Hijacking of foss community

[MarkMLl]

Speaking of ethics and principles, I think the FreePascal and Lazarus communities can take can example from SQLite for creating a list of principles that drives the community.

I don't. Manifestos and charters invariably end up pandering to the alleged "disadvantaged" irrespective of whether they're present in the provider or consumer population, and are too often used as an excuse to not step beyond the mandated point even if doing so would appear to be demanded by common decency.

The statements of fact at https://www.freepascal.org/ are entirely adequate: "Free Pascal is a mature, versatile, open source Pascal compiler" ... " The language syntax has excellent compatibility with TP 7.0 as well as with most versions of Delphi " and so on. Those are statements of fact, nothing else is needed.

Look at what happened to StackExchange...

MarkMLl

[denis.totoliciu]

I don't.

Thing is that once you moved the IRC channel to libera, you still have a set of implicit principles, but they are not stated out to everybody.

[MarkMLl]

I don't.

Thing is that once you moved the IRC channel to libera, you still have a set of implicit principles, but they are not stated out to everybody.

I beg your pardon?

MarkMLl

[denis.totoliciu]

I beg your pardon?

MarkMLl

To be more precise: I think the heads of the project and the community itself already have a set of principles since there was a decision to move the #fpc channel from freenode to libera, but they are not stated/written anywhere in the open.

[MarkMLl]

To be more precise: I think the heads of the project and the community itself already have a set of principles since there was a decision to move the #fpc channel from freenode to libera, but they are not stated/written anywhere in the open.

If it's a "heads of project" issue then please don't quote my postings as though I'm responsible.

And I fail to see why the project owners should publish stuff. It's not a democracy, and while they're usually interested in the opinions of longstanding project contributors ** they're under absolutely no obligation to solicit or conform to them.

MarkMLl

** i.e. people with a substantially more productive history than either of us.

[FPK]

We will see how it turns out and I am still on both networks. But the fact that the freenode staff apparently overtook OSS channels because of "inappropriate advertising" (mentioning the new libera channel) narrows it down for me. Of course, they can do so - it's their network/server - but a service acting like this is most likely not suitable for an OSS project in the long term as they simply miss the idea of OSS.

[MarkMLl]

We will see how it turns out and I am still on both networks. But the fact that the freenode staff apparently overtook OSS channels because of "inappropriate advertising" (mentioning the new libera channel) narrows it down for me. Of course, they can do so - it's their network/server - but a service acting like this is most likely not suitable for an OSS project in the long term as they simply miss the idea of OSS.

Entirely reasonable Florian.

I'd add that an ISP I use heavily- AAISP in the UK- uses IRC for some of their support, and I look forward to seeing their habitually-outspoken MD's take on this.

MarkMLl

[Joanna]

Handoko thank you for your inspirational words. When I’m not being distracted by trolls I do try to help the pascal project by actively using And promoting it. Sometimes I find some bugs but I’m not sure if I should report them because I’m still using an old version of Lazarus.

I recently finished my first application in Lazarus but I’m having difficulty with flickering trackbars when I resize and it seems to not work at all for very high resolution. I guess it will take awhile to find out what I did wrong.

 I’m a bit intimidated by forums because I sometimes have seen people being scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’. However the forums do seem to be full of useful information that I can search through.

FPK Yes it’s true that the owner of freenode who was under a barrage of attacks did act hastily and disrupted more channels than he should have. It was because he saw some channel owners forcing people who wanted to stay off of freenode by locking channels and kicking people.

He was definitely unprepared to take control of freenode and is a bit inexperienced but I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt because I once made a blunder similar to his..

The lack of preparedness also in my opinion indicates a lack malicious intent. The channels are not permanently gone their owners can have them reopened.
 Here is the link explaining https://freenode.net/news/post-mortem-may21

Im grateful to both the owner who paid the bills and the former freenode staff for keeping it operating so I refuse to take sides in this divorce -> custody battle over irc users affair.
I will use both networks with preference given to the one I was on first

[Martin_fr]

I guess I’m a bit intimidated by forums because I sometimes have seen people being scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’. However the forums do seem to be full of useful information that I can search through.

"scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’"

I guess this is sort of a: When you ask a myriad of people, you may find one of them to be unkind towards you or your question. Don't know if that ever happens on IRC...

[Joanna]

Martin it definitely does and I put people who do it on ignore asap.
 Most people in pascal channels who aren’t lurkers are fairly friendly and helpful I’ve had more of that behavior in non pascal irc channels .

The good thing about irc that gives it a definite advantage over forums is that I don’t have to know the exact terminology for what I’m asking about. I often ask questions about something I vaguely remember doing before or some issue where I sort of describe what is happening but am not sure what is happening exactly and people there can usually figure out what I mean.

I guess forums don’t limit who you can talk to by your time zones like irc does. Both are important resources for the project I think.

[Handoko]

That's okay if you prefer irc more than forum.

