About stop energy
25 06 2008If anyone out there wonder why Aaron Seigo’s blog is down, the reason is pretty simple… Its author got burnt out because of some of the poisonous people in our project. The story started several weeks ago (probably even months ago) with constant
bashing of some of the decisions taken in the Plasma project (which is not a one person project by the way). It culminated last week with very rude and useless mail threads on kde-devel, and yesterday on the dot with personal attacks.
That’s why Aaron decided to retire from the public and do what he truely loves: code. No more blogs, minimal involvement on lists and IRC to ensure coordination with the other developers. That’s what we obtained after those weeks of angry poisonous mobs. You might think: “well you can ignore them”. Really? Could you? Such people can bring a lot of stop energy. Really a lot of it, and that worries me. It seems that the project I love is not a nice place to live in anymore.
When we are able to turn down one of our public face, someone very active and energetic, we really crossed a line. Of course, we could shake head, and think “tsss, those poisonous people, they’ve no idea what they’re doing”. That’s even probably what we did during those weeks of bashing… and still we let it happen. I think that’s the most frightening side of the issue: nobody stepped up, and no actions are taken to make KDE a better place again. Oh, and don’t worry, I have my share of guilt in this story… I didn’t step up either.
Worse than the stop energy carried by poisonous people, there’s the apathy of your peers. I don’t want that anymore! We have to end it!
Of course, I’d like to propose a way out, but I’ve not much to propose. Here are my attempts at bringing some improvements proposing some actions which could be taken (in no particular order):
- Recruit more editors for the dot, as far as I know they’re overbooked and can hardly moderate it;
- To help the dot editors, we have to improve it’s engine with a real moderation system (how come most news site I know have one but not the dot?);
- Write a code of conduct (probably something for the e.V. membership), and publish it as soon as possible;
- Enforce it, especially on mailing lists and on bugzilla, mediating as necessary, and banning people in the most extreme cases.
That’s definitely not much, but that’s a start… More ideas are welcome, but most of all: acts are needed. We must stop this kind of behavior.
PS: I’m not linking any thread, bugreport or mails on purpose. I don’t want to point finger. Aaron’s reaction is a symptom of something broken in our community (in the broad sense, all contributors and users included) it’s just an example (and not the first case). If you want specifics, do your homework and dig our archives it’s all public anyway.
This is so unfortunate. I have not read or even seen the emails that were sent or directed to Aseigo… I look forward to every post from him. News about the development of the Plasma project and KDE4 in general is something that I look forward to everyday. The people who started these attacks should be ashamed of themselves. I hope that Aseigo will reopen his blog and continue to contribute to the planetkde.org in the future. I love the work that he along with the other KDE developers are doing. It is true that sometimes a decision is made and a direction is taken but if people have a problem with that they can just not run the software or write their own code. If you see this Aseigo, keep up the good work.
Justace
… and before someone brings it up (and I’m sure someone will choose to misinterpret it this way): this is not about “burying his head in the sand” or “being unable to deal with criticism” - this is about him not having to put up with people whose criticisms are a) useless, either because they are too vague to act upon; b) already known and being worked on i.e. “Are we they yet? WHY NOT? DRIVE FASTER, MR LAZYBONES!!1″; and c) couched in either outright vitriol and insults or those kind of underhanded, vague insinuations about apparent character flaws that we all know and (don’t) love.
I concur with what you say. I am mostly a user lurking on a few KDE mailing lists and occasional member of the bugsquad. I do not understand why a harsher stance was not taken as soon as insults started on the mailing list (and on some bug reports). Trolls do not have to be tolerated. They are highly detrimental for developpers and by extension for all the KDE community.
I have some experience on Wikipedia with errr âcontributorsâ being there only to push their personal ideas and make everyone lose time. My position was to just ban them if they refused to change their behaviour. Unfortunately i was in the minority and it made me just stop contributing as no action was ever seriously taken against them.
I hope this sort of thing will not happen to KDE developpers too. Perhaps we are not vocal enough to express our support towards developpers. So to Aaron and all KDE developpers, we love you all!
Honestly, I wouldn’t have endured half of what he endured. This is just sad. I was afraid of him running away from KDE. I just hope he knows those people are a minority, and that they are some who appreciate his work and patience.
I hope he can just rest for a while and make this a bad memory.
Those trolls make me angry. I loved to read Aarons posts, he is very talented in writing and it’s always a pleasure. He’s also in a very difficult position within the KDE project, he’s the “head” of plasma development, the most visible part of KDE4.
