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

[Martin Steigerwald]

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.

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.

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.

2) Switch clients.

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.

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.

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.

> In your reply to Denny, you first ban him, accusing him of bad
> attitude, then say he is right, and suggest that he help, but not how
> to get started. Do you think that is comforting, or constructive from
> his point of view? I know that it isn't from mine, when I am met with
> that sort of reaction.
> 
> 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.

Ciao,
-- 
Martin 'Helios' Steigerwald - http://www.Lichtvoll.de
GPG: 03B0 0D6C 0040 0710 4AFA  B82F 991B EAAC A599 84C7
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