Bug#371882: a few minutes with gnome virgins

[Michael Gilbert]

it was not my intent to start a flamefest with this bug report; my
goal actually was to help make debian better.  however, i believe that
your attitute is tarnishing debian's positive image, and i must speak
my mind.  so here 't goes.

> Oh I didn't take it as humor neither, I was just putting the average
> fun that working on Debian can be with the particular non-funnyness of
> receiving reports that are not even Debian based.

volunteering isn't always fun.  people volunteer for the sheer reward
of helping others.  a lot of that involves thankless, hard, and un-fun
labor.  if you are not enjoying the tasks required by you as a debian
developer, perhaps you should take up a different cause.  habitat for
humanity and big brothers big sisters always need more volunteers.

perhaps you are a non-native english speaker, but fun and funny have
completely different connotations.  fun is something you enjoy; funny
is something you laugh at.  you're saying that you are laughing at my
report, and that is just downright disrespectful, especially since my
intent was to help.

> It's nice to report bugs in Debian, typically crashes, missing files,
> erroneous dirs etc.  The more high-level the claim, the less power
> Debian has upon it.  This is because Debian doesn't have the man power
> to rewrite large amount of code to solve all high-level bugs, and also
> because Debian doesn't want to diverge from upstream.

a bug is a bug.  i believe usability bugs are more important because
these issues limit the number of users that can adopt the system.  it
is as if you are saying that debian does not want to get involved in
usability because it is a hard problem.  i doubt many would agree that
debian should give up or ignore issues just because they are
difficult.  i would contend that it is a rare breed that can document
and submit useful usability issues.  you should be thanking folks like
me for making the extra effort to see things that no one else sees.

besides coordination with upstream is probably the easiest part of
your job.  as such, i expected this issue to be forwarded upstream at
the moment i began writing.  i didn't do it myself because i do not
have a relationship with upstream, and it is more work than i, as the
average joe user, am willing to put in.  i know the debian bts, i like
it, and i believe in it.  it's your job as a dd to make sure that bugs
go where they are supposed to go.  the more bugs, the more fixes, and
the better debian is in general.  please don't harass me for
sumbitting something where i shouldn't.  i am only joe user.  i don't
have the time or patience to read debian policy, rules, etc.

> You describe yourself that the experience happened on Fedora systems,
> proving that the matter at hand is not Debian specific but relates to
> GNOME.

i will now prove via the magic of logic that this bug report should be
submitted to the debian bts:  since this bug was repported about a
usability problem with the gnome desktop, and the debian bts is used
for problems with components of debian, and gnome is a component of
debian; therefore this bug report is applicable to debian.

> IMO, your report was a report to improve GNOME from the very
> beginning, and never was to improve Debian otherwise you would have
> made the experience under Debian, not Fedora.

hypothetically if i replaced the system that was used in this
experience with a debian box, i would have made the exact same report.
 however i have no control over the os supported by the network techs
at work.  i could have lied and said that i obseved coworkers using a
debian box; you would have seen no problem and done your job as usual.
 perhaps i am just too honest...

> I feel this is an abuse of the Debian BTS.

i feel that it is misguided to tell users to filter their
contributions.  it is your job to make sure bug reports are forwarded
to the propper maintainers.  if i am a debian user and believe in
debian, i want to make my contributions to debian. the semantics and
what goes on behind the scenes are irrelevant to me.

have you ever heard the saying "the customer is always right?"  well i
believe that the dd mentality should be that the user is always right.
 if i am a casual user and try to make a positive contribution, but
get flamed for something i did wrong, or not being as technically apt
as patch submitters, then i'm not likely to want to help in the
future.  as i feel right now.  i think i have made some good
contributions (http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?which=submitter&data=michael.s.gilbert%40gmail.com&archive=no&version=&dist=unstable)
even though i don't mess with the code and generally don't worry about
simple problems like path bugs, etc.  nitpicking the details of my
report only pushes me away, leading to less useful information for
debian to improve upon.  i tend to think about bigger-picture issues
anyway.  you really need a diverse set of participants who can
contribute at varying leveles.  for example Joey Hess, Frans Pop, and
some others are great at big-picture stuff while most others are just
concerned about little issues with their own package.

anyway, thank you for your hard work and dedication.  my one request
is that you be more considerate to your users in the future.  thank
you.

mike