> What should you do? Phrase it better. Post your reports with the attitude that you are just one user, using free software, from the humility of your own personal experience on your own system. Make it clear you don't expect anything from the report, you are grateful the software exists, you intend to keep using it and this is your small way of giving back. Say this in words because I can't see your face or hear your voice. Write "thank you" and mean it. Acknowledge the costs in time and money to bring it to you. Tell me what's good about it and what you use it for. That's how you create a relationship where I can see you as a person and not a demand request, and where you can see me as a maintainer and not a vending machine. Value my work so that I can value your insights into it. Politeness, courtesy and understanding didn't go out the window just because we're interacting through a computer screen.
I don't want that kind of stuff in bug reports for the same reason that I don't want to have to deal with "hello", "good morning", from coworkers in messenger applications, and I will assume that for your sake you don't want to deal with it either, unless you explicitly say so.
So if this is a requirement for writing and responding to bugs, then you should "say it in words" that that's what you want.
The baseline expectation of social niceties is the lubricant upon which our human systems run. That you don't personally find them necessary, or even perhaps find them aggravating, does not mean that they should not be by-default valued in the recognition that the person at the other end of the line is a fellow human being with feelings and needs.
It does not take much effort to be nice in the general case. Your desire for efficiency does not supersede respect for others' humanity. And, frankly--resentment at a coworker for saying "good morning"? Yikes.
There's a difference between having niceties and content in one message:
> Good morning! When I foo the bar, I expect it to baz, as per documentation at <link>, but it seems to be drizzling instead. Could you please tell me if it's me doing something wrong, or there is a bug in bar that prevents me from fooing it? Thank you!
Compare this with the typical annoying IM exchange that happens across multiple timezones (EU ↔ India seems to be the worst):
<Mar 01 2021 05:59> Them: Hi
<Mar 01 2021 10:00> Me: Hi, what's up?
<Mar 02 2021 04:03> Them: Do you have a moment?
<Mar 02 2021 10:00> Me: Yeah, what's your concern?
<Mar 03 2021 04:20> Them: I have a question
<Mar 03 2021 10:00> Me: What's the question?
<Mar 04 2021 04:54> Them: I'm trying to foo the bar and it doesn't work
Grrrrgggh! Four days! FOUR days pass and they are only starting to ask the damn question!
Okay. Sometimes it's not so bad. Sometimes it's only two days wasted.
There absolutely is a difference between inefficient and efficient communication, and you're right to highlight it. There is no gap between efficient and pleasant communication, though, and attacking pleasantry as if its sin is inefficiency is pretty messed up.
Like you say, that exchange is no less pleasant, and of course way more efficient, if it's one message with better information density. That takes some coaching, but the answer (and to be clear I don't think you're advocating for it) absolutely isn't "be a grouchy turd in the name of efficiency".
(And arguably that should then be an email, but most folks have forgotten that email exists, so, yeah.)
2. What about your message, or any of the other messages here, exempt them from requiring the sorts of obligatory pleasantries ("good morning"; politeness and courtesy that should be "[written] in words"; etc) that you're so strenuously arguing for as a "baseline expectation"?
(I'm going to pre-emptively call bullshit on any "giving a taste of one's own medicine" response to the latter question. I'm not interested in dishonest answers.)
Ooof, never seen it that bad, but that would be really annoying and you shouldn't tolerate it.
My rule is if the help I need isn't so urgent that it requires chat, then I'll send an email.
Also if I'm doing something in response to their request then I'll always say what I'm doing when I do it, so they at least know that their request is being worked on. Kinda like
Mav: Switching to guns
Goose: Ok
Mav: Firing!
Goose Ok, hit?
Mav: No - trying it again as sudo ...
Yeah, this is a really annoying habit in instant messangers, even without the long delays in response. I've just taken to not responding to messages like 'hi'. Either state what you want or I'm not going to interrupt my workflow to ask. (that said, I don't mind (and may appreciate) pleasentries included along with useful questions or information, even on bug reports, just don't add more round-trips for the sake of them).
