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Thank You!

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Thank You!

Postby jharris1993 » Wed Jan 11, 2017 7:51 pm

@everybody
(The list of people I'd like to personally thank is sufficiently long that I fear I'd exceed the character limit for a posting! :wink: )

This is a quote from a PM to wkitty:
Having been both a BBS Sysop and a form moderator, it gives me a much broader perspective about what to expect from both a forum (and it's moderators), as well as the various user-types that come-and-go. It also gives me a perspective on what I call "Sysop's Disease" - getting yourself confused with God - that all too many Sysops and forum moderators fall prey to. It's hard to keep a sense of humility and perspective when YOU own the "smite!" key. . . .


I also know how absolutely thankless a job this can be. Not only do you have to maintain a package that is non-trivial in its complexity, navigating all the speed-bumps that go with it, but you also have to deal with those users who haven't seen a copy of "Clue" in decades!

If nothing else, I wanted to take a moment of my time to say "Thank You!" to everyone here who has patiently, gracefully, and diplomatically put up with all the BoooSh*t that we users give you. Notwithstanding the mountain of fertilizer you have to wade through, your patient kindness helping us noobs get FG up and running is a true testimony.

Every time I visit these fora, without exception, I am struck by the wonderful way these fora are managed and moderated.

============================
Update:

A glaring omission in this message of heartfelt thanks are the developers, maintainers and package contributors who go above and beyond the call of duty to give us an excellent piece of software to complain and bitch about! ( :D :lol: )

I understand how even simple packages can be a maintenance nightmare. I shudder to think how much grief and angst you folks have to put up with - both in the development and maintenance of this beastie, and in managing user expectations for a project of this magnitude.

Not only do you create, maintain, and upgrade FG, the level of user support we receive is absolutely unparalleled.

I have spent tremendous amounts of money on commercial software packages, (tremendous being defined as in the "thousands" of dollars order of magnitude), and received pitiful support. Here I experience a problem or have a question, post the thread, and it seems that I have hardly finished clicking on "submit" before kind, patient, and thoughtful advice appears - almost as if by magic!

Please accept my apologies for being less than patient at times, and my heartfelt thanks for all the effort you folks put into this excellent piece of software.

For all of which I am humbly grateful.

Jim (JR)
Last edited by jharris1993 on Thu Jan 19, 2017 4:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.
What say ye?

Jim (JR)

Some see things as they are, and ask "Why?"
I dream things that never were, and ask "Why Not".

Robert F. Kennedy

“Impossible” is only found in the dictionary of a fool.
Old Chinese Proverb
jharris1993
 
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Re: Thank You!

Postby Johan G » Fri Jan 13, 2017 2:16 pm

I would actually redirect that to our forum members. The very, very most of you know where to post, reports issues with posts sooner rather than later, and last but not least have good manners the very most of the time. :D

Between the flame wars the moderation is mostly about moving topics to better suited subforums, removing quotes of entire preceding posts, removing spam and blocking spammers, and splitting topics.
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Re: Thank You!

Postby jharris1993 » Sat Jan 14, 2017 3:04 pm

Johan G wrote in Fri Jan 13, 2017 2:16 pm:I would actually redirect that to our forum members. The very, very most of you know where to post, reports issues with posts sooner rather than later, and last but not least have good manners the very most of the time. :D


John,

Though I absolutely agree with your sentiments, my original statement still stands.

It has been my experience that the number of fora where the users are abusive are relatively few. Those of us who wish to get real work done avoid those slime-pits like the poison that they are.

In my, (somewhat limited), experience, the big issue with most fora I lurk are the moderators. A classic example is a particular forum on the Mint fora where a number of us have been asking for a particular bug-fix for something like the last four years - I among them. We have, all of us, admitted that as much as we would like to have the coding skills to make changes to the basic Cinnamon desktop, this is out of our reach. I offered - repeatedly - to test anything they wanted to post. All of us mentioned that we knew that the dev's have a Real Life too and we didn't expect them to jump whenever we said "Boo!" What we DID ask for were periodic updates. Is it being worked on? Is there a timeline? Is there anything WE can do to help things along? The messages, though perhaps showing a bit of exasperation, were polite and respectful.

One of the moderators appeared to be annoyed at our angst at getting no feedback whatsoever, so he (?) deleted something like 90% of the thread despite the fact that most of the posts were relevant, pertinent, and offered possible suggestions as to how to fix it. The rest were "+1" votes as requested at the beginning of the thread. No PM's to us. No warning. Just the "smite" key.

I have had experiences like this in a number of Linux/Distribution/Etc. based fora, and I allow that to happen once before I leave, never to be seen again.

As a sysop and a forum moderator since the mid 80's, I have censored, (deleted), precisely ONE message in all that time. There have been messages I didn't like. There have been comments that I didn't approve of. In those very few cases a polite PM to the offending member worked wonders.

By comparison, even on the rare occasion where both my meds and my common sense were out of whack, you have all been pillars of professionalism. A polite nudge back onto the path of righteousness, and things are happy again.

I appreciated it then, and I appreciate it now.

Jim (JR)
What say ye?

Jim (JR)

Some see things as they are, and ask "Why?"
I dream things that never were, and ask "Why Not".

Robert F. Kennedy

“Impossible” is only found in the dictionary of a fool.
Old Chinese Proverb
jharris1993
 
Posts: 154
Joined: Sun Nov 18, 2012 10:20 pm
Location: Worcester, MA. / Moscow, Russia
Callsign: $%^&ing Idiot!
Version: Whatever..
OS: Win-10/ Linux MInt


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