Open Buddy list via single clicking the tray icon?

[Etan Reisner]

On Tue, Oct 23, 2007 at 05:42:38PM -0500, Andrew Roeder wrote:
> On 10/23/07, Ka-Hing Cheung <khc at hxbc.us> wrote:
> > On Tue, 2007-10-23 at 15:38 -0500, Andrew Roeder wrote:
> > There's a wiki on developer.pidgin.im, there's also a forum on SF. Some
> > of us don't like forums because most forums' interfaces aren't
> > convenient to use. I personally don't care.
>
> Personally I think the SF forums have fallen completely out of being a
> knowledgeable source of information for any project, not just pidgin.

<snip>

I still receive sf forum emails, and have tried to make it a point to
respond to questions there for which I have answers and which are asked in
ways I think deserve answering. I have also had to correct many *many*
incorrect answers over time as other users attempt to help people. I think
I am likely the only developer who even pays the forums the slightest bit
of attention anymore and if I were to magically stop getting the emails
(no I'm not asking someone to unsubscribe me) I wouldn't ever notice (or
care).

The problem with forums is that users very often give really bad advice.
They have a problem, they manage to fix it somehow and think they've found
The Answer and then proceed to give that out to everyone else with any
even remotely related problem. This problem isn't relegated to forums
though, it happens in the irc channel all the time as well, users have an
*amazing* ability to ignore the two or three people giving them correct
advice and to home in on the one person giving them the incorrect advice.

A very common (non-pidgin) example of this sort of thing is the great
number of people who think that regardless of what terminal emulator you
are using all console/terminal problems should be solved by manually
setting TERM=xterm in their shell startup scripts. This 'solution' is
responsible for countless issues I've seen crop up in various places but
the people who find that it 'fixes' whatever problem they are having think
they have found the magic bullet.

The problem with moving user support away from the developers is that it
becomes increasingly hard to prevent people from giving and receiving
really bad advice.

The issues with support being handled in the irc channel and on this
mailing list really are almost entirely users having unreasonable
expectations and/or responding in ways that are out of line for the
answers they are given. Are we (the developers) always right in our
assumptions about what the user is implying? Certainly not, and assuming
you believe the original posters comments he didn't intend to imply
anything negative with his questions. Whether you believe him or not, he
certiainly did not respond to any of the developers comments in a way at
all likely to further anyone's interest in getting this solved in an
amicable fashion. A simple "I'm not sure why you got all angry with me
after my first email, I certainly didn't intend to be insulting or
condescending" would have defused this *entire* issue at the start, would
have gotten the real answer much faster, and would have cut the size of
this thread in *half*.

One last point and then I'll be done, the users involved in these
discussions often think we are being unreasonable in our responses because
their interaction with threads like this is limited. They don't see the
dozens of other threads that functioned in exactly the same way with the
exact same sort of questions, accusations, insults, etc. from both sides
and the general harm to any community that they cause. I *DO NOT* want to
start another discussion about this but the *great* ill feeling generated
on both sides of the protocol icon debate was *solely* the cause of a
small handful of angry, belligerent users making wild assertion, wilder
accusations, and blanket demands. Had the conversation started with the
author of the final patch being reasonable and making his change it likely
would have ended right then and there with no hurt feelings on any side.
(We likely would have helped him make it a plugin, but that's neither here
nor there.)

Whew, if you've read all that I commend you, and I would dearly love not
to have to have this sort of conversation again, though for all of you
users watching, keep this in mind the next time you see something like
this start or you hear someone claiming things that might not be so
helpful.

	-Etan