I don’t get every thing about plasma and I’m a KDE 4.0.5 user and i actually see all those glitches, but I just shut up and wait. Those trolls just boot up some kde4 live cd and complain on every place linked with KDE about how bad everything is instead of shutting up and don’t judging on beta software which is meant as technical preview.
I just don’t get why everyone has to tell the world that he/she does not like something. It’s obvious that KDE 4.0 is not meant for the average user.
I hope Aaron continues his very amusing and informing blog some time soon. Until then I hope he can relax.
Good post, I love the followup. We see a problem and naturally aaron has my shoulder to lean on as well, but much more important is the question;
What will *you* do to make sure this never happens again.
Something like this would do; http://xkcd.com/438/
Who volunteers to write the beginnings of a policy we can point people to that are not, ehm, helpful
That is a great shame, as Aaron’s blog was one of the few that I would regularly read, as it was nearly always well thought out, well written, and would impart something interesting and new.
Wow… it is not cool at all.
I’m really sorry to hear Aaron that had to put up with this. I hope that he will reopen his blog, cause I really enjoyed reading his posts on KDE. The direction in which way Plasma is going is fantastic. Desktop innovation at its finest IMHO. And KDE 4 is a bold step into the future. Such a shame, that a few had ruin things for the rest of us.
Looking at some of the comments directed at him and/or related to things he has done, I’m not one bit surprised at what happened. In fact I’m kinda relieved that it only resulted him in closing his blog (I don’t know if something else happened as well though). I was afraid that he quits the project in disgust or something like that.
And while I’m relieved, I’m also sad. I read his blog regularly and I was always looking forward to seeing him in planetkde, because I was grown to expect great and interesting blog-posts from him. But I can understand why he did what he did.
Awww, dangit, this stinks. Aaron, if you read this, dude, you are doing AWESOME. Please totally ignore stupidity like this. I totally agree with you in removing distractions and doing what you love though. And you’re really good at it. Be encouraged–there are a LOT more people who love you and your work than there are those who complain. Unfortunately, the complainers are most often the loudest and most difficult to ignore. =:( *hug*
Would be nice if the blog was still online for reference, even if it’s read-only without allowing people to comment.
Aaron is doing great job and I hope this won’t impact Plasma development. Of course that it isn’t perfect, but hey, it’s software and there is no perfect software
And when I’m reading about what Plasma will be in the future I can only think how great it will be to work with. So I’m sad that there will be no more Aaron’s posts — they were great to read and I really enjoyed them. Aaron — if You are reading this, I’d like to thank You for all the things You do for KDE.
Good call. The thing that I really really hate about open source is all the whiners and trolls. Where do they all come from, these self-proclaimed computer experts with an ability to understand “the whole picture”/other people about as narrow as their own asscracks through which they see the world?
I really REALLY get pissed off. Aron’s blog was one of the best on planetkde - and some whiners and trolls ruined it.
Thanks for this info.
For days, I was thinking that Aaron needed that all this stop. But as i’m not an member of the project, (and even if) I cannot find a solution to stop this.
Some comment on his blog was very unfriendly, (hopefully, only some for now).
I think that this is because our community become bigger with the help of user-friendly distro (ubuntu and co), and while growing the community is changing. Some realy don’t care about freedom (read ubuntu-forum, you’ll be scared) and aren’t aware of the basic rule of our community. Every free-software user should have read this before posting any where any thing….
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html
I hope Aaron didn’t take all this too hard.
your fellow,
Sebastien
Wow, this is some shocking news. I’ve spent quite some time recently to (passively) keep up with the recent discussions and I can really understand Aaron’s decision. (Okay, to be honest I started to skip reading most of the Plasma bashing because it was just stupid, useless and repeating constantly.)
Aaron’s blog was one of the first things that helped me to get into the “KDE world” and I remember checking it regularly even before I started reading PlanetKDE. He is just great in writing and talking (and coding, of course) and being the project leader of the most visible and innovative part of KDE certainly doesn’t help to escape (the bad type of) trolls.
So Aaron, if you’re reading this, thanks for everything you have done. Please keep up the good work and focus on cool Plasma stuff instead of ignorant trolls. And maybe someday you’re ready to share your passion again with us.
You can count me on the list of the KDE happy users.
I still use 3.5 because a just need a rock stable desktop. I played with KDE 4.0, I saw the promise and I thought, that’s a great and an innovative work. I could not use it, because of some bugs, but I was well aware of that before trying it. I read Aaron’s blog and that was no surprise.
I will miss the great blog from Aaron, I will miss his insights, his cheesy music and his screencasts. I hope he will return very soon to blog.
Keep up the great job you’re doing, you just rock and make the world a better place to be.
I am shocked, too!
Aaron’s blog was among those that have been more like “oxygen” to me! He’s so much gifted and talented both code-wise as well as blog-wise and I am surely going to miss the latter one!
Let’s hope, that all this negative energy that was exerted on him, won’t harm his passion and willingness to keep up the amazing work that he, along with the rest of the plasma and kde team does!
Sometimes words can cause more harm than actions and I really feel both pitty and anger towards all those that caused this misfortunate event (and myself that ignored the overall heat by just pathetically reading through the last blog entries and not attempting to bash the trolls)
nassos
I agree with what everybody has said so far. I got really excited about KDE 4 after hearing and reading what Aaron had to say. I got really irritated by the ignorance and vitriol people showed to Aaron and the rest of the KDE team. It would truly be a shame if Aaron reduced his role in the project. Here’s hoping we hear from him again soon.
How quickly could a Code of Conduct be put together? We’ve got quite a few being used by different projects. Has anybody started work on that?
That are bad news for open source development. One could notice in the past how aaron got more and more mad at peoples comments. But there is no point in arguing with people who are up to no good. It speaks for aaron that he kept trying to be positive and explain himself over and over again. I hope he didn’t loose his faith now.
Unfortunately these people get the satisfaction now that they discouraged one of the projects best contributors. And so they will continue to nag and stick needles into developers to see them give up.
Well its not my business to tell aaron what he should do or not, but i think he should stand strong and not give up.
The community needs you aaron, not only for coding but also for your inspiration that you gave to so many people.
All the best to kde and its developers.
[...] I want to say here is that this is a pretty darn sad state of [...]
Aaron, If you read this : I do appreciate your work. I don’t know the whole story, but I respect your choice. But please don’t give up on coding !
i just wanted to say, that kde4 rocks, especially (but not only) because plasma and because people like aaron. i admire their work and attitude towards “future desktop” ;). pls, don’t let the trolls ruin your vision.
Well, 99% of the problem is because of two things:
1. Fear of changes. People don’t like change and often critic changes without even trying.
2.People don’t mind their own business. Not because you have the freedom of speech that you can pollute the world with your critics.
[...] {June 25, 2008} re: stop energy so, ervin blogged about about “stop energy” and the poisonous people that we’ve been failing to deal [...]
Damn! One good place to get some info about plasma is gone (I hope temporarily).
I tried Plasma in KDE 4.0 Beta # just to have a look. It was raw, but promising (it’s totally normal because of the _Beta_ word). Now looking at those nice Plasma pictures I think it’s going to get awesome in KDE 4.1 and I can’t wait it hits final release.
And of course I support Aarons decision of “semi-isolation” (meaning in having as much communication as it needs for coordinating the project). He needs some rest from cruel lil’ whiners
.
And of course, I hope they didn’t took the joy of coding on Plasma! Keep up the great job.
Aarons blog was one of my favorite lectures for the last couple of months, and it’s a shame that this great source of information vanishes. But I totally understand his decision.
Anyway, I really hope he won’t be too distracted by this ugly stuff, and I believe in his vision of a better desktop, so please, Aaron, keep up your good (coding) work!
I always enjoyed Aaron blog entries and I think only once commented on them! Usually people stay quiet and the minority of trolls give the false impression of the community voice! Of course there was also legitimate criticism but please don’t judge the community by a bunch of LOUD bastards …. I wish you all the best Aaron, I hope you will reconsider your decision. A charismatic and informative leader going into the shadows is a bad thing for KDE … May I give one advice? Why not close your blog for comments and let people quarrel elsewhere? You’re the leader man!
I hope there’s enough positive energy here to make Aaron happier.
Go go people.
All the best to Aaron and KDE community,
Rsh
It is really sad to here this, and fundamentally it’s become a problem from newer users, who are less competent, patient and understanding of developers needs and attires. I’ve got a feeling that planet.kde.org will become a substandard in comparison to planet.gnome.org, ooh there blogs are dull and boring. I just hope that aaron will still contribute screencasts to us fellow users. The great fun behind kde 4 is seeing how it’s developed which I never saw in kde 3.5, it was mature and I was immature to the Linux ecosystem at the time.
Humm could someone get some guns out and shoot these trolls
perhaps it’s news sharing websites that are causing a problem, but I always loved to read aaron’s blogs like everyone else.
This is really unfortunate to read. I agree with the other people here too, aaron’s blog had the most appealing and inspiring posts when I started reading planetkde.
I do fully understand this act of “giving up” had to be taken. Somehow not everyone can be convinced with arguments, even if they make perfect sense. I wish anyone involved good luck, and may the best happen to all of you!
Good post Ervin, someone had to inform KDE fans of what has happened, and your words are appropriate.
This is a sad day for KDE.
Aaron was the most prominent among KDE developers not because he is the “president”, and only partly because he is the leading developer of plasma, the part of KDE4 every user sees first. The most important reason was that he is the KDE developer who blogs most by far, and thus communicates most to enthusiast users in what direction KDE is heading, and precisely because he was the developer who most discussed and engaged with blog comments.
So it is really a sad irony that his willingness to discuss development with users is what partly “caused” (through being very public and open) being accused of not listening to the users. It is absurd. He could have just disabled comments on his blog. Or not have engaged in discussions with the trolls. But he kept on because he cares.
Aaron please know this: KDE needs you as much as a coder as a communicator. Please reopen your blog and disable comments, or only authorize those invited like it seems to be now, or anything. But let the free software world keep hearing what you have to say.
Thanks.
I think this shows that KDE needs a good news outlet. Something for the zero-day news. Blogs aren’t good enough, the planet is flaky and too often just has someone’s vacation pics. The Dot rarely gets bleeding edge stuff and looks old. Then there could be an outlet where someone would write about stuff in the third person. And bashing wouldn’t be so directly connected to the author of the software. That’s my opinion at least. I want to know about networkmanager stuff for KDE4, I want to know about more inside stuff about Amarok, I want to know when K3B will have a KDE4 version. Stuff like that isn’t there or is extremely cluttered. Leaving it to the coders to spread news like that is unjust and just makes them more stressed than they would like to be.
I’m totally not surprised by this and I completely sympathize with Aaron’s stance.
There obviously will always be homes for trolls, poisonous people or what ever other term we come up with for these human road bumps, but on the other hand there needs to be places where developers and other contributors can have grown up, sensible conversations without the continual hi-jacking perpetrated by this small subset of people. Clearly the dot and especially the mailing lists stand out as choices for such places.
What I find incredible is the near to stalking some people have been practicing against Aaron. Anywhere he posts this little handful of people show up and just hound him. This type of behavior must be prevented or surely they’ll just latch onto another victim and repeat the same process.
So, thanks TJ, thanks Mark A Taff, thanks James Richard Tyrer and all the rest. You’ve successfully made the world a slightly worse place. Kudos.
Gaaah! Why?!? Well, I understand Aaron. But why must peole try to ruin the best parts in life? My biggest fear for a long time have been Aaron running out of energy and leaving KDE. He is a true visionary, and any project should have one like him. I do not always understand, or agree on Aarons visons, but I see him as a leader for brave new ideas.
I wish Aaron all the best, and hope him locking him self away from the outer world will give him the energy an joy he needs to continue to push KDE into a new world.
Well guys, I admire Aarons work, but here’s the other side of the story:
http://bugs.kde.org/show_bug.cgi?id=154535
“I don’t want this feature, so it won’t make it!”
Not clever to dismiss a feature like that when dozens of users ask for it. And now don’t even tell me it’s a minority. I myself have shown KDE4 to like 8 friends so far and *all* of them hated the cashew without an exception. None of them voted for this bug though after having read the discussion…no surprise, really.
Though it’s a pity that Aaron’s blog as one of the best sources about plasma isn’t available any more (for the time being), I actually hope it has an impact on plasma development. With Aaron no longer being hammered by unreasonable people with their impolite, indecent, demanding, insulting and demotivating remarks, he might be able to concentrate more on plasma development and end up happier than before. Sure, I’ll miss his blog - but if not blogging makes him feel better, I am all for it.
Just a couple one remark on the real issue:
Despite what *some* people think, the old desktop paradigm doesn’t cut it anymore. It has served us well enough for around 30 years, but it’s time for it to be put to rest. “Desktop computing” has evolved so much beyond anything we could have thought about 10 years ago that the modern computer desktop has stopped to resemble a desktop. Sure, it still does in some areas - for instance office work. In other areas, it does not.
