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List:       kde-devel
Subject:    Re: feedback; bug reports
From:       "David Jarvie" <djarvie () kde ! org>
Date:       2007-11-14 9:46:13
Message-ID: 1275.S0VKQUNDQUo=.1195033573.squirrel () www ! sensical ! net
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On Wednesday 14 November 2007 8:58, Anne-Marie Mahfouf wrote:
> On Wednesday 14 November 2007 08:38:43 James Richard Tyrer wrote:
>>
>> I am starting to feel as though I need to apologize for going to
>> engineering school and studying EE & CS.  I figure that my instructors
>> and the text books used were correct and I can pass this knowledge along
>> unless people think that what is taught in software engineering courses
>> in college had no validity and that they must learn it themselves by
>> trial and error.  There is a large body of knowledge on the subject and
>> it seems foolish to ignore it. I would hope that KDE developers have
>> read several books on programing and would already know that what I said
>> is true.

I'm not complaining about _what_ you say, just the _way_ you say it. I
haven't been following the subject matter of this thread - what prompted
me to post a reply was simply the tone of your statement which I felt was
very harsh on people who have been contributing as best they can. In fact,
to be blunt myself, as a bystander I found your comment offensive.

In many cases, contributors don't start off with a blank sheet - the
software grows from the existing base. Yes, in the ideal world some things
would be done differently, but people don't have unlimited time and
resources to do it the way you (or possibly they) would like.

> We all agree on what you say here. What we don't like are lengthy mails
> telling us to do this and that, often with sentences we don't even
> understand.
> When you say a GUI has poor design, we'd like a patch with a good design.

Helpful emails with suggestions on how to fix things, and patches, would
be more likely to produce the results you want. Being too critical in tone
will tend to put people's backs up, and is likely to produce less result.

-- 
David Jarvie.
KAlarm author & maintainer.
http://www.astrojar.org.uk/kalarm

 
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