New blog post on user support frustration, its causes, and how we could build the "infrastructure of equanimity" in #opensource, including ideas for potential cross-project tools & practices.
Shout-outs to @davidism, Heidi Waterhouse, @offby1, @jacob, Nicole Harris, @bernard, + @georgia for work & conversations that I built on in this piece.
@brainwane@davidism@offby1@jacob@bernard@georgia Spectacular writeup! I'm doing 1h a week live patch queue review for glibc, and that limit is great, and we've had people show up and petition for their patch. I need to set some kind of bug triage limit now 😃
Successful outreach that gets people to show up will INEVITABLY bring along people whom you've reminded of ADJACENT questions, ideas, & needs. These dynamics happen in every public-facing organization that actually tries to be accountable to the people it affects (e.g. governments).
Even great policies & tooling won't reduce user response labor to zero. Can we, collectively, make practices/tools to reduce its emotional drain? To build the "infrastructure of equanimity"?
What specific mindset shifts can help #maintainers retain equanimity? I think each #maintainer needs to consider power & economics, develop their own analysis of what they & users owe to each other, AND reflect on their own needs/personality. Then, they ought to use those assessments to define their limits + publicly set expectations.
Collective supports:
A shared blocklist, or at least a warning flag
Boilerplate policies
Flagging old resources as old
Shared UX research efforts
@brainwane this is great, it made me think about the role of community support in open source projects. i’m curious about how much work it takes to moderate a healthy community forum (and whether it’s harder than just providing support directly, or easier, or just different)
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