What has video cutting to do with a desktop? Or composing music? Or playing music as a DJ at a function using a laptop? Or using our computers as knowledge centres (wikipedia)? Or reading books at Project Gutenberg? Or watching videos? Or listening to music? Or … or … or. None of these involves a “desktop” in any way.
We need a new paradigm beyond desktop. Probably, we need a whole range of new paradigms. Plasma is a darn good start here. It seems flexible enough to cover *all* current and future ( at least, mid-term future) requirements of “desktop computing”. We simply need a new approach to keep up with how using a desktop computer has changed and will change.
So: Plasma, well done! It isn’t there yet. Fine with me. It will take time, probably a lot. Still, it started the paradigm shift. Good!
As for Aaron himself: Hugya! Here is a (virtual) Windhoek Lager or a Hansa Draught, whatever you prefer! Keep your blog down as long as you need it down. Come back online when you are recharged and able again to deal with unreasonable people!
Wish you a good time!
Uwe
Really sad. I always liked to read Aaron’s blog and loved to see the developments Plasma is taking. So often I read about a new feature and immediately started to sync with svn and rebuild plasma. Perhaps I should have given positive feedback on his blog posts.
I just hope Aaron will start to blog again. Perhaps with disabled comments.
Damn… Just yesterday I was thinking exactly that Aaron’s latest entries on his blog were showing maybe too much stress, and it seems what I was thinking happened.
Aaron, do take a time off, because you’re a very important member of the community, and we need you
So, thanks for all the work so far — just installed openSUSE 11.0 today and it’s great (I’ve been using kde4 since january) — and hope you recover your mojo soon!
Aw. I am looking so much forward to 4.1 it’s sick really. I have 140 feeds in akregator and planet-kde is the one I care most about (really, hehe).
Plasma seems to be comming along nicely. I really enjoyed his blogs (when they weren’t about personal stuff which IMHO there were a few too many of, but I just skipped those) and videos, but if this makes him happier and more efficient then here’s to you!
I wont add to the obvious words of support to Aaron, or of the big loss for the comunity; I think previous comments are clear enough.
I never read the mailing list, but sometimes read the bugtracker and regularly the dot and planet. And yes, I have felt the quality of comments go down slowly but surely, seemingly all the way to intentional trolling. And I am guilty of not doing anything against it, although in part because of the “dont feed the trolls” principle.
So what’s an open-but-self-protective community to do ?
* One could encourage the comunity to fend off “bad” comments, like it happens now for any “this week in svn is late again” comments. This’ll only work to an extent, but is a good tool to have.
* Use moderation tools on the dot (can bugtracker comments be moderated too ? that would be usefull) is a tight rope to walk on, but could certainly be used for the worst offenders. I really dont want to see the dot become another slashdot, though. What about a “report trolling” button on every comment to help the moderators, the same way we have “report spam” in other places ?
* Disabling or moderating comments on individual blogs is worth considering… individually :p
* A “comment contribution” charter could help in all those cases, but I’m a bit sceptical. These things are hard to write and allways subject to interpretation. Since there’s going to be some interpretation / subjectivity anyway, I’d rather have a few persons officially designated (elected ?) to classify good and bad comments.
I’m not sure how well these ideas will work, but they’re worth considering (hey, I copied most of them from this blog’s author :p ). Trying to completely cut on bad comments is futile, but maybe we can control the flow a bit. KDE is becoming more mainstream, and will mechanically attract more bad-commenting apples. Aaron is one of the most visible member of the community, and therefor got burnt. I hope that he heals soon, and that the community find the tools to tame the flames.
Really sad … no more news of shiny plasma features …
But I understand, I wouldn’t have had half the patience Aaron had… Even Hitler he was called… People that make this kind of things shouldn’t ever be considered… but We have blood on our veins and We get offended with some kind of words (mainly when those words do not have another intention than offend)…
I hope he continues on the great work he is doing on KDE, I really do.
Sorry for my English, learning…
OMG! I cant believe what I am reading….. and I cant believe what people are doing.. Shame!
Reading Aarons blogs and post’s is like Christmas for me… I need it like I need my coffee and cigarette ..
.
People we need to do something about this, we cant sit and let this all happen…
Aaron if you are reading… please dont do this to us, there are people that need you and much more of us are innocent than guilty, don’t let your self hang.. WHAT CAN I DO, GIVE ME A JOB, A MISSION… TELL ME WHAT I CAN DO TO PREVENT THIS.. I am Sirius..
I volunteer to moderate the Dot!
It’s a shame that the “community” had to be so cruel. I’ll say cruel because it is: using personal attacks, calling people names, and generally being abnoxious when people are GIVING is cruel and mean and the type of things you would never say to a person’s face. If Aaron leaves KDE completely……………… just don’t make him leave completely.
Ok. I’m sad. But I’m not going to just repeat what everybody else has said.
I’m glad Aaron is taking a break from blogging. I’ve noticed for a while that he was being drained by whiners. Page long replies to idiots on the DOT, multiple blog entries - even a screencast - devoted to those who Didn’t Get It… I love you Aaron, but you’ve got to quit worrying about the FUDslingers. You’re the president and chief Plasma developer. Of course it hurts when people diss plasma because it’s you’re baby, and worse, all the public whining could eventually hurt KDE’s image. But please, appoint someone else, a group even, to handle the FUDslingers if you feel they must be fought. You’re writing code for yourself and KDE users, not for whiners.
I’m glad Aaron is taking a break. I’m now free from the constant obsession of reading his posts. It’s like a Dominoes commercial - what will I do with my new free time? Mostly though, I’m happy Aaron has finally realized what’s important to him, and that defending KDE4 against whiners is not it. They don’t deserve his time.
Now, what can we do? I agree, start with the Dot. Here’s my idea of a moderation system: Include a “Pipe this comment to /dev/null” link next to each post. If someone clicks it, they have to select why this comment deserves to be hidden. Options include:
*) Yet another “KDE sucks” rant
*) Pointless, poisonous, personal attack
*) Yo, ever heard of bugs.kde.org?
Requires users to be logged in to bury.. er.. pipe comments to /dev/null. If 3 users bury a comment, hide it and replace it with the reason why it is buried. I don’t really think we need a way to promote good comments, just bury poisonous ones.
““I don’t want this feature, so it won’t make it!”
Not clever to dismiss a feature like that when dozens of users ask for it.”
Well, this is free software, do it yourself. Like it or not, developers are not required to satisfy every whim the users might have. They obviously have a plan and a purpose for the cashew. And now they should (for all intents and purposes) kill that plan because “dozens” of users say so? And how many users are NOT asking for its removal?
Besides, if distros want to remove it, they can do so.
I’ve noticed that once people have met face to face they will behave much better in their online communication. It is too easy to hit a man you haven’t met nor will probably never meet. People may really do that just because they have personal problems in their life, a bad day, etc. and there’s always dozens of such people online. Nobody should take half-anonymous online quarrels too seriously. If you think you’re right in, say, your blog, and someone disagrees, you may calmly explain your point once, but then forget the whole matter. No point letting aggressive fools ruin your time.
Well, the only surprising thing about Aaron doing that is: what took him so long? Had it been me, it would have been closed months ago and that’s only by reading the comments on the planet. Comments on the bugtracker and what not may even be worse.
“some of the poisonous people in our project” - hm, not in my eyes. The people throwing venom around are whiners and trolls and not people that want KDE to be the best it can be.
Does that mean I agree with everything Aaron and the other developers are doing and the direction KDE is going? No, of course not. There’s always something any individual would want implemented differently but that’s no reason for name calling. And name calling is the most effective way I can think of that will make sure the developers won’t listen.
Finally, most of the venom I’ve seen directed towards Aaron and plasma amounts to “I don’t like it even though I haven’t even tried it myself yet. Fix it now you lazy bum or I’ll make sure you get a kernel panic”. Hardly constructive or anything but just venom for the sake it.
I’ll miss getting the updates but hopefully it at least makes sure Aaron can concentrate on working on KDE instead of wasting energy on morons.
Wish him luck from me. I know it sucks terrible getting crap like that.
Sad to hear it. His blog showed in what direction KDE4(Plasma) was going and what i may expect after few month.
It might be a nice time to buy Aaron a
weird, WP ate the URL…
http://www.pennyarcademerch.com/pat070381.html
I’ve started a page on techbase which may be useful for the whiners to look at and to tell them to stick to KDE 3.5.9 if they can’t handle the issues KDE 4.1 will have.
http://techbase.kde.org/Schedules/Is_KDE_4.1_for_you%3F
Please update it with whatever else has come up in this vein.
Cheers,
Steve.
Well, very sad and would not wish it on anyone.
That said, I fell obliged to point out as a fairly disinterested observer that Aaron seemed to bring a lot of the trolling and flaming onto himself:
- Often he would use troll like titles for blog posts - I seem to remember one recent one along the lines of “KDE 4 will have no desktop icons”.
- He seemed to think on many things, such as the cashew for example that he had the “one true vision” that all should follow. Frequently he was quite rude to people in comments.
Above all my impression is that he is a fantastic developer, but not a good figurehead for the project as he didn’t see able to take on board other peoples views or take constructive criticism and took negative remarks way too personally.
I don’t think KDE should allow one developer to become a focal point for a whole project in this way. Aaron’s blog gave the impression that plasma was going to be the way he wanted it to be and users would either have to see the light or suck it up. Clearly there are many people behind plasma and decisions are (hopefully) coming out of reasoned discussion, but that wasn’t apparent at all from his blog.
I just wanted to display my solidarity to Aaron.
Aaron, you’re doing an incredible great job! I always enjoyed reading your blog and where Plasma is going!
Keep up the great work.
Cheers, Nelli
“Often he would use troll like titles for blog posts - I seem to remember one recent one along the lines of “KDE 4 will have no desktop icons”.”
He did that to get attention (which he did). He just assumed that people would read beyond the title. Besides, he said that in his personal blog, so he can use whatever titles he wishes. And “troll-like” titles are no excuse to harass the dude.
And while we are at it, could you name other “troll-like” titles he used? One title is not “often”.
“He seemed to think on many things, such as the cashew for example that he had the “one true vision” that all should follow.”
Like it or not, Aaron (or any other developer for that matter) is under no obligation to satisfy the whims of the users. If he thinks that the cashew is a great idea, why exactly should he remove it? Because some user tells him that he should remove it?
Of course users can make suggestions, and if the developers like the suggestion, they might implement it. In this case the developers obviously feel that removing the cashew is a bad idea, so they didn’t do it. If an user disagrees with that, he can remove it himself.
That’s to bad, I enjoyed reading Aaron’s blog (haven’t read the poisonous comments
). And as a user who appreciates what he’s done with plasma and interested in the latest plasma development, I hope his blog comes back online soon.
Janne: It’s not about removing the cashew or not, its about having the *option* to remove it or not.
It’s unfortunate that Aaron has seen fit to close his blog and just go back to coding.
I know from having spent a few years as point person for a couple of in house corporate projects that people tend to get long term and short term mixed up.
Some, of course, are worse than others and do become downright poisonous in their comments, emails and water cooler talk.
I ended up deep sixing the emails from the worst offenders and telling those who repeated the same thing over and over and over again that it didn’t matter a bit how often they said they wanted something it just wasn’t gonna happen the way they wanted it to. At least for this release.
If that didn’t work they were deep sixed as well.
I have only so many hours in a day and I needed to spend some time on the project(s) rather than try to answer the same email endlessly with variations of the same answer.
In KDE’s case there’s another thing. Like it or not, and I’d like it, people are looking forward to the day that this leaves what is essentially a beta, sometime about 4.2 if I read the tea leaves correctly.
The long term goals are exciting and while I want them NOW I can wait. I’m gonna have to anyway so I might as well wait anyway.
Add to this some of the less than helpful blogs out there that seem to think that KDE 4.x is ready to replace 3.5.9 or should be. It leaves me wondering just what the bloggers are reading or thinking.
All that said I’ve been around the block a little and I don’t recall the same level of excitement or anticipation around GNOME 2.x or KDE 3.x as I see for KDE 4 when they were getting ready to roll out.
Sadly, this always seems to bring out the worst in some.
Aaron is a wonderful communicator and has tried to manage the expectations as well as anyone could but it seems that some people just weren’t listening/reading.
To the developers and others who are disheartened by this I’d suggest that you remember that what you are doing is looked on as something both exciting and very important by the silent majority of us out there as we wait for the day we ditch KDE 3.5.x completely and move into a whole new world of the desktop, if it can even be called that by then. (Good thing, wonderful thing!
)
Do your best to ignore the trolls, the terminally impatient and those who just don’t seem to want to get it.
I’d volunteer myself to help out at Planet KDE if I could clear the deck on some medical things. Of course, I can’t..busted vertebrae as the result of a traffic accident so that can’t wait to be fixed.
When it is I’ll be more than happy to help out there if the help is still needed.
Keep on keepin’ on. I, for one, think that watching KDE 4 take shape and grow is exciting and important.
ttfn
John
While I am not a rabid KDE fan(I am more on GNOME), I must admit that KDE4 looks very promising and that Aaron Siego plays a great role in Plasma(which is one of the things I like in KDE4) and his blog posts were really interesting and at times fun to read. I hope he reconsiders his decision and comes back, but if he doesn’t want to, I completely understand.
Ok Well Just to throw in my observations. Aaron has a very good vision for an encompassing future of the Desktop and he is doing it from scratch. If this project was actaully being done only by him and outside of KDE people would be a LOT more patient and it would be moving a lot slower than it is now. I think that it’s a combination of many things that make people bring out the comments –with-acid macro. There are things that Aaron hasn’t yet figured out and he has said as much and been very open with them.
The comments about him having a trolling title don’t take into account that the article itself was pretty troll busting giving as a gift many things that the complainers/detractors/character assasains/outright trolls were rallying around. He even then later went on to clear away the clouds so that it was clear what he was talking about and he still had over 700 comments calling him all sorts of personal names and ascribing him as a destroyer of technological civilization. I think that he is decidedly less in the wrong here.
On the aspect of the now famous “cashew” many moons ago he said that the cashew was a part of the containment he was working on and the containment could be changed (even to have a clock as your background). The contatinment that is currently the default is I would suspect the broadest range of where he wants to see Plasma being used and so allows the Plasma team to implent things for quick and effective testing (Stil have yet to see the Media Center mode but with time I guess) for desktops, presentations, small screens etc. Now all someone has to do is have a new containment and no cashew. The plasma folks are curerntly adding new features at a furious rate and should probably be given the oppurtunity to get up to KDE3 feature parity as is often requested and to build proper frameworks as early as is reasonable so that others can start building on that. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
In any case though Aaron has been trying to put out effort to inform about KDE and got a thousand sword strokes for it. I think a good solution is spread the thousand sword strokes among teh thousands of KDE advocators. Step up and have a say for KDE whereever you can. If it can be online when you see something you appreciate then by all means do that. I’m not saying that you can’t question or criticize but far far too often I have seen changelog put up on the Dot with a huge list of improvements and a single please note this has not been fixed yet and there ends up a 56 post discussion on the one this is temporarily out of order and maybe 12 covering the 20 lists of this will be working wonderfully for you over the next 4-5 years. How is that even statistically possible?
[...] from turning into flame wars. While there were no details on what might be in such a Code, Kévin Ottens, a KDE developer, suggests on his blog that such a code be written, and enforced, to prevent the “constant bashing” of individual [...]
Hello,
I also really enjoyed Aarons blogs. It’s really exciting to see how the technology progresses. Maybe he can just block the comment section. Or better have a KDE blog where the comments are moderated by someone else so the author who is putting himself out does not have to suffer all the destructive critisism. If he, or who ever is putting themself out to help inform the public, only sees the positive feedback as well as the constructive critisism it should become an inspiration to read what the readers have to say.
The moderator needs to be someone not emotionally involved who can just judge the feedback to be helpful or unhelpful and delete the unhelpful.
When I wrote Aaron about the blog being down he even wrote me personally to tell it was suspended. I really admire his patience.
Anyhow it’s good to let things cool down and have more time for fun coding. It’s not my field but being an engineer I can understand his feelings.
I often do social service work and many times after spending so much time and energy people are upset because it was not enough… It’s tough but I say go ahead and do it anyway.
Sincerely,
Dada
Thanks to you and all other KDE developers
Ever since the whole KDE 4.X $hit hit the fan I have been trying to go around and post on as many blogs and sites as I can (if anyone knows how to post on Aaron’s blog since he took it down, please extend this to him as well)
Thank you, Thank You, Thank You.
I have been using Kubuntu for almost 4 years now and I am amazed as how much work has been put into KDE. I have turned into a bit of an open-source zealot as I am constantly pestering my friends and co-workers to try linux and open-source in general, and I always show them the coolest features on KDE when I am making my pitch.
The customization and ability to make it look however you want is something I have always valued and it humbles and amazes me that there are so many people willing to work on a project that has that as one of the main goals.
Again, thanks for all the hard work, and don’t let the naysayers get you down, KDE rocks!
thanks
Steve Lloyd