[DISCUSSION] A ramble on how open source communities often fail.

[izder456]

Hey all!

I am an OpenBSD user. I used to use Gentoo Linux, but got increasingly frustrated by the elitism and otherwise gross behaviour of the Linux desktop communities as well as the mess that is the Linux ecosystem, and moved to OpenBSD for good. I've now been on OpenBSD for three-ish years. See: Why OpenBSD

I was inspired to write up this blog on the topic of how many open source communities fail to be friendly to the new user. OpenBSD to an extent too, but definitely not as much as Linux's various distro communities.

What do y'all think of your community? do you see this sort of behavior in the say, FreeBSD, NetBSD, or other *BSD communities?

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Originally Posted by izder456

What do y'all think of your community?

I'm a regular over at the Arch forums, which have a reputation of being elitist and abusive towards newbies (and I have been accused of such behaviour there) but in my experience the people making those complaints tend to be help vampires who refuse to conform to the standards of the community and so experience pushback. I think Xyne explains it best here.

So the Arch forums prioritise the community at the expense of newcomers, who are expected to adopt.

[bsd-keith]

I think, when Bulletim Boards went over to Forums their etiquette followed, but then we had the Social Media explosion, & those people started joining Forums, & the decline followed....

I visit a good number of Forums for FOