#winehq admin abuse

Thu Aug 16 22:06:01 CDT 2007

I'm not going to continue this. This is my last message concerning this
argument.

I just have a few things to point out.
Yes, there should be specific rules for IRC. Obviously, when there aren't,
things like this happen. I'm still banned from the channel, people in this
mailing list have said he shouldn't have banned me, and yet, I'm still not
unbanned.

Even if you don't have a lot of people to choose from, there should still be
rules for those you do choose.
This is a channel for END USERS. End users DO NOT ASK "SMART QUESTIONS."
PERIOD. If you can't answer a "stupid question" in a civil way, by
explaining how to ask or by linking to a guide to asking a smart question,
don't answer it at all. Hell, I code decently myself, I've been using wine
for over a year now (I think), and I STILL don't know that
"err:ntdll:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 0x509da8c "?" wait timed out
in thread 0047, blocked by 003e, retrying (60 sec)" is useless.
Like I said, if it was a some random guy, it would've been rude. As a
channel admin, he can at least exhibit some civility and say "that's a
useless error message," instead of "oh well."
Furthermore, if there was a known issue with certain hardware, that message
would not be useless at all, as it is the only information available about
the crash.
As I would've explained if he'd been civil and MENTIONED that copying the
files was a bad way to do it, I've been using a copied wow directory myself
with the same version of wine with no problems.

"I still fail to see how this is connected to being an op or not. This
should be a general rule."
It is connected to being an op because it is the op's JOB to keep the
conversation civil. If he can't keep HIMSELF civil he has NO BUSINESS being
an op, and frankly, no business being in the channel, period.

"you stated that you hadn't read the FAQ"
Where?
Do you intend to ban every noob that asks a question without reading the
FAQ?

"starting the conversation in a "I'm a paying customer, and if people don't
do what I want, I'll spend my money elsewhere" style message certainly
doesn't help."
I didn't. I merely stated that her switching to windows is out of my control
and that I don't want to deal with fixing windows. In hindsight, yes, I
would have phrased my question differently.
Still, if you're going to offer a free help channel for free software you're
essentially writing for charity, you should at least be prepared to be civil
to those people who ask for help with a "tone" that you don't like. Its in
the interest of the success of the project. If people stop using the app
because the admin of the channel was a total fucking dick and publicly
announced that he didn't care if the problem got fixed, the userbase of the
project goes down, and eventually it dies. It will not have any developers,
because no one wants to develop for a project with no users.

I can so very easily circumvent the ban, and come back and ask the question
when vitamin isn't around. I haven't, and I don't intend to. I'm done with
wine, and now I'm done discussing its community's serious flaws.