"Good morning" in chat is not a pleasantry. It is a demand for the other person to switch to synchronous communication and attend to their conversation ahead of everything else the other person has to deal with. Respect for others' humanity implies respecting their time first of all.
I'll note that you didn't start your response here with pleasantries, and no one else has, either. By leaping at the opportunity to condescendingly explain human behavior, you've slipped into attacking a strawman. Take your passive aggressive yikes elsewhere.
Being delayed by a "good morning" from an oblivious coworker? More than just annoying. (Obligatory "pleasantries" from coworkers who otherwise take glee in making you miserable and obstruct you for sport? Much, much worse.) We're not friends--we're coworkers, at least nominally, and I probably have a stack of shit this high to deal with--that you may or may not be the cause of. How about this for being "nice": don't force me into dealing with your bullshit, against my wishes. Where's your recognition that I'm a human with feelings and needs?
You're unable of living in real life if you can't exchange pleasantries. It's kinda sad for some of us introverts out there, but the reality is that these things can do a lot for even simple things like job mobility in the subconscious sense. You may get mad at someone for interrupting your work for instance, but saying hello and goodbye and thank you does wonders for getting people to like you more, being able to tell someone to stop bothering you when you need it, and even in what people perceive as personality.
So you're doubling down on condescendingly explaining how to human. Cool.
Consider this: I have a high emotional IQ and acutely understand whatever lesson you think you're imparting here, I just don't have the kind of bullshit budget required in this context.
Here's the obvious consequence that no one ever seems to get, even with having it explained to them: if I'm going to have to start dropping things on the floor and make some people unhappy, guess who I'm going to choose to be the recipient? All the people most responsible for squandering the resources that were available.
Are you sure you're not dealing with a lot of burnout right now?
Your call, your problem, I've no stake in it either way. I don't need an answer here, although don't let me stop you if you feel the need. I'm just saying, is all, because the kind of analysis you're describing reminds me of the way I tend to get thinking when I'm too burned out to have realized yet how burned out I am.
Maybe I'm wrong to make the comparison, and in fact I kind of hope I am, because you sound like you're in a bad way.
Given that you felt the need to say that, you might want to reconsider whether your powers of self-diagnosis are as accurate as you previously thought.
> I just don't have the kind of bullshit budget required...
> ...if I'm going to have to start dropping things on the floor...
...then you've already failed. The goal is to never get to that point in the first place. Perhaps if you spent some of your "bullshit budget" sooner, it wouldn't have even occurred to you to make plans for throwing a tantrum.
Civility is incredibly cheap and has a multiplier effect on most other human resource metrics—such as productivity, enthusiasm and loyalty.
The remark "you might want to reconsider whether your powers of self-diagnosis" is not using "consider" in the same sense that I used it in the comment you're replying to. You are not really asking me to consider anything. You are mirroring the word choice, but the thrust of your comment is an argument that my comment is probably not true, and that it is almost self-invalidating.
Perversely, you are doing exactly the thing that the statement "Consider this: I have a high emotional IQ" is exhorting you not to do, which is to tunnel vision your way to one of the possible outcomes--the one where it isn't true--and then try to reflexively use it to justify the starting position that leads to that outcome. You are failing to consider the counterfactual.
If you can describe how what I said fits the informal fallacy of begging the question, I'll concede all disagreements, accept that you're correct in everything and donate AU$500 to a charity of your choice.
I know. I said it. Why am I having to repeat this?
> what part of your description was condescending
What? I'm not saying my description was condescending. It is a description of your reply. It pinpoints what was condescending about that reply. You are "leaping at the opportunity" to explain "how to human". This is condescending. It would be like if I launched into an explanation about why it's a good idea to shower and maintain good hygiene, as if you needed to be told that body odor can be unpleasant for other people and might make them not want to be around you.
