I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, most of y’all don’t know what it’s like to be a fediverse developer of a popular project and have to deal with all the negative feedback and personal attacks
Let’s be nicer to the devs of the fediverse who have been doing this mostly unpaid for the greater good, all I ask is for basic respect!
Anfora, Prismo, Firefish and dozens of other projects have been abandoned by their devs, and I’d bet the fediverse mentality towards devs is part of the reason
@dansup I’m one of the few that does know. Granted, it was over a decade ago, but community management is not the cakewalk some people assume it to be.
It’s super difficult at times, to the point of being mentally and emotionally exhausting. Being out there repping a project, talking to people, building the dream, coordinating with volunteers, it’s an insane amount of work. Goodwill can evaporate in an instant, and maintaining it with your base is crucial.
If you can not donate, tell your friends & family who use #Instagram that there is a better alternative called Pixelfed & that they should check it out. You could even encourage them to start their own Pixelfed instance together too!
@dansup Mastodon is well developed. The rest ... I can't really speak for. When an app like Lemmy that purports to be a Reddit replacement locks users who enable 2FA out of their accounts, you can't be surprised users get angry
One good way to support the Fediverse's volunteer devs: ask them to work with volunteer design and user-research practitioners who help them to develop and test usable designs – before any substantial code is written.
Testing mockups and prototypes with the community would reduce unhappiness all around.
@FiveSketches Hmm, whilst I appreciate the process you’re suggesting, I think the point being made is that you’re always going to get a bunch of ungrateful asshats who complain, no matter what.
@dansup The weird/new thing about Fedi, is how many people have strong critical opinions about websites they aren't using, and exactly what principles those websites should be advancing.
I do think operating a forum is inherently more thorny than software development.
But I don't suppose that's much comfort, when you're a small developer of forum software. Norms against harassment don't seem to be very strong in this case.
@dansup Dev abuse is why key packages end up with ill-intentioned maintainers. #xz Spoilt little brat problem has dogged open-source since forever; entitlement of some people is absolutely staggering. 'negative feedback' being any complaining without a supplementary ticket/issue. Generally I have been lucky (your user demographic really makes a difference apparently) - "non-technical" people being much more respectful and appreciative.
@dansup people can act surprisingly entitled with the toys they got for free. Just be assured that people like that are arseholes offline too, or in fact really are children.
@dansup 2/2 But they are obliged to respond in accordance with applicable law to such reports from users. And this is where the problems begin. They need to hire a lawyers or other experienced in some topics people, and this cost enormous amount of money. They need to learn how something like that works, they need to take all responsibility of what they are doing and what effects their work/projects will have in the future on people. And this can be very overwhelming for some of them.
@dansup That's only the one side of the medal. There's also the second one. Lots of dev's are pretty good at what they are doing yes, but also they don't pay enough attention to other aspects of their work. Those direct ones and especially indirect ones as well. There many more things to have in mind as only code, usability, UI and such. There are laws, social impacts, mental or even moral ones as well. Most of devs doesn't know about that. And that's fine, because they don't have such duty. 1/2
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