Sat in a 4 hour meeting, me with N900, colleagues with they standard issue dell lappys,

me using AbiWord to take notes throughout the meeting, them in Word.

I went in with half battery, they had just unplugged after all morning on charge


2 hours in they all shut down,

I finish off, go home listening to internet radio over FM to my car and charge up overnight having emailed the full meeting notes to my boss as I walked back to my desk.

geek mate went... " FFS it comes to something when you can out power a laptop in your pocket and then call me about it on the same device"


Today whilst sat waiting in the barber 5 YO daughter watches most of "fantastic Mr Fox" whilst I get my hair cut then watches Oompah loompahs on youtube and a dozen other videos whislt at Mother in laws.

I've burnt hours on Angry Birds, Numpty Physics and a number of other games its a cracking playting to boot.

to me its everything I want and more.

well.. there are too many idiots at bugtracker allready, and those take too much time that could be spent to something useful. for example: [place the most important bugfix for you here]

so I'd say the reply was a bit too polite. Try next time spitting to the floor just after a cleaner has passed....

This is off the topic of the thread, but I think it's a point worth making:

I've always seen this kind of thing (the quick harsh answer) as slightly counterproductive, but since having children, I've learned far more that it achieves almost exactly the opposite of what I really want to happen.

What was done was done in error, but without anything like a malicious intent (unlike the spitting example, which to be honest has no bearing on what was done). As far as I know, the poster had no knowledge of the problems of bugtracking, or the system, and set out to do the wrong thing with nothing like the wrong intentions.

THere are then 2 approaches to this:
1. blast them and make them feel like idiots
2. explain that it's really not what is the done thing, perhaps point them to a code of ethics for the system (do we have one? ISTR it was postulated in a recent thread about lolcats), and ask them not to do it again.

In my experience, both approaches take almost exactly the same amount of time to accomplish. However, the fallout from each is significantly different (diametrically opposed, one might say).

We should ask ourselves, what do we want to achieve: productive and keen members of society (or our sub-society in this case) or antisocial idiots who hate everybody in it because they have no patience and little understanding. I've asked myself that for years now both as a university professor and now a father, and I have to say the answer is pretty obvious.

Take the calm approach, build the world with patience and understanding. You'll find it's a much much nicer place.

And let's not forget, we have lots of sticks to resort to if the approach I suggest just doesn't work for the few...

Just my 2p

Steve

On one hand the joke was funny-- but if you only knew the amount of work that has to be done around bugs...

EDIT: props though for even thinking of Bugzilla.

Normally.. I'd agree with you completely. In this case, it was called as seen. The bug was spam.. sure, it was a joke, but it was also spam. People work very long and hard on those bugs, and imagine the amount of people who legitimately file crap bugs due to ignorance, and you can see that it probably gets flat out annoying and on people's nerves when they come across one that was an obvious fake.

Weeding out proper bugs from legitimate bugs already takes time and effort - they don't need people adding to the mess to make a joke.

So I perfectly understand the response.

I'm not saying I don't understand the response. It's legitimate and understandable, and all the rest (I don't really thing the analogy of spitting was apt though, and to be honest, it's this I was responding to rather than the original rebuke)

But let's consider the original rebuke a second. What can it achieve?

I am saying that it will achieve nothing of substance in the long term, where a different approach may well have (I don't really know in this case). This is conjecture.

Consider now that the several people who may have read this thread who could have been productive in the bug scene may well now be put off by the attitude, regardless of the 'severity' of the offence.

I don't really do the bug thing, it's just too offputting. There are reasons I don't want to go into right now, but suffice to say that while I'm considered a relatively smart person but I cannot get my head around the esoteric nature of bug reporting, the patent disbelief of those who can do it notwithstanding. And I'm an educator betimes, so disbelief of understanding is something I'm familiar with. This disbelief and feeling of inadequacy is only reinforced when 'ignorance' is brought up as something that is potentially 'bad' and makes extra work for people. Being rather busy myself often, I understand not wanting to give others extra work. But I digress.

I just don't see the need to respond negatively to something when a positive response, even if firm, could not have achieved a better result.

For instance:

'Please just don't post spam or non-existent bugs. We're busy enough as it is. Thanks for understanding.'
104 characters.

The other response:
103 characters.

So much more *goodwill* could be achieved through one extra keystroke. Heck, if I removed the superfluous 'just' the nicer response beats it.

But that's just me.

No.. cuz you missed the word "file" after the or .. so it's either 104 or 109 . Those extra 5 keystrokes could be a whole CLICK in a real bug thread .

Anyway.. my point is when people are deliberately obnoxious.. I don't feel bad when I see an obnoxious response.

I myself would probably not have responded the way Ryan did.. but I hold no argument against it. Different strokes for different folks.. and if you make a smartass comment, you should expect that someone may not appreciate it. That's all.

If your "offput" because someone didn't like your joke.. well.. that's just sensitive. Just MHO.

I was always a sensitive child though.

And clearly I cannot count. God I hate it when I screw up I'm impressed that you checked though!

No, I wasn't really arguing about the rebuke (well, I was, but not the way you think, perhaps) - just the tone. Guess I am too sensitive... Or idealistic ('why can't we all just get along'. Or something).

We are all getting along I'm sure... I'm pretty positive Ryan probably spent all of 2 seconds worrying about it and has long since moved on .

Now, please excuse me while I go lookup the lyrics to "Kumbaya" and chant in a corner .

I could provide you with the lyrics to 'kumbaya', but I'm too bust showering hugs on Smarsh for so perfectly expressing how I feel about Bugzilla. And here I thought it was just me.

Seems I am not alone!