If Zed hadn't written a blog post detailing how he fucked everything up (in all his greatness, apparently) it wouldn't have gotten such exposure and would likely have died out.
He had to make his point with a hammer or it wouldn't have mattered. And it's unfortunate that it took a hammer to make the point. I'd even go so far as to say this feature isn't actually all that important. Zed Shaw just MADE it important.
Can you explain where in my blog post I claim I'm great? I think all I did was explain what was happening and how this was someone who bothered me in the past and followed me to github, and then there was nothing I could do about it.
And then you claimed it was all to improve the github experience. Cmon.
Next time, actually read what I write instead of just imagining you read it after seeing a stream of tweets and your buddies on reddit tell it to you 4th person in some comments. For example, I didn't contact github because I knew one of the peole working there was in on the joke. If you read what I wrote you would have known that, idiot.
For the record, this isn't true no matter how many times you repeat it. You should have emailed us and we would have taken care of it without a holiday weekend filled with unnecessary drama.
What it looks like from an outsider: He said, (s)he said.
I don't know if Zed is right. I don't know if you are right. What I do know is Zed Shaw ranted and got stuff fixed. Apparently, their was some merit to what he was saying, and at least the majority of his story can confirmed to be true. As for the employee, it's just as easy for you to be misinformed or simply ignorant of the truth as it is for Zed to be wrong. No malice, just mistaken.
> This is what Debian maintainers are doing, but there's a very specific reason why they do this and it's not a "culture clash". It's embrace and extend which they probably learned from Microsoft. You see, if you have to adapt your software and processes to their weird layout and packages, then you can't get off their platform. It is sadly pure business and has nothing to do with open source, quality, or culture.
> It's simply a tactic to make sure that you are stuck on Debian.
Whether you like Debian and agree with their technical decisions, or not, it's a non-profit completely based on open-source code. There is no business, and there is no motivation to lock you in to Debian, and there is no desire to do so, either. Complaining about Debian in technical terms is fine; making stuff up about the project is beyond the pale.
After that episode, I became much more inclined to take what Zed has to say with a large grain of salt.
Like I said, it's essentially a he said, she said match. github, if anything, let themselves get pulled into it. Just fix the problem and move on. The only they've done is make note of what they disagree with (and frankly, their denials don't match up with what Zed accused anyways).
I learned a long time ago that as a company, you should avoid getting into a pissing contest on the forums.
hmm, couldn't it be that some other customer service people would actually do their job about your issue? How do you know it would all be channeled through this one guy that was in on the joke? In any case if they did ignore your request, you could still do the whole crashing thing...
> Can you explain where in my blog post I claim I'm great?
The cart should not be put before the horse by implying that this missing feature was simply used as an excuse to be negative. What's the perverse incentive here, that it's actually in GitHub's interest to prevent users from blocking each other?
"The squeaky wheel gets the grease" and public shame were invented way before the Internet, so this makes no precedent. It's just one of the myriad ways in which things get done. Ever had a boss?
To be fair, in this case, that does appear to be exactly what happened. Github had a problem. Someone exposed it and then Zed used his considerable influence to "force" github to fix it.
Perhaps so, but Zed Shaw is not the one that set it. The age of the phrase "the squeaky wheel gets the grease" is measured in decades, not days.
Its unfortunate for many reasons, not the least of which is that they either were, or were perceived as (which is just as bad for the customer), so out of touch with the user base that such action was necessary.
>it also creates perverse incentives
No, it was created by a general disregard for customer service. The attitude that an issue is fine to ignore unless it is boiling over is what created the incentive, that was ages ago.
I don't see how that makes github "out of touch" nor do I see how this situation was created by a "general disregard of customer service." Granted this might be true, but it doesn't sound like it had anything to do with this particular incident.