#winehq admin troubles

Chris Howe mrmessiah at gmail.com
Mon Nov 5 07:20:02 CST 2007


On Nov 5, 2007 11:51 AM, Stefan Dösinger <stefandoesinger at gmx.at> wrote:
>
> I absolutely agree. Helping people in #winehq is a really bad job. Many people
> who go there seem to expect you to wave your magic wand to make their problem
> go away with zero effort from their side, and to make that instantly and free
> of charge.

> Another aspect that was mentioned in Wineconf was that #winehq worked quite
> well until gamers started to use wine. The atmosphere in #winehq seems to be
> close to the general gaming atmosphere. Did you ever read the letters to the
> editor of a gaming magazine? I did that in two or 3, and I was shocked about
> that. Similarly the chat in an average counter-strike game(although cs is
> propably an extreme case).

Well, you're involved in the right parts of Wine to know that the
demands of games are such that relatively small - I'm not even going
to say bugs, but unimplemented/unimplementable features - can cause
big usability problems over and above what you may see in a "normal"
app, especially with the fact that   support for the more office-y
apps has had a lot more of a headstart with work done to it so far.
You can see why an influx of gamers might seem to bring an influx of
problems.

But I think that the attitude thing is less to do with gaming and more
to do with the fact that Wine's getting better. When it did less, less
well, people could take it as they found it expecting that there were
going to be big problems. As it improves and grows, and the overall
satisfaction with it rises, people start to pick on the problems more,
and in harsher ways. It's like some kind of uncanny valley effect.
(The Unhappy Valley? ;) )

I only mention it in this thread because it's a sad fact but I fear
that as Wine improves, the tone of user support requests is going to
get more like this and be more of a problem. Particularly among the
section of the userbase, lets be charitable here, that are used to
expressing themselves in such terms anyway. It doesn't EXCUSE it, but
I think it behooves us to be ready for it.



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