I wouldn’t apologise. I strongly respect the social rules of hacker news but they are by no means perfect and tend to break down in the face of a well calibrated troll.
This particular variant is the verbose non sequitur anti-pattern. It’s effective because it generally can’t be identified at a glance. It requires a lot of contextualised reading. This means it gets few down votes, the canonical sign of disapproval here.
> I'll note that you didn't start your response here with pleasantries, and no one else has, either.
There are obvious differences between expressing an opinion and asking others to do something for you. Understanding that distinction makes this apparent contradiction entirely explicable.
This is the second instance of an attempt on your part to use circular reasoning so that it might be impossible to argue with you. It's clear now that you're just here for the conflict, and not (sound) resolutions. This is a dead end.
If you can describe anything about my argument which soundly qualifies as circular, I'll concede all disagreements with you, accept that you're correct in everything you have said and I'll even donate AU$500 to a charity of your choice.
> It's clear now that you're just here for the conflict
Says the person who thinks that basic, pro forma civility requires a "bullshit budget."
I disagree. Bug trackers should be respectful, and users should know that they are just one user and be humble without demanding that things are fixed immediately or otherwise showing anger/entitlement.
That doesn't mean they should write prose in their reports. Bug reports should be precise and should make it obvious what's happening to allow them to be quickly triaged and understood. They should ideally be a bulleted list with configuration, what was done, what happened, and what the user expected to happen. Logs/screenshots/etc. can be attached as necessary. It is incredibly uncommon for anything else to be necessary - and I say this from more than a decade of experience in enterprise and end user-facing software that gets thousands of feedback/bug reports per day.
As part of a triage team, I'm going through bug after bug after bug. I don't want to read paragraphs. I don't want to read your life story. I don't even really want to read your "thank you". I want to read exactly what is necessary to assign the bug to an owner and to understand its priority - no more, no less.
"All these 'thank you's and 'please's are annoyingly adding to the verbosity of the bug reports!" said no small-scale open source software maintainer, ever.
I would say that. I don't want to hear "thank you" -- I just want a clear bug report. "Thank you" often comes across as disgenuine, a plea to try to raise the priority of the bug.
I don't really know if it effects me in a major way, but if it even effects me at all, it probably would make me less likely to want to fix a bug.
Wow. I always say thank you and have never meant what you think, and it has never even crossed my mind that it could be read that way. I doubt it means what you think very often.
In a team I worked in many years ago, there was a general consensus that a manager saying "thanks" didn't come across well. It implied that the dev was doing a favour for that person and wanted to do so. Instead, they preferred something along the lines of "good work" or "great job" or similar. This indicated that the work was of value.
This was in person and in a single company, so is a bit different from issues raised by a stranger over the internet in a bug tracker.
Personally, if I don't know the person I say/write "thanks" because I mean it, especially if it's an open source project.
Thank you's are literally the only form of payment small scale open source developers tend to get. If no one cares about your project or likes it or shows appreciation then why bother with it or at least why bother responding to issues?
For some reason I always think of an episode from The Wire. Rawls is dressing down McNulty for his latest infraction and orders him to have a report to the deputy tomorrow morning, and the points should have "little dots next to them. The deputy likes dots."
Since then I always separate and mark specific items in a report, usually with bullet points. It turns out pretty often, the deputy does, in fact, like dots. But it's also important to avoid duplication.
I tend to fill my report with figures having self-contained captions. That is the only thing I expect a busy reader to read. The rest of the text is a note to self.
It won't do what I want when I click it,
So now I will open a ticket.
It should do the right thing
And not be a pain,
Would you please help me out now and fix it?
iambic pentameter or haiku? my automated bug report diagnostic tools only read prose written by the Bard, so if you choose the wrong meter, your bug gets tossed to the "won't fix" category
This should be part of bug reporting training.