Trouble Users
Sometimes I think and wonder why we develop these projects. We may all
have these reasons.. We do it for ourselves, we have an itch to scratch,
we want to further open source/free software, etc.. How often does a
person say they do it for the users?
It's really great when we get a "Thank you" from a user, and on most
projects, yeah, they come. They're very appreciated, and it makes my day.
The problem, however, are the trouble users, and these are the vocal ones.
Working on Gaim, we get more than our fair share of these
users. They're the ones who threaten us, insult us, yell at us, etc. for
not having their bug fixed right away, for being a little late on a
release, or who knows what other reason.
It's these users that make me contemplate quitting the projects. That's
unfortunate, since I love what I do, but sometimes these types of users
get to be overwhelming.
Now, it's one thing to have annoying trouble users that just complain,
but insults? This is something I'm seeing far too much. One guy took our
former lead developer's screen name awhile back for who knows what reason.
He had a method for suspending it, and now, because I was busy and said to
forward his patch to another Gaim developer, he's threatened me with the
same. Why? Why would a user sink so low for something he's even trying to
contribute to, and why should I have to take it?
Someone told me what he's now saying to his trouble users. Something along
the lines of "We're doing this on our own time without pay. If you want
to complain and don't want to help fix the problem, sit down, shut up, and
say thank you." It's not a bad attitude, imho, when addressed to those users
who do nothing but complain. Unfortunately, it doesn't always seem to help
the situation much, as those types of users are very vocal and sometimes
choose to spread around lies or insults about the project.
I think it's too bad that these users are giving all of the
good users a bad name, and I think it's about time that we get the point
across that developers and supportive users no longer want to deal with or
hear from these problem users.
So, is there anything that we can do about such users? Is it this bad for
other projects, or being an IM client, is Gaim more of an exception? I'd
be interested to know.