Sometimes, people say to me ‘Hey, Bleets. Why do you get so upset so easily?’ Now, I know I shouldn’t… but here comes my pathetic excuse.
Imagine volunteering in a call centre for a charity of your choice. This is how user support is in Free Software. Add several hundred, or millions, of users (depending which product I’m talking about). And shake… steadily… for over a decade. This is why my fuse tends to be fairly short. Or at least this is the spin I put on most of my geek rage.
I found this transcript of an old help chat from a few years ago. Tidied it up and here it is for your consumption.
10:52 <us3r> What is the difference between the (software title 1) and (software title 2) 10:53 <co-author> One is a single (product), the other is a large collection of (different products). 10:53 <us3r> that makes it kind of bad to list them together 10:54 <us3r> in the download list 10:54 <us3r> yet separate from everything else 10:54 <co-author> What download list? 10:55 <us3r> http://a.url.to/downloads 10:55 <us3r> is (software title 1) included with (software title 2)? if not, what does it do? 10:55 <co-author> Look at the (publishing house's) wiki. 10:56 <us3r> located...? 10:56 <co-author> You're on it! 10:56 <us3r> no. 10:57 <us3r> no, i'm on the downloads page. 10:57 <co-author> Which is part of a wiki. 10:57 <us3r> :) 10:57 <us3r> i dont see 'wiki' anywhere in the url 10:57 <us3r> :) 10:58 <us3r> honestly
edit: put the ‘usernames’ back. WP ate them somewhere…
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