What does not kill you makes you stronger. I can understand you feel intimidated on the forum. Me too, get criticized. I posted some codes, which I was sure worked perfectly. But still some could tell me there were security issues, potential problems, not efficient, etc. As a normal person, I felt bad. But instead of doing nothing, I studied their advice. It turned out, what they said were true. This forum has many professional programmers, their criticisms mean to make you a better programmer.

Sometimes there are people who are not very polite and seem unkind. That's okay, cultural differences I think. They may talk too directly but they don't really mean to hurt you. Unless trolls.

Sometimes I find some bugs but I’m not sure if I should report them because I’m still using an old version of Lazarus.

If you are not sure about the bug. Post it on the forum first. Some may test it on different machines or tell you if it has been already reported or solved on the newer versions.

I recently finished my first application in Lazarus but I’m having difficulty with flickering trackbars when I resize and it seems to not work at all for very high resolution. I guess it will take awhile to find out what I did wrong.

That is what forum used for. Start a new a new topic, post the issue there and get help.

For the politic issue, I better stay away. I'm not good on it.

[MarkMLl]

I’m a bit intimidated by forums because I sometimes have seen people being scolded for asking questions ‘incorrectly’. However the forums do seem to be full of useful information that I can search through.

On occasion I'm guilty of that. But let me argue it this way: forum-type software means that people with questions generally put some sort of coherent description in the subject line... except for the clown who puts NEED HELP NOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! to everybody's detriment and annoyance.

If a subject line appears that looks like something I can help with, then I'm likely to look more closely at it. But if the body of the message doesn't give a coherent explanation of what OS he's using, what Lazarus/FPC version he's got, and what the problem actually is, preferably with an example program that can be fed straight to the compiler, then I've already wasted time which could have been better spent elsewhere.

There's nothing wrong with asking questions in public. There's not much wrong with asking questions which could be resolved by a few moments with Google or Wikipaedia (and you'd be surprised how many people don't know about that). Non-technical people who are unfamiliar with the "style guides" such as the classic http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-questions.html have nothing to be ashamed about.

But the fact remains that civilised public behaviour does have certain norms, and one of those is that if you're writing something or making a verbal presentation then you try to be coherent, grammatical, and conform to an appropriate style.

So if somebody does get snapped at for not following "house style" when asking a question, he should still console himself with the knowledge that at least one person has read it and would be likely to help if it were better presented.

MarkMLl

[MarkMLl]

I guess forums don’t limit who you can talk to by your time zones like irc does. Both are important resources for the project I think.

That's one thing, but another is that good forum software threads messages properly, so if you see that a subthread is heading off in some irrelevant or objectionable direction you can simply mark it as "to be ignored" without blackballing everybody involved in it.

MarkMLl

[Joanna]

Forums definitely organize and preserve discussions better . Irc is faster but more informal. Both have their merits.

I have found that there are people in both mediums who can be very strict about how they want you to ask questions. It’s as if they are burned out or busy and don’t want to be bothered unless you are willing to put forth considerable effort beforehand. I suppose this is understandable being that nobody is being paid to come here or irc to help people.

The second category of people just enjoy trying to be helpful unconditionally often because they want to show off or improve their skills or they like the social aspect of interacting with other people in the community. It has been said that helping others is also of great benefit to those who help.

There is also a third category of people who pretend to know more than they do and won’t admit it. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the people faking it from the people in first category.

In any case an irc channel where people are told to shut up and go use google is not a good place because it kills most of the interaction in the channel and deprives people of learning new things unexpectedly about features that they didn’t know existed. I go to irc to talk to live people not to be told off.

A lot of discussions on irc do start off in the vague “I need help now” category but the interesting thing is that the act of talking about problems with someone else often stimulates the thought processes and helps solve the problem even when the person they are talking to doesn’t know the answer either suggestions can be made that are helpful.

Here is the explanation of the channel closings for advertising libera https://freenode.net/news/post-mortem-may21

[MarkMLl]

Forums definitely organize and preserve discussions better . Irc is faster but more informal. Both have their merits.

Agreed. Snipping most of your other points in the interest of brvity and without intending disrespect, there are also users who are quite clearly out of their depth, profess a level of expertise (possibly to people paying them) that they quite simply don't possess, lack all ability to read and inwardly digest relevant documentation, and demand an immediate solution to an ill-described problem without being prepared to contribute an iota of effort themselves. Fortunately they usually also lack enough understanding of how annoying they are to change their moniker on a regular basis :-)

Here is the explanation of the channel closings for advertising libera https://freenode.net/news/post-mortem-may21

Thanks for that. Can I ask one followup:


The intent of doing this was not an attempt of a hostile takeover nor hijack like many
people are saying. Since certain projects were disrupting their users' ability to chat on
freenode via mass kicks, force closures, spam, we decided to enact this policy in those
places which were deemed in violation and could cause an issue later.


Is he alleging that Libranode was interfering with Freenode at a protocol level, i.e. by injecting control messages into Freenode traffic?

MarkMLl