of course, if you argue against GNOME's dogmas, you will be sidetracked
because of some bullshit like your tone (which IMHO was totally fine, and you
even argued your case with sources, examples and all) and then banned because
you took part in the off-topic discussion (or even for talking back). That's
how every sneaky bastard on the internet with a ban-hammer proceeds.

~~~
bkor
There are clear rules on how to behave. You say it was fine, but you only
judge on his version of his behaviour. He went on and on and on, various
bugreports, various personal emails, etc. Eventually enough is enough.

I see that you are now perfectly happy to call me a sneaky bastard. Try going
to a conference and talking to me in person instead of this anonymous
internet.

~~~
ralfn
The interaction escalated, but you were as much to blame for that as well. The
problem is the ban hammer. An independent judge would either ban you both or
neither. This is supposed to be a profesionally run project, not scriptkiddies
in dome irc chatroom acting tough.

And i second the other remark. You wouldnt dare behave like this in public.
Trying to get somebody removed from a conference for an opinion you do not
agree with, nor are willing to discuss.

And lets be honest. The gnome bugzilla ban list, is likely bigger than the
launchpad ban list, eventhough you guys have much less contributors. You guys
are running a clubhouse with the self esteem of 13 year old boys. The highest
standards for others, the lowest for yourself.

All the gnome hate can be summed up in one simple question: when are you guys
going to behave profesionally. Be the better party in conflicts. Show some
patience. Show some understanding for the relationship people have with your
product, and just in general "play nice".

Because between the conflicts with canonical, kde, users, contributors .. The
one constant is "gnome devs dont play nice". And its 99% of communication.
Tone of voice, and socially handicapped individuals with little empathy and
ban hammers.

~~~
bkor
> This is supposed to be a profesionally run project, not scriptkiddies in
> dome irc chatroom acting tough.

You're suggesting how I should behave, while calling me a scriptkiddie? Wtf?
The rest of your post is much of the same.

~~~
ralfn
Come on. Is your exchange, that resulted in a ban, not very typical for an
IRC?

I get that you feel insulted. You should. And you can call me names if you
want to. But on bugzilla you are representing a project, an organisation and a
mission statement.

Yet you used the ban hammer as a personal dislike button. You do not see the
difference? You do not see the comparison to immature irc behavior vs being
professional?

------
skrebbel
Mostly off topic: is it just my filter bubble, or does this flavor of deep,
hate-ridden flamewar only show up in OSS projects that touch end users?

I mean, on the server side, the worst kind of flamewar I've seen is TJ
Holowaychuk disagreeing with Rails defaulting to CoffeeScript. It got us some
drama and pictures of cats.

But end-user OSS? That's been a pit of hate and anger ever since Torvalds
posted a kernel to some newsgroup.

In fact, it's one of the things that keep me from trying out stuff like Linux
for real. If a question like 'which audio driver do i best install?' can only
be answered by reading through a multi-year flamewar, why would I bother?

Now, since i've never really tried (or well, not in the past 14 years), the
above might be entirely untrue. Still, to me, 'end-user FOSS' and 'hate and
anger' are somehow symbolically linked.

