And how can this be improved ? Should “normies” be pushed into RTFM or ELI5 ?
Dealing with unhinged people has been around since as long as the internet. There was a period of time before the general population got online when it was mostly academics and military people, the level of discourse was higher. But useNet still had the crazies.
I think the federated systems and GitHub allow people to participate more, so the barrier to entry is lower, so we get to see more of this emotional labor then we used to historically.
Your complaints should be in the donation message.
If you are dissatisfied with the free thing I gave you, then I am happy send you a refund of your purchase price. 🤷♂️
That’s my preferred strategy.
You should charge a restocking fee.
Convenience fee.
People feeling entitled on the internet were always a thing.
“I paid for my internet connection, so everything I find on it should be free and come with support and modifications I request.”
Just ignore them?
Not only is it normalized, but it’s being weaponized. See, for example, the recent XZ backdoor which was equal parts hacking and a psi-op against the maintainer.
Just fyi it’s psy ops, short for psychological operations.
There are excessively clear instructions for tails on how to do exactly what they are asking. You can’t help people like that.
Is that you Jia Tan?
God knows no wrath like a slightly inconvenienced and intellectually humiliated liberal.
Ok boomer.
I don’t think I’d ever complain directly to the maintainer. I often do find instructions that are essentially The Rest of the Fucking Owl but you go to the community for help and then give up when 90% of them act like you are an idiot for even asking.
I am indeed seeing this with increasing frequency. Just take a look at threads about the Lemmy devs for examples. An increasing number of people seem to feel entitled to be treated not just like customers but as also as stakeholders/PMs for software that was gifted to the community.
As for how to try to change this direction, I think ELI5 on what FLOSS is and how it is governed, as well as how to be a good member of the community, whether as a contributor or otherwise, is probably the way to go.
Who is this little shit who can’t Google how to format a USB drive securely? If
ddisn’t enough, there’s plenty of methods documented online.Fuck such people. Off to the maintainers blacklist they should go
It was always normalized, but recently there seems to be more backlash from maintainers.
The post’s photo conversation seems like feedback moreso than complaining. 🤷
Believe me, no AI wants to steal your comment.
This is one good reason not to publish any normie-accessible versions of your software. If you only provide the source and build instructions, your software will never get popular among the kind of people who demand free support.
That could get rather annoying. Imagine if when you installed your distro everything was compiled from source (I apologise if you use Gentoo or LFS), it would take a lot longer.
Also people could still just upload a binary to various package managers (assuming the source is available).
What’s the issue with just ignoring them? I really don’t think making open-source software intentionally obscure because annoying people exist is a great idea. Ultimately we want more people to use FOSS instead of corporate software.
It takes time and energy to ignore them and only them specifically. They need to be filtered out, bug tickets closed and cleared out of otherwise useful channels. The alternative is you just ignore everybody interacting with the project, but that’s not a good solution.
Cutting off your nose to spite your face.
