McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 12:38 UTC (Fri) by Rehdon (guest, #45440)
In reply to: McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus] by billev2k
Parent article: McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

What I found most depressing: the attitude of the devs who answered. I mean, the guy who opened the bug report surely wasn't ranting, he explained his points really well, and even if the last paragraph might look ad hominem it actually wasn't (the question "is anyone doing a thorough review of these ideas or is this a one man show?" is perfectly legitimate IMHO, especially on the basis of McCann's post). And what happens? here comes the Gnome police:

"Please keep comments technical and do not get personal by criticizing
particular developers for changes that you describe rather generically."

Conveniently ignoring all the technical explanation and focusing on one sentence with the clear intent to discourage further elaboration of the issue.

Have seen that happen elsewhere, even here on LWN. Reading that kind of reaction makes me feel like I'm staring deep into the abyss...

Rehdon

(Log in to post comments)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 3, 2012 16:45 UTC (Fri) by donbarry (guest, #10485) [Link]

Political correctness often enters when the desire is to deflect rather than engage in a discussion. The larger discussion of how the remaining Gnome team is actually deciding these issues is entirely legitimate, but one which they'd apparently prefer to remain opaque. It's a bitter feedback loop, because these processes tend to alienate people other than the "true believers" -- who alienate the rest, when their true belief has little to do with the world of users. That's why it's important to engage.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:35 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

The people looking after the style of communication are not the developers, nor designers. They are the bugmasters. Further, the reporter in bug 680118 is a GNOME triager.

Anyway, your summary of how GNOME behaves is plain wrong.

If you think that you should be allowed to behave inappropriately, then you'll be warned and if you continue, banned. During the warning we make it explicitly clear that the opinion is of no interest, just the style of communication. Meaning: we don't care one bit if you're pro or con. I actually prefer con, because all kinds of "+1s" is just wasteful.

If you think that behaving inappropriately (e.g. insults) will make anyone receptive to what you're saying... then, cool, but don't try to do that on a GNOME server.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:25 UTC (Sat) by ovitters (subscriber, #27950) [Link]

Conveniently ignoring all the technical explanation and focusing on one sentence with the clear intent to discourage further elaboration of the issue.

At GNOME Bugzilla we're not going to split the technical bits from the non constructive comments. If you cannot say things politely, you'll be warned and eventually banned.

Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680118#c18.

I don't see that as a valuable comment.

Feel free to disagree on someone elses server.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 2:40 UTC (Sat) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

> Feel free to disagree on someone elses server.

Or just use someone else's software, so the problem doesn't come up in the first place...

BTW, since you appear to be someone involved with GNOME 3, how about starting some sort of motion to get rid of the Nautilus maintainer Cosimo Cecchi?

He's clearly totally incompetent: why don't you revoke his commit privileges and find someone else instead?

I mean, the idiocy of the maintainer is clearly the real "bug" there, and it's not possible to productively discuss technical issues if the ultimate judge of them is a moron.

Although I guess that since the disease probably runs deeper in the GNOME 3 leadership, it's likely going to be hard to find someone willing to work with the rest of those guys, so you probably should just get rid of all current maintainers and anyone else currently holding leadership positions.

I mean, it's not that much of an issue because all users will eventually switch away and GNOME will eventually die and be replaced, but it's a real pity to see GNOME, which once was THE free software desktop, go down this way.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 22:05 UTC (Sat) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

I sure hope that people are aware that behavior like yours is what leads to GNOME developers not caring one bit about negative feedback.

If feedback is filled to the brim with trolls, rudeness, insults and plain hate, there is only 2 ways to live with it:
(1) Ignore it.
(2) Don't take it serious.
Which is the primary reason why feedback from sites like LWN rarely makes its way into the GNOME community.

In case you don't understand what I'm talking about: Talking about trying to "get rid of" someone or otherwise claiming someone is harmful certainly requires solid arguments. In particular it requires research into the whys of their behavior and having a clue what the problems actually are.

I sure wish there were people in here that had the audacity to get people like you to shut up.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 1:25 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

Well, you have someone who, using their maintainer position, does this:
1. Removes an already implemented highly established feature also present in Windows Explorer and most other applications where it makes sense to have it
2. Replaces it with nothing or with a feature with an UI that is different from all other similar software and that cannot cover all use cases as well or better (as argued by users)
3. Doesn't provide a detailed rationale of the exceptional circumstance resulting in some great advantage in doing this that offsets all the disadavntages
4. Causes several users to complain about the above
5. Doesn't either reconsider, announce he's thinking about it or explain exactly why the decision is good despite the huge negatives

This applies to both type ahead find, sidebar tree view and the compact view he recently approved the removal of.

