[Kde-pim] From a users point of view ....

Thu Feb 23 14:04:11 GMT 2012

Torsdag den 23. februar 2012 13:40:44 Martin Steigerwald skrev:
> Am Mittwoch, 22. Februar 2012 schrieb Anders Lund:
> > Onsdag den 22. februar 2012 11:43:42 Marc Deop skrev:
> > > On Tuesday 21 February 2012 18:21:22 Denny wrote:
> > > > I could spent the whole day fixing new appearing Errors and Crashes
> > > > of kde - pim.
> > > > Is this just broken by design or why isn't there a working email
> > > > client for at least 4 years?
> > > > I thought with KDE 4.7.x we were over it and at least basic things
> > > > kinda worked stable again.
> > > > With KDE 4.8 now - nothing is working anymore, just to name a few
> > > > things annoying one one on a daily basis:
> > > > - Filters: broken
> > > > - Crashes : several per day
> > > > - email Addresses not recognised as you type
> > > > - password management : broken
> > > > - several empty windows popping up from ktimetracke at login ....
> > > > 
> > > > Am I supposed to create a new profile each and every time I upgrade
> > > > to a new version and scrap all my data?
> > > > 
> > > > Obviously, even Kontact PIM fans gave up by now. What I don't
> > > > understand is
> > > > why other kde developers step up helping fixing most annoying bugs,
> > > > as this
> > > > situation damages the whole kde experience.
> > > > 
> > > > Denny
> > > 
> > > With this attitude you aren't helping, at all.
> > > 
> > > Even though I aknowledge there are problems with the PIM suite, last
> > > think I would do is rant in here. Instead, offer your help debugging
> > > and triagging. *That* might help.
> > > 
> > > And to the developers: *THANKS* for all your effort and work on KDE.
> > > I'm sure it will become bugfree eventually :)
> > 
> > Marc,
> > 
> > While I share the appreciation of everyone working on free software and
> > kdepim, I still do not understand the desire to censor away
> > frustrations. Developers should be willing to harden themseleves a
> > bit, and realize that the user frustration comes from a desire to use
> > the software in question.
> 
> I think its not the frustration as such. Its the accusing tone I recognize
> in the mail from Denny. And the expectation that KDE developers owe any
> kind of - best immediate - remedy.
> 
> Frankly, they do not. Cause there is no contract between users of KDEPIM
> and the developers. No one has been paid for any negotiated amount of work
> except from Kolabsys as Georg Greve mentioned here.

This is where taking a deep breath helps. Much of the despair comes out of 
high expectations, which we learned to build up through the last decade.

> That said it is still just fine to want it to work better and to feel
> frustrated about that it isn´t holding up to own expectations.
> 
> But for anyone who wants to help to make it happen its important to shift
> the energy to resolving problems. So express your frustration from your
> point of view without accusing anyone for your pain, then be done with
> that and think what you can you offer to help getting things fixed.

> Of course there is some kind of relationship between developers and users.
> And of course ideally developers provide a suberb application that users
> love and users give praise for it and contribute back.
> 
> But how do you create a relationship that works this way? Is "Is this just
> broken by design?" and you owe me to fix it contributing in any way to such
> a kind of relation ship? In my perception it starts a downward spiral of
> accusing each other until someone holds in, stops it and starts to provide
> constructive feedback. And that means users and developers as well.

You have to ask yourself if the current level of complexity will hold up, 
don't you? But it could be nicer put, agreed.

> How instead would "I feel frustrated about this, this and this not
> working, I really do find it difficult to use KDEPIM 2 at all at the moment,
> how can I help or what can I do to get a different experience?" with some
> description of what "this, this and this" really is work out? How does this
> feel differently for you?
> 
> The KDEPIM developers are not responsible for the pain you are suffering as
> a user. You are when you stick to KDEPIM 2 without helping to make it
> better. Your options are:
> 
> 1) Help to make it better.

Providing a way to do so would be good. Just "go help" might add to 
frustration, because it is unclear how to do that.

> 2) Switch clients.

I'm considerng that daily, but still sticking to kdepim in the hope that it 
will not take years before we get to a functional state. Call me silly...

> 3) Use a distro that actually means stable when it says stable. Debian
> still has KDEPIM 1 even up to KDE 4.7.4 experimental packages. KDEPIM is
> still at 4.4.5. And it just damn works - except some annoying but rather
> minor issue compared to what I read here regarding KDEPIM 2. Debian also
> did not put KDE 4.0 or 4.1 out to its users. These versions IMHO have not
> been ready for production yet.
> 
> I do use this option 3 in production and it serves me well.

1. It looks to me like the switch of major distributions, albeit throwing a 
lot of users in troubled water, have been what made the situation clear.

2. A lot of developers appear to tink, or did until very recent, that 
everything with kdepim 2 should be fine, at least that is the impression i get.

3. I used kdepim 4.4 until the release of kde 4.8 (apart from a very unhappy 
test back in august), but while kmail in that version works fine, other 
applications - mainly korganizer in my case, was rottinging badly. Browsing 
calendars got to a point where it would take 30seconds to move the month view 
one step. Both korganizer and kaddressbook, though still not perfect, have 
improved a lot with kdepim 2, making life much easier. So it is unfortunately 
not a simple descision.

4. I jumped in knowing it would not be easy, though the number of problems are 
still suprising to me.

> If you consider KDEPIM 2 not to be production ready then by all means help
> to make it so or switch clients.
> 
> Its simply as easy as that.

As what?

> And yes, you are entitled every right to feel frustrated about your
> expectations not being satisfied at the moment.
> 
> But please just don´t make someone else responsible for your self inflicted
> pain.

I used kmail since forever, it was part of the reason I felt giving up on 
windows 95 was the right choice - by far better than outlook express back 
then, as I remember it. It have been doing its job more than well up to now, 
and providing me with features that made me feel proud of being a FOSS user, 
as well as with superb workflows for many aspects of my life.

neither - feeling cool or having supercool workflows - are possible for me 
using kdepim software at this point (not with kdepim 4.4 either, as described 
above). But yes, self-inflicted.

[...]

> > How about in the future, when someone takes the time to tell you about
> > his frustrations, instead of making people feel even worse by accusing
> > them of being stupid/bad/annoying because they react, offer a bit of
> > empathy and a startingpoint to help?
> > 
> > Maybe it is time to have a "how to help debugging
> > kmail/akonadi/nepomuk" page somwhere, and linking to it when
> > responding to unhappy users?
> 
> I like this idea.

So how do we get started? Adding a page to either userbase or techbase
* listing known problematic areas, indicating if work are being done to each 
area, and maybe list existing bug reports (to try to avoid more)
* if there are any, list tasks that can be done by non-technical users
* list possible tasks for technical users?

Would that be productive?

Should we start a thread for that here, getting out of this not so comforting 
one?

Anders

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