Hacker News Reader

Comment by AshamedCaptain | Hacker News Reader

But I don't understand why this would be annoying at all to the developers. I have absolutely zero conundrum with just ignoring a request if I'm not in the mood to do it.

Most of them I even delete outright, but I still have requests that were sent to me in 00s that I'm keeping just in case one day "I'm in the mood".

And yes, people request (demand!) crazy things, and have done so for decades. There are even "If you don't do it, then $threat" guys. And my area of software is generally industrial/professional....

View on HN

I mean, you still read them though, right? And you somewhat sort out the ones based on how much of a buffoon the user is? Maybe someone with excellent writing skills and having demonstrated reading all the documentation and FAQs is still asking for help in a respectful and intelligent way, and so maybe you engage.

All of that is mental tax. And it gets tiring, even if you're mostly ignoring the request. It's still tiring even when you're in the mood for it.

Just saying, it's a hard thing and I definitely sympathize for the way which open source / open project / volunteer collaborators get treated.

> Maybe someone with excellent writing skills and having demonstrated reading all the documentation and FAQs is still asking for help in a respectful and intelligent way, and so maybe you engage.

You mean it gets tiring to find the entertaining messages instead of the random trash? Because it doesn't matter how much effort the sender has put, or how intelligent his request/question/contribution/comment is. If I'm not in the mood, I will ignore it. I'm doing it for the fun, not to provide free support, so I will only read stuff that is fun to me. Obviously being an intelligent question is likely to add points, but it's not always the case.

It's not like this is race to see who is the least Torvalds-like of the bunch. It's 100% OK to just ignore everything. The people who complain "I had to moderate comments while my mother was in the hospital!" look like they have an addiction, or a runaway hobby.

I even have an online board for this sort of requests and generally I just read the subject lines. Fortunately for them, once your software is popular enough, a lot of people seem to like to reply to other people's questions, for some reason.

Maybe you can ignore it? And that's great, if so.

But I know I can't. I'm perfectly fine ignoring the buffoons. But I feel much anxiety over ignoring an insightful request or comment that would benefit both myself and the user if I were to engage.

If I'm passionate about a project (in whatever form of contribution), I definitely want to help people who are genuinely looking for help. The problem is the signal to noise is way out of line, heavy skewed the wrong direction.

For me it's a mental tax to wade through and find the good requests sorting them out from the bad ones. And it causes anxiety to miss the good ones.

Some people just aren't suited for certain jobs. There's nothing wrong with the person, and there's nothing wrong with the job (in this case, the job "just is").

> "For me it's a mental tax to wade through and find the good requests sorting them out from the bad ones."

This might be one of those very valid use-cases for an "A.I." / LLM to classify "hostile" messages into some sort of "junk bin" and maybe flag ones it's not entirely certain about for human review. Could fairly dramatically cut down on the garbage hopefully, leaving only the stuff worth reading.

> I mean, you still read them though, right?

no?

am I the only one with the super power of leaving a discussion and never going back?

But why are you working on a project? If it isn't for the money then you are doing it to 'give back to the community'. But if they are turning hostile to you then why continue?

Because you want to see that sort of project exist and if no one else is doing it, why not yourself? That's why I work on (certain) projects anyway, not for any community support or for money.

> "Because you want to see that sort of project exist and if no one else is doing it, why not yourself?"

That right there was my understanding of how most open source projects come into existence. Building a thing because it's a thing you want, and it don't yet exist in the form you're seeking, so ... "I'll just make it myself!" Then you throw it out into the world, because "Hey, why not?"

Who is "they"? In the UBO threads I've seen there are about a hundred supportive comments for every entitled dickhead - if that's enough to make you characterise the community as "turning hostile" then you are unlikely to ever be satisfied. Bad and inconsiderate people exist. The sensible thing to do is just ignore them.

> "The sensible thing to do is just ignore them."

I tend to go one step further than "ignore mode" (when I'm not bein' so utterly stupid as to get sucked in and actually respond) and actively block them any and every way that I can so that I never see that person's crap again.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com