Does this make sense? Do people recognise this? Or am I simply a closed-minded
fool too fast in his judgment?

~~~
Nursie
"In fact, it's one of the things that keep me from trying out stuff like Linux
for real."

If you're even remotely involved in technology as a profession, this is a
deficiency in your skillset. Linux now runs much of the world and isn't really
a novelty.

"If a question like 'which audio driver do i best install?' can only be
answered by reading through a multi-year flamewar, why would I bother?"

Unless you have specialist needs it's not really a question that should pop up
any more, your distro of choice ought to make that decision for you.

"Still, to me, 'end-user FOSS' and 'hate and anger' are somehow symbolically
linked."

Kinda. This is a bit different as it's not a war over "A or B" but the
direction A is taking.

The problem, particularly with Gnome at present, is that the direction it's
taking is not appreciated by most existing users. It's compounded by the fact
that a lot of people liked Gnome 2, and the Gnome team basically canned that
at short notice. Distributions then started to roll out Gnome 3 and remove
Gnome 2. Gnome 3 forces them to work differently and takes away a lot of
choice. So users were annoyed, the desktop environment they liked seemed to be
being taken away from them and the new one seemed to be making a lot of stuff
worse.

From the developers' perspective (as far as I can tell) the thought was
basically that Gnome 2 was finished, stable, unexciting and old fashioned. A
drive took place to create a new, modern desktop with a consistent experience.
Logically then, this would bring new users to Linux. Some resistance from
techies was to be expected, people don't like change, but they'll thank us for
it in the end.

I'm not 100% sure why the distros ditched Gnome 2 quite so fast, but the
announcement of support and development basically being dropped didn't help.
The Gnome team also seem to have gone out of their way to make sure that the
two could not easily reside on the same system.

Anyway, these three things in confluence make people feel like the Gnome team
have taken something from them (not really true) and the Gnome team think that
naysayers are all entitled and change resistant (also not really true). So
it's no wonder it's a rather heated area.

If you want to watch FOSS at its constructive best I recommend the debian
mailing lists. You'll still find disagreement on there, but you'll also see
people helping each other and getting stuff done.

I think part of the reason for your perception is probably that FOSS is done
far more out in the open than something like MS Windows, and in a far less
hierarchical way, so there's nobody to pull rank or to hush things up. Linus
may well be in charge of the kernel, but only has a limited say over the user
space (for example).

(This has become quite a bit longer than it was meant to be!)

Also, I'd be interested to know if you think the vitriol between FOSS
advocates is any worse than, say, all the Mac/Windows shouting matches you see
all over the net? Or Ps3/Xbox weenies? (BTW if you really want to see FOSS
vitriol go observe a GPL vs BSD license freedom debate!)

I think people on the net just like to argue. I know I do. Free/Open software
is developed out in the open through mass collaboration, which gives so much
wonderful, flamey opportunity.

~~~
skrebbel
Good post, and I've little to add but the following:

First, the world isn't running on Linux. _Webservers_ are, but software
techology is a lot more than stuff on web servers. For example, i work in
embedded software, mostly for relatively large machines (ATMs, multifunctional
copiers, industrial machines that turn stuff into other stuff), and Linux
isn't _that_ common there. The most common setup is some (micro)controller
with RTOS for the nitty-gritty stuff, hooked up to a Windows box for the
display panel and outside communication. There's plenty other examples of tech
that mostly isn't Linux. Cars? Sliding doors?

Second, to answer your question, i do think the FOSS flames are harder and
nastier than the win/osx platform wars. I don't know about the consoles, since
I don't game much.

~~~
Nursie
>> "First, the world isn't running on Linux."

A significant portion of it is now. Maybe not desktop linux with
gnome/kde/xfce/whatever, but it is in a lot of places. It's on a lot of home
networking gear (NAS, routers etc), it runs a lot of the server room and has
even found a home on mainframes. It's also in supercomputers and in a lot of
consumer electronics these days (Android phones, kindle touch and I assume
paperwhite).

I too have worked in embedded software recently and can tell you that some of
the newer credit card processing terminals run a fairly standard linux-on-arm
with framebuffer display setup.

It may be a niche desktop OS at present, but it does a hell of a lot behind
the scenes, webservers are no where near the extent of it.

\--edit-- I wouldn't be surprised if you were right on the arguments, as they
are often quite ideological in nature.

\--edit2-- Smart TVs! Love 'em or hate 'em, Samsung Smart Tvs run Linux too...

\--edit3-- Also the most popular laptop on amazon US, and third most popular
on amazon.co.uk. Sure it's a chromebook, but that's just a cut down,
restricted linux too.

\--edit4--You mention cars, Jaguar Landrover, Nissan and Toyota have recently
kicked off "Automotive Grade Linux" (I swear I'll stop editing in a minute but
boring day is boring...)