On 8/16/07, Kai Blin <kai.blin at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On Thursday 16 August 2007 20:27:04 Jonathan Challinger wrote:
>
> Jonathan,
>
> without wanting to give the impression that you posted on this list and
> now
> everybody is ganging up on you, I do have a couple of comments here.
>
> > Jan Zerebecki, I'd be happy to help, but how? I could develop some
> > guidelines and rules for admins to follow, but then what? How would they
> be
> > enforced? I have no authority to put such things in place. Its not the
> > writing rules that's hard, its the enforcing them. Here: i'll write them
> > now:
> > Either participate politely or don't participate at all
> > Break up flamewars, don't start them.
>
> I completely agree for mailing lists. But this doesn't really map well to
> IRC.
> Communication is much less precise and faster in chat. I don't have a good
> solution. Does someone have a good set of explicit rules that work for
> IRC?
>
> > There needs to be some kind of structure, though. Presumably, unless
> he's
> > the project leader, there's someone who can take away his admin
> privileges.
> > There should be guidelines for how admins behave, and admins who don't
> > behave according to said guidelines should have their admin privileges
> > suspended or removed.
>
> That's not the way it works, though. There need to be people willing to do
> this job. If you have a large number to pick from, you can be picky.
> Vitaliy
> devotes a lot of time to helping people in #winehq, even though I agree he
> is
> a bit rude from time to time. Still, you will find that he's really
> helpful
> if you ask "smart questions", as esr defines them.
>
> >
> > Tom Wickline, I am Pie-rate, not carretto. I still don't agree with how
> he
> > handled carretto. Maybe the community should try appointing admins based
> on
> > people skills, not coding skills?
>
> Agreed. Ideally the developers should do as little user support as
> possible to
> be able to spend more time developing. However, most wine users only come
> into #winehq to bitch about some programs not working and to ask for help.
> Again, if more people in there were actually active helping people,
> someone
> would have said something else than "oh well", and don't tell me you'd
> just
> have ignored the "oh well" in that case.
>
> Of course building a good community is important, and I think your email
> scratches the surface of the problem Wine as a project has with it's
> community. But that's material for a different thread.
>
> > The problem here is I asked a question in a help channel, not to him
> > specifically, but he answered it just to state that he doesn't care. He
> > then banned me for voicing concern over whether he should be doing such
> > things.
>
> Ok, if you don't mind I'll dissect the question a little.
>
> [some formatting added for better readability]
>
> <Pie-rate>: my brother's girlfriend's WoW install is
> crashing (locking up, stops responding) randomly.
>
> Here, you describe the problem you're seeing. So far, so good.
>
> <Pie-rate>: she will install windows tomorrow if it doesn't get fixed. i
> don't
> like windows and i don't want to deal with it.
>
> Here, you're trying to to stress how important your problem is. While this
> might be important for you, it is not for me, and I doubt it is for lots
> of
> other Wine developers. I don't work on Wine because I want to make more
> people switch to Linux. I stopped caring what operating system people use
> about six years ago, as long as they don't mind what OS I use.
>
> Frankly, I started working on Wine because I was paid to work on it, and
> while
> I'm not paid anymore, I like the challenge of working on problems like
> figuring out how Windows ticks and to make Wine tick the same way.
>
> But back to the analysis.
>
> <Pie-rate>: the message it crashes with is:
> err:ntdll:RtlpWaitForCriticalSection section 0x509da8c "?" wait timed out
> in
> thread 0047, blocked by 003e, retrying (60 sec)
>
> This is not really helpful, but arguably that's a bit hard to tell without
> knowing Wine. So I'd say this one is fine.
>
> <Pie-rate>: this is with an install copied over from my
> computer, which i KNOW works flawlessly, and wine 0.9.41
>
> If I'd do that on Windows, it'd break for a lot of apps. Why people think
> Wine
> is different is beyond me. As Juan said in his email. the FAQ clearly
> states
> not to do that.
>
> > Civility is important to a degree in the freenode channels, but swearing
> > like a sailor while banning people who complain about it is just
> > ridiculous. As an admin, you should be helping politely or not helping
> at
> > all, and breaking up flamewars, not starting them.
>
> I still fail to see how this is connected to being an op or not. This
> should
> be a general rule.
>
> Anyway, looking at my experience with Open Source help channels, you're
> basically always expected to have read the FAQ before asking questions if
> you
> want someone to help you. You actually didn't ask a question and you
> stated
> that you hadn't read the FAQ. So I think an "oh well" response, while
> certainly not ideal, was well justified.
>
> I agree with you that banning people who disagree is bad style.
> Personally,
> I'd probably just ignore the whole thing. But starting the conversation in
> a "I'm a paying customer, and if people don't do what I want, I'll spend
> my
> money elsewhere" style message certainly doesn't help. We do get that a
> lot,
> and having done support in a volunteer organization myself, I know this
> gets
> on your nerves quite quickly.
>
> Anyway, I don't want to single you out for being the bad guy, I just
> wanted to
> explain a little why the echo you got here was the way it is.
>
> Oh, one other thing. It's a bit rude to take a personal email back to a
> public
> list without consent of the poster, especially if the poster stated that
> he
> didn't want the email to go to said list. Also, top-posting is against
> common
> mailing list etiquette.
>
> Cheers,
> Kai
>
> --
> Kai Blin
> WorldForge developer  http://www.worldforge.org/
> Wine developer        http://wiki.winehq.org/KaiBlin
> Samba team member     http://www.samba.org/samba/team/
> --
> Will code for cotton.
>
>
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