I think that's not what you want from a maintainer, ESPECIALLY when said project already has issues with having a sizeble fraction of its former GNOME 2 users no longer liking it and vocally criticizing it.

And no, McCann's post doesn't really explain at all why the changes are a good tradeoff: he incorrectly states that all use cases are preserved, fails to even consider how easily existing users and prospective users now using Windows will understand and cope with the changes and that "Sometimes is just not possible to add new functionality without first making some room" (which is just bullshit, as software can grow without limits).

Now, of course, if you can get him and other people acting similarly to change to more effective behavior, that's good, but otherwise replacing them seems advisable.

Especially if these people are paid to work full-time, since that means you can just hire a random good programmer instead and tell him to get up to speed on the project, and don't need to actually hope someone fills the spot on his own accord.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 9:54 UTC (Sun) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

"Sometimes is just not possible to add new functionality without first making some room" (which is just bullshit, as software can grow without limits).

Your keyboard has an infinite number of keys on it? The room he was talking about was room in the user interface, not room in the code. You can't both have plain alphanumeric typing do a search-names-in-current-dir and search-subtree-recursively. That's a shortage of room in this sense.

(The changes sound quite horrible to me too, but that doesn't make your reasoning any less flawed.)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 10:52 UTC (Sun) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

Well, but features don't have to be keybound, so the only true statement is that "Sometimes you cannot add a new easy-to-hit keyboard shortcut without removing an existing easy-to-hit keyboard shortcut", which is very true (to the hindrance of many gamers).

At any rate, if both the previous and the new key binding schemes are useful, an option to choose between them can be added.

But that's probably not the case here, where keeping the current behavior and ADDING a search box on the top right and a keybind (Firefox uses Ctrl+K, not sure if it conflicts with something in Nautilus) seems by far the most reasonable course of action.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 4, 2012 6:50 UTC (Sat) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]

"Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=680118#c18."

That's not true: the comment I quoted is comment n. 2, and it's the first comment by a Gnome dev to the bug reporter. Your policy makes sense, and comment n. 18 adds only noise to the bug discussion (polluting a technical discussion thread is surely reason enough for a warning and even a ban), but I don't think you can say the same thing about the bug report itself, not at all. A warning about your "politeness reporting", and even a link to the Gnome conduct code as first comment by a dev sounds like a clear "we don't want to hear about this" message to me. Fortunately McCann answered and the discussion could be started, but as you can see the reporter was clearly disheartened by this reaction.

My 0,02€, feel free to disagree on any server.

Rehdon

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 8:58 UTC (Mon) by andre47 (subscriber, #86127) [Link]

The comment was NOT by a dev. The comment was by a bugmaster (me). As I am a bugmaster and not a dev I won't comment on the report content itself if I don't have enough background.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 5:59 UTC (Tue) by Rehdon (guest, #45440) [Link]

That's just semantic hair-splitting. If you're the bugmaster, you're involved in Gnome development, even if you don't code a line of Gnome libs/apps. Perhaps what you meant was "I'm not a programmer", which is not relevant to this discussion.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 9:30 UTC (Tue) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

Quite, but again another response of the same character - not to engage with the issue at all, but to try to find any tiny, arguably not even real, little nit to pick at to deflect, derail and discourage.

I have to say, on a somewhat personal note, that this seems to be André's thing - he used to be involved in the same process in the Maemo project, treating bug reports as attacks to be fended off rather than contributions to be made use of.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 10, 2012 23:59 UTC (Fri) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

Ah, the venerable Mr. Klapper. I remember my one (and only) communication with this kind soul; I asked him a question that got me a ban on gnome bugzilla (for trolling).

Do note, that the politeness is apparently not required from developers, bugmasters and other GNOME bureaucrats; Mr Klapper's answer to polite question about implementing SIEVE support in Evolution was rather curt: Nobody works on this and nobody plans to. Patches welcome.

