Given that the sender didn't provide constructive feedback, is seemingly not contributing financially, and can simply choose to not use the application, I don't see why a response in kind shouldn't be given. To me, Don's response was mild.
Yes, they should've opted for a more civilised approach. No, it doesn't discard the issue that they (and possibly others) are experiencing.
Loose analogy, I don't watch videos of retail workers being abused and think, that customer is providing constructive feedback.
"You suck and your software is a piece of crap" is not constructive feedback because there's no details to act on.
"Fuck you the submit button is obscured by the footer" is constructive even if the message has a personal attack.
You might choose not to act on comments due to emotions, but I don't think it invalidates any constructive feedback contained within.
Loose analogy, I don't watch videos with people buying a bike with no breaks, fall and get hurt, then go to the vendor and calmly explain to them that they should modify their bike design so the breaks function and think, that customer is behaving like a human being.
See what I did there? :) My analogy might not be great, I give you that. But frustration is a normal human behavior. Granted I strongly believe you should try to vent a different way and then give clam feedback, you can't discard feedback just because the person giving it is frustrated.
We should be able to distinguish between frustrated good feedback and just abuse. I know I was able to get feedback from very hostile messages. And last time I checked I'm not a robot. So it's as skill you can gain.
But I'm just wondering, is it possible to ignore the form of the message and listen to the content? Looking back the stoics were very good at controlling their own emotions and dealing with insults. Insults would just not get to them, they would bounce right off them. Is this a skill we've lost as a society?
It seems that nowadays we're focusing external, not internal. Instead of developing a thick skin we're focusing on changing the behavior of the people who's insulting us. To me that seems like a pointless endeavor. You can't change someone else behavior if they don't want to cooperate. And without a thick skin, all it takes is one jerk to ruin your day. With thick skin the insults from a jerk bounces off you and your day is still a good day. So, it seems to me that we should focus inwards instead of outwards. Not saying it's easy. Just saying humans were capable of that in the past, nowadays I don't hear anybody talking about it.
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Hey Don, thanks for all the hard work you've put into Notepad++ over the years. I've never paid you a cent, and yet I've personally made quite a bit of money from using the product.
Despite how obviously useful the product is overall for me, there's a niggle I've got, that I'd love you to solve. Let me know if I can do any hands-on work to help you fix it. I'm probably not good enough to write code, but maybe I could help with testing, writing documentation, or giving you more detail on the issue.
Or maybe I should, you know, give you some cash.
Anyway, the issue I'm having is around using the settings. I'd like to use the application with a specific UI - greenish background, black text, highlighting what's selected. The way I've configured it sort of works, but has a white background when I move the cursor around. This is probably me doing something wrong, but I can't work it out - I've searched on the internet, but can't find a solution. Here are the settings I'm using. [...] Let me know if I can provide more details that would help reproduce the problem.
Thanks again for all that you do to make Notepad++ the great product that it is.
Maybe his wife just cheated on him, divorced him and took half his money, his kids don't want to have anything to do with him, his bank took his house and he just crashed the car. And he tried to use Notepad++ and the same old issue happened and he snapped and sent that email.
99 out of 100 times he would have send the email you mentioned here but he had a horrible day and vented in the email. Does it make it ok? No. Is it understandable? Yes. Should we discard the feedback because he was frustrated? No.
One's having a bad day does not excuse anti-social behavior. Ever.
To be excruciatingly explicit: Bugs (and confusing UI/UX) experienced and reported by rude users also affect many non-rude users. If one wants one’s software to be the best it can be, then one should listen to all bug reports; the attitude of the reporting users are irrelevant.
I agree that he’d be under an ethical obligation to listen to a rude security report. But it doesn’t follow that he must therefore listen to all rude bug reports.
That’s a value judgement man. Not everyone values turning everything into a productivity improvement over all other values
If the only issue my application ever had was reported in such a rude manner, there might be a case to be made to fix it, even though it was reported in a hostile or rude manner. It might make the application better for people who didn't report the issue. But maybe it is more valuable to just spend that time on something fun or enjoyable like coding on something else or eating cake. There is no reason to waste your free time on rude people, when they have the option to just be nice and save you all the anger.