~~~
skrebbel
Hmm, good point. I blatantly assumed that you said what you said because you'd
ascribe to the common HN idea that "tech == server + app/browser". My bad!

Nice list of examples.

Btw, I'm pretty familiar with using Linux as a server/embedded OS - the
reluctance I uttered before was indeed very much about using it myself as a
consumer OS - which is what these flamewars all seem to be about.

~~~
Nursie
Ach, fair enough, if you can find your way around linux on the server you can
have a stab at finding your way around it anywhere else.

What you use on your desktop comes down to personal preference and it's hard
to think of many advantages to linux on the desktop compared to other
environments, unless you're a habitual tinkerer like myself...

------
girvo
Crazy to see Felipe banned, but then he's always been one for expressing a
strong opinion... strongly. Love his technical posts, been reading for over a
year now.

Also, GNOME seems to be having a difference of opinion with the loud minority
(or is it a majority? I honestly don't know), about how they run the project.
Is that a problem? I think so, but then one of my favourite projects
(Elementary OS) is run similarly... and it works well there.

The difference is, GNOME has been around forever, and I think end users feel
invested in it. Over the past couple of years, it feels like it's been "taken
away". Whether or not that is correct is up for you to decide. I'm not fussed
either way: I use Unity ;)

------
andridk
It's hard to tell if GNOME developers are defensive because they are under
attack or if they are under attack because they are defensive.

Bottom line: These people, weather they are arrogant, impolite or
unsympathetic to users does not refute the fact that they are _giving_ their
time to the project.

GNOME has been under fire since the famous GNOME 3 release and I would
understand the remaining developers to be a little touchy on the matter. At
some point, you either stop - or you decide: Fuck this - I will just ignore
user-input, because it sucks.

There is nothing more demotivating for developers (especially those working
for free) than a loud group of people displeased with your work.

Do I agree with the way they communicate back to the community? Hell no! But
they only deserve half of the shit storm they are getting.

~~~
bkor
FWIW, I totally agree that just a "No." is bad, entirely understand what it
resulted in. However, going after a developer in a bugreport is not tolerable
behaviour as well.

~~~
jjs
> _FWIW, I totally agree that just a "No." is bad, entirely understand what it
> resulted in. However, going after a developer in a bugreport is not
> tolerable behaviour as well._

So why did you go after him?

(I realize that by "a developer" you meant yourself, not Felipe. I still
consider this a fair question.)

~~~
bkor
I meant Christian Perch, the other story about GNOME Bugzilla. I'm not a
developer. I didn't go after Felipe.

~~~
jjs
Ah, ok. I somehow got the impression from your comments that you were the Olav
mentioned in the blog post.

------
cyphax
Playing the devil's advocate in a way: I'm not surprised that he got the ban.
After Olav wanted to stop polluting the topic with this meta discussion about
"tone" and "speculation", Felipe kept going on anyway, about how complaining
about "tone" is unsophisticated (which is actually getting personal). It made
him come off as wanting the last word, and that, I think, made them trigger
the ban.

Of course, whether or not Olav should be so concerned about "tone" in a text-
based medium is another matter entirely and I'll refrain from making a
judgment call on that.

~~~
bkor
s/Olaf/Olav/g

Pretty easy: "please stop". Person does not. Then ok, bye from me.

And yeah, I'm the one you're talking about. And Felipe got banned by one of
his best friends on Google+. Apparently really good friend in reality,
terrible on Internet. Enough said IMO.

~~~
seanc722
Based on your comments here and there you sound like the one with the attitude
problem. But eh this internet drama is quite a good read.

~~~
bkor
I never said I'm not a bastard (at times).

------
aetimmes
Can we edit the title to say (2011)?

The fact that you're bringing this up two years later only serves to validate
Olav's viewpoint.

~~~
felipec
I'm bringing it because I saw another guy that was also banned for wrong
reasons. I think it's relevant now.

------
alrs
The secret to getting anything critical of the GNOME project to the front page
is to post before anyone is awake in Raleigh, North Carolina.

~~~
rammark
Unfortunately the best data I can find are from 2010 [1], but Red Hat only
contributes 16.3% of the commits to GNOME.

[1] <http://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/28/gnome-census/>

------
tspiteri
I really dislike this kind of flame. The author got banned over a year ago,
and now, because of the recent threads on the "No." in the gnome-terminal bug,
the author tries to fan the fire by bringing this up. Then, he posts his blog
post on HN using the third person: "Another user/developer banned ..." If you
are going to post your own blog post (nothing wrong with that usually), don't
make the title look like someone else talking about you.

------
threeseed
This was in September 2011. Are you really holding a grudge for this long ?

My suggestion would be to forget about this and move on. No offense to anyone
but GNOME is just dreadful and there are so many other Linux/FOSS projects
that desperately need people. Help them out instead.

~~~
felipec
I don't really care, it's their loss. I'm just bringing this up because of the
other post about the other ban.

------
jcape
@filipec: Dude, that was two years ago. You're still on about that?

~~~
jjs
It reveals the culture behind the infamous "No.", so it's topical.

(And presumably the ban is still in effect.)

~~~
jcape
FC seemingly goes out of his way to act like an ass, and he got himself banned
from a bug reporting tool for it. According to another link in these comments,
he was also banned from pidgin's IRC channel, and a friend of mine banned him
from his G+ feeds.

FC getting banned from GNOME's bugzilla isn't a GNOME thing, it's an FC thing.

~~~
jjs
GNOME needs a gadfly like him. Or rather, needed.

If GNOME's developers have truly become indifferent or outright hostile to the
needs of actual users, then the project is doomed to irrelevance.

~~~
jcape
Nonsense. No project, open or closed, needs a non-contributing pain in the
ass, injecting his (and it is always his) nonsense into every single
discussion, forcing every conversation back onto whatever topic they felt they
lost the last time, regardless of existing consensus, regardless of the lack
of new information, and regardless of who is actually doing the work.

Also, I'd like to meet people that don't resort to emotional blackmail in
order to try and force nerds to provide them free goods or services.

And I'd also like a pony.

~~~
jjs
His attempt to restore a culture of listening to users is not a non-
contribution; it could have saved GNOME.

~~~
jcape
Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah.

 _gasp_

hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.

------
forlorn
I banned GNOME from my desktop also without any warning.

------
RestoreGnome
Does anyone personally know people in Red Hat's management or the GNOME
foundation's board of directors?

If so, it would be a good idea to engage them and convince them to fix the
problem.

Red Hat has the authority to fire the many GNOME developers they employ, and
the GNOME Foundation owns the trademark and can thus ultimately remove commit
rights and Bugzilla admin rights from the problematic developers.

It's clear that the issue is now so big that this is the level at which
corrective action needs to be taken.

~~~
bkor
Red Hat doesn't run GNOME, though lately they've been hiring people for GNOME
like crazy. The last time some GNOME contributor disagreed with one of my
decisions, I make him a GNOME bugzilla admin. Any of the 4 admins are totally
free to unban someone. If GNOME foundation board says someone should be
unbanned it will be done as well.

I find it rather telling that instead of an unban or review, you're suggesting
to completely remove me. Like everything I do is bad. Right...

------
solarexplorer
This was in 2011... Is he still banned?

~~~
felipec
Yes. Nobody bothered to review the situation ever.

------
alcuadrado
And this is what happen when two dicks-wannabe nerds meet online. I'm tired of
watching argues like this.

~~~
DanBC
There is a problem with developer communication. It's an unsolved problem.
There's probably some interesting research to be done about it.

You have people who don't have English as a first language talking to people.

You have people with varying levels of interpersonal skills - some pretty
poor. For example, people with Asperger's can be pretty blunt when talking to
others. And they don't always have best modern help to sort that out.

People tend to be protective of work they've done. Especially when it's being
"attacked".

And people can be unconstructive in their criticism - "that sucks!" "You're an
idiot for doing it like that!"

People can be very attached to certain models.

These combine into a massive clusterfuck. The fact the world runs on so much
open source software really is remarkable.

As to fixing this stuff:

1) Create clear divides between technical lists and things that anyone can
comment on.

2) Create clear rules about expected behaviour. ("Only technical comments";
"patches get attention, whines don't"; "comment on the code, not the coder";
"polite is good, constructive is essential, flames get you banned".)

2a) Have people to enforces those

3) Have some kind of comment limiting mechanism to prevent flames breaking
out. Mostly this is user behaviour, but slowing comments might help to prevent
a few flames turning into a forest fire.

4) Have experienced community members acting as mediators. Often flames happen
when two people mostly agree with each other but are mis-interpreting a small
point, or there are language problems, or some such.

~~~
alcuadrado
I don't get what you mean with "The fact the world runs on so much open source
software really is remarkable". Could you clarify?

I also think that big part of the problem with developer communication comes
from the fact that many/most of us taught ourselves how to code when young.
That gives you a very high self-pride, as you were doing complicated stuff
while your friends were watching DBZ. If you are lucky enough then you find
out that you don't know a shit about programming, but that's not always the
case.

~~~
DanBC
> I don't get what you mean with "The fact the world runs on so much open
> source software really is remarkable". Could you clarify?

Some online environments are hateful, toxic, places that contribute to burn
out and developer churn.

Yet these same places manage to turn out excellent software.

------
wwwtyro
I'm curious, has there been any kind of response from the GNOME team about the
now-infamous "No"?

------
mcherm
As I see it, Felipe WAS being abrasive in tone, and I can see why people would
be disturbed by that. But if I were the administrator, I would never have
banned him for this without first giving specific, actionable feedback on how
to say the same thing in a different tone. People have different strengths,
and some may be brilliant programmers or have excellent UI design ideas while
being rather poor in social and communication skills -- without actionable
feedback they cannot improve. And "just stop the way you're acting" is not
actionable feedback -- in fact, responding that way ALSO demonstrates poor
communication skills.

~~~
felipec
I agree. In fact, a warning saying "don't continue this tone or I'll ban you"
would have been more than enough. About the tone, I don't think there was any
way I could have conveyed my message that their conclusions were wrong in a
way they would like.

If somebody really cared, they could have tried to say the same thing I did,
in different words, but the bug is still open. They are never going to change
their minds.

------
hawleyal
Yeah, writer was kind of dickish, got banned. Meh.

------
ckdarby
Olav should get banned for this -_-

------
jasonlotito
Wow. I wonder what the OP would do if people treated him the same way.

"Wrong.

<http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=60101>

2273 people starred this issue and may be notified of changes."

You are wrong. You ignored the second part of that statement: "or if they do,
it's not nearly as visible as something like 'votes'." By ignoring that, it
makes your declaration of "Wrong" wrong. Any assertions made by this are also
"Wrong."

"In my experience however adding voting does not lead to annoying comments."

In my experience however adding voting does lead to annoying comments.

This completely proves my point, and I can now move on.

"I'm not acting in any way."

That's wrong. You have to be acting in some way. The lack of acting would mean
you aren't participating in the flame war you started. Indeed, that statement
is not only wrong, but makes you a liar.

Wow.

You know, it's so much easier to act like the OP. You don't have to think, or
put for much effort. Just mouth off.

"And complaining about "tone" is not precisely considered a sophisticated way
to engage in a discussion"

Sure, but acting like a self-entitled little bitch is much, much worse.

Go ahead, complain about my tone there.

