Good Users

It’s just really nice to get an occasional respite from the annoying clueless people in #xfce. Very often I ask myself why I even idle in there at all, given that the majority of the traffic is completely OT, or random people whining about their pet feature not being included, or having problems that many others have had and they could solve themselves by reading the FAQ or clicking the help button in one of the settings dialogs.

But tonight I had the pleasure to talk to someone with a feature idea who was willing to talk it out with me, and was understanding of why it is difficult and maybe not the highest priority. And even more impressive, he was willing to do some of the necessary legwork himself to maybe kickstart the feature. Kudos.

I understand that most people don’t do any coding and wouldn’t be able to hack their way out of a paper bag. But that’s not an excuse to bitch and moan and expect the developers to bow to do your bidding. It’s not even an excuse to expect the developers to even consider what you have to say. Sure, it would be nice if I had the kind of time (and patience) for that, but I don’t. And until and unless my paycheck comes from someone who hired me to work on Xfce, I probably never will.

People don’t even realise sometimes that they don’t even need coding skills to help. The documentation could always use people looking at it and improving it. It wouldn’t hurt to have a support-type person watching over Bugzilla, answering and closing common bugs that get reported. And in this case, the guy I was talking to was willing to do a little research into how his particular feature (“switch user” functionality piggybacking on GDM or KDM if running) could be implemented. I’m not saying it’ll get implemented immediately if the required information is acquired, but it sure as hell isn’t going to happen at all if someone’s not willing to do the homework.

Anyway, I didn’t intend this to turn into a rant; just wanted to express some gratitude that there really are appreciative people out there, and while they may not be as vocal as the complainers, their presence negates the effect of a lot of repetetive, annoying crap I sometimes take from users.