In other words: There exists roles and relationships, with attached obligations and expectations, other than those involving money. Free software development is such a relationship, as is this debate.
There are obligations other than money, but none of those exist here. There’s no contractual obligation. He put out something for free and doesn’t need to take an iota of criticism on it by people freeloading. He obviously can, and if he wants certain goals like increasing his user base it might be the smart move to respond to these type of people, but there are no obligations.
That sounds like a social and/or cultural obligation to me.
In other words: Trying to punish rude users by not fixing the bugs they report is like cutting off your nose to spite your face.
No Jerks cuts many different ways...
Honestly, this looks like a troll's work. I personally would've ignored him/her because of the adage, "don't feed the trolls"
What would constructive, unfriendly feedback look like?
I'm having an issue using the settings. I'd like to use the application with a specific UI - greenish background, black text, highlighting what's selected. The way I've configured it sort of works, but has a white background when I move the cursor around. Here are the settings I’m using and a screenshot of the problem.
So that is by definition 'unfriendly' - because it does not exude any friendliness.
Just because it is 'unfriendly' does not mean it is 'rude'.
To circle back to the point of the original comment, my point was "constructive" and "friendly" are describing different characteristics, and "rude" does not automatically imply "unconstructive" (and of course "constructive" does not imply "kind" either). That fact is precisely what necessitated your use of the word "friendly" in your own comment. You can see this if you Google too—the top result I get when I Google constructive criticism meaning [1] says constructive criticism is "a feedback method that offers specific, actionable recommendations". That's all it means.
[1] https://www.google.com/search?q=constructive+criticism+meani...
- Praises the product and the hard work
- Says that it is so useful to them [but it wasn’t for this user, though?]
- Volunteers to help with what they want to solve
- … and yet also chastises themselves for probably not being good enough to contribute the most holy CODE. More praise of the author by putting oneself down?
- Finally gets to the suggestion in the fourth and penultimate paragraph
- Oh silly me, it’s probably a user error on my part
- Praises the product again
You’re either taking the piss or are setting the bar so high that none of the “haters” are gonna feel inclined to send someone a matter-of-fact (not rude, and also not this submissive fanperson, either) constructive feedback.
> I'm having an issue using the settings. I'd like to use the application with a specific UI - greenish background, black text, highlighting what's selected. The way I've configured it sort of works, but has a white background when I move the cursor around. Here are the settings I’m using and a screenshot of the problem.
;)
I think we should have universal single character symbol for responding to assenine communications (trolling, entitlement, stupidity and such).
I propose
k
Vertical line sybolises the barrier behind which trolling, entitlement and stupidity remains and the rest sybmolises me propping the barrier with my butt while being completely uninterested.
You may see it also as last step of evolution that brought us such responses as Ok and kthxbye.
...You don't have to. You can write mail filters that send stuff like this straight to spam. I even did it at a workplace. Admittedly, that is a bit more hairy but now I atleast understand why passive aggressiveness was invented.
I used to agonize when I'd get feedback like this, rude or not. It is emotionally draining, but I always tried to extract something from it. As mentioned elsewhere, I've reacted poorly in the past and really regret it.
I will point out that this really isn't "in kind." The email response was, but publicly posting it and letting other users know how similar emails will be treated is an escalation.
Please. If you email me - regardless of content - the expectation is we're having private communication.
That's an escalation?
Nobody knows to Tom is so he's all good. Everyone else now knows what the dev puts up with and how they feel about it. Maybe someone knows now that being a jerk over email won't get them what they want?
I don't really see any escalation here.
Yes but what else should you do? Just let it bottle up inside you? Why? Because you were dumb enough to release software as open source? Does publishing software as open source mean that you have to stop having any emotions?
There are a lot of people here who work in a business setting and are conflating the sorts of behaviors that can be expected in a paid setting with those more appropriate to a gratis effort.
These days I take every opportunity to fill it out with ‘FIRE YOUR UX TEAMS’
Well, it feels good in the moment, but crazy people like this always engage, so you get dragged into an argument that drains your emotional reserves for no benefit.