It's a pity that many GNOME people seem to be organically unable to do something that was quite obvious to Philip Hazel (ex-maintainer of Exim):

Writing/maintaining software is providing a service (even when it's free). You need to listen to your customers if you want to learn what features they need and thereby improve your product. Of course, the customer isn't _always_ right, and often they suggest specific implementations which don't fit into the "grand scheme", but it's the input of ideas which is important. Even if they seem at first to be "wrong", I've found it's always worth thinking about them, even if you ultimate modify or reject them.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 11, 2012 8:55 UTC (Sat) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link]

Well, the difference there is that Phil Hazel has instinctive charm and courtesy and is pleasant to pretty much everyone by default. This is a very rare trait and most people don't have it.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 13, 2012 1:39 UTC (Mon) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link]

The main difference, IMHO, lies in that Philip Hazel is a professional. The GNOME folks, on the other hand, have a long way to go until they start to match his level of professionality.

Unfortunately they were handed a decision power before they got a chance to learn, and now we're seeing the same pattern repeated for the last few years: development is ruled by fiat, features are excised on a whim, many decisions seem to enjoy the quality of a revelation, dissenters are trolls, and presented use cases are dismissed (with users sometimes being told to stop trolling).

Of course, the paradigms change every few years (or with every second maintainer), what does not change is the surety of the developers and the swiftness of banhammer wielded by the – very appropriately named – bugmasters.

(Does anyone still remember the Great Spatial Paradigm being the One True Way?)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 6:36 UTC (Tue) by jonasj (subscriber, #44344) [Link]

> The comment was NOT by a dev. The comment was by a bugmaster (me).

Then it's funny that the bug tracker in question refers to you as "André Klapper [developer]" :-)

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 5, 2012 23:52 UTC (Sun) by ewan (subscriber, #5533) [Link]

"Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to [...]"

No, it wasn't. It was comment #2, the first response to the original bug reporter, who had already stuck to technical matters. It was a blatant attempt to derail the report and squash legitimate criticism. Your dishonest response here does neither you, nor GNOME, any favours at all.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 9:51 UTC (Mon) by cladisch (✭ supporter ✭, #50193) [Link]

> "Now the comment about sticking to technical matters was a direct response to [...]"
>
> No, it wasn't. It was comment #2, the first response to the original bug reporter, who had already stuck to technical matters.

It was a direct response to "Is there anybody here that stops and thinks whether everything that Jon McCann thinks up is a good idea?"

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 10:31 UTC (Mon) by sorpigal (subscriber, #36106) [Link]

> It was a direct response to "Is there anybody here that stops and thinks whether everything that Jon McCann thinks up is a good idea?"
Sounds like a purely technical question, to me. Would it have been somehow less offensive if he had rephrased to omit mention of the name of the person who thought up the idea that lead to the technically horrible change?

Try this on for size: "Is there anybody whose responsibility it is to review whether the changes recommended by designers are good for the application?" Is that better? Although I can't see the value in not naming the person, I suppose this sounds more politically correct.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 16:57 UTC (Mon) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

Both the original question and your rephrasing qualify as that. One uses the name, the other uses "the designers".

The correct question would be:
"Is there anybody whose responsibility it is to review whether recommended changes are good for the application?"

And that sounds very much like a rhetorical question to me.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 17:45 UTC (Mon) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

>http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

> Both the original question and your rephrasing qualify as that.

Posting a link that refutes your own claim is a pretty poor show if you're trying to get others to share your opinion.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 0:11 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

I am sorry. Try this:
http://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ad_hominem

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 10:35 UTC (Tue) by nye (guest, #51576) [Link]

Please come back once you have learned basic reading comprehension; you're embarrassing yourself.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 10:50 UTC (Tue) by slashdot (guest, #22014) [Link]

That's not an "ad hominem" attack, it's a question about how the GNOME development organization works.

Although a more pertinent question would be "is there anyone outside the GNOME clique that checks whether the maintainers of GNOME applications do a good job?"

And that's indeed rhetorical, since clearly there's no one checking.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 7, 2012 23:32 UTC (Tue) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]

It's an ad hominem because it explicitly mentions Jon McCann after pointing out a negative characteristic or belief of him (namely: All your whining i this whole thread). Granted, it's somewhat more complicated than the usual your mom jokes.

Also, there are various instances outside of GNOME that check whether the maintainers of GNOME applications do a good job. In fact, you are doing that in this thread. It's a side effect of open development.

What you're really after is this: Who is doing anything when GNOME developers mess up?

And that is happening. Those people enjoy Unity, KDE and XFCE. At least if you believe what they're writing everywhere.

McCann: Cross Cut [the future of Nautilus]

Posted Aug 6, 2012 10:04 UTC (Mon) by colo (subscriber, #45564) [Link]

It really is sad in a way, but this is _exactly_ what the bug's comment history and the reaction to it in this thread made me think, too.

I'm afraid GNOME's fate is already sealed, and it's not a pretty one.