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Comment by OutOfHere | Hacker News Reader

Whenever I see this message in a repo:

> An owner of this repository has limited the ability to comment to users that have contributed to this repository in the past.

I immediately know it should never be used. time-rs is such a repo. They don't want you or need you there, and they don't care about your bug reports or even your questions.

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This shows a stark lack of empathy for maintainers. Per a maintainer’s Mastodon profile, the comment lock is temporary and specifically in response to driveby commenters dogpiling a bug report where the issue in question has a working fix that was already released months ago. Said abusive comment traffic probably often originated from blog posts and comment threads similar to this one.

That hardly justifies the block. Users deserve empathy too, considering they have to bear the consequences if things go wrong. One now doesn't even know and cannot even estimate the number of other issues that must have gone unreported. It's not safe or wise to use a package that is so shrouded in mystery. It is in fact foolhardy.

If maintainers don't want to address issues, they only have to ignore them. At least other users can then still discuss the issues in-between themselves. A lack of empathy for maintainers does not come into the picture.

No one should have to go to Mastodon or wherever to find out about the author's stance. The readme of the repo is where the stance belongs. The readme is currently grossly misleading, asking users to use Discussions, but this is not possible.

Overall it seems like a hazardous project to use.

This is an open source tool meaning that maintainers can communicate however they like. If you don’t like it, you can fork it and do things your own way. But there is absolutely nothing wrong with temporarily disabling comments. If anything, that’s a sign of self care and this wisdom.

A little more empathy wouldn’t hurt you.

I have plenty of empathy; it is just not biased the way you want it to be. As it stands, the software has a misleading and lying readme, asking to use Discussions when this is not even possible. A little broader perspective won't hurt you.

When it comes to open source maintainers, my perspective is really simple.

They are volunteers who spend their free time so that I can build cool things for zero dollars. My demands are proportional to the terms ‘volunteers’, ‘free time’ and ‘zero dollars’.

But if you’re this passionate about communications in open source projects, I know you could find hundreds of projects that need help with documentation and overall communications. Use the passion and good things will come.

So you think they can push whatever nonsense and liabilities they want upon users? No, they cannot. By offering a software, as advertised in its readme, they're in effect making a particular promise. They do not get an automatic right to violate this promise. If they cannot maintain the software, especially when it comes to major bugs, the repo should be set to Archived. In the case of this repo, since user interaction is disabled, it is even impossible to know which other major bugs may exist as would've otherwise been reported by users. Being a volunteer is no excuse to be horrible.

No maintainer is obligated to maintain access to a discussion space for their users.

> One now doesn't even know and cannot even estimate the number of other issues that must have gone unreported. It's not safe or wise to use a package that is so shrouded in mystery. It is in fact foolhardy.

Issues don't get reported for any number of reasons. All open source is use at your own risk.

Do not try to equalize the risk of using an open software where issues are allowed versus one where issues are not allowed. The risks are not the same. In blocking users from commenting, it is obvious that the authors of this software are trying to cover up for gross negligence and bugs.

Do you simultaneously believe "it is a maintainer's prerogative to ignore any public feedback they receive":

If maintainers don't want to address issues, they only have to ignore them.

and that disallowing comments on a temporary basis, starting in the last few days, is gross negligence?

And do you also believe that the offensive part of this scenario is that their users, who may or may not be compensating them but statistically are not, temporarily don't have a public venue in which to chastise them for a problem that was already responsibly solved in a previously released update?

Do not try to equalize a maintainer guarding their time and energy from having to deal with an issue that has already been fixed and users that refuse to search or read with trying to cover up for gross negligence and bugs.

There are better ways of dealing with it. For example, a particular issue can both be locked and pinned. The readme too can be updated to reflect the concerns. There is never a need to disable all user interaction. It is foul-play and it stinks of other major bugs that the authors don't want users to become aware of.

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