On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 06:42:53AM +0200, Thomas Hood scribbled: > On Thu, 2003-09-11 at 05:17, Marek Habersack wrote: > > On Wed, Sep 10, 2003 at 09:00:02PM -0500, Manoj Srivastava scribbled: > > [snip] > > > Hell no. When you signed up to maintain packages, you signed > > > up to respond when people come and point out flaws in the > > > package. You may not agree with every bug, but the least you can do > > > is investigate, and if a certain modicum of effort makes things > > > better for the person who cared enough to file the bug, you do indeed > > > improve the package. > > > > See, this is something I don't understand in your reasoning. This is a > > community, right? Isn't a community a kind of a fellowship where people are > > supposed to help each other? Walking around and pointing fingers at other's > > mistakes without suggesting any solution is a waste of time, is in no way > > helpful. > > I disagree. If someone takes the trouble to point out a shortcoming in > one of your packages then you should thank him for the trouble and not > complain that he or she didn't do even more. But _what_ is the shortcoming? As Joey said before and I repeated after, maintaiers can be genuinely convinced that the description is correct - as they know the package in and out. And sole saying "this is wrong" helps nothing, since they only know that somebody doesn't understand something. But what is the something? What do they fail to understand? > This talk of "pointing fingers" makes it sound to me as if you are > taking these bug reports too personally. I know from experience, No. Let me explain. "Pointing fingers" is saying "this is wrong, my friend." without providing an explanation. The bug reports, IMO, fulfilled only part of their purpose - they stated something was wrong, that's about 25% along the way to fixing the problem. > however, that you are not the only one who interprets bug reports as > personal criticism. I would estimate that about one in ten bug reports Please, don't draw such far conclusions. I have fixed all the bugs ASAP (the same day and the day after) without commenting on them as, reading some of the descriptions, I realized that indeed there might be a merit to the bugs. I came and stated my opinion here only later on, after the packages were uploaded, accepted and installed in Sid. And there's nothing personal in it. The fact that I am saying about it and I'm using my packages as the example is only because that's the packages I know the best and I can comment on them. Nothing more, nothing less. > I file is met with an inappropriately defensive reply. My response to > this phenomenon has been to try to be as polite as possible in the > wording of my reports. Also I usually file at one severity level below > what I think is really warranted, since the amount of offense taken > seems to be directly proportional to the severity level. These > techniques don't reduce the number of sharp replies (which are caused > more by stress than by anything else, I imagine) but they do leave the > irritated maintainer without anything real to complain about in his > reply. Again, I haven't replied to Javier's bugs in any other way than by fixing them. And note that I'm not addressing Javier directly anywhere in the thread - that's on purpose, as I don't have anything against him (even more so that now he's fixing his mistakes, which is an example to be followed) but only against the (general) way the bugs were filed in. The idea of such bugs is fine, the way the idea was implemented (without giving hints, suggestions - a "helping hand") was less than helpful. And judging from the posts here, it's not only my opinion. There's nothing personal in it. regards, marek
Attachment:
pgpNALXM4X6vF.pgp
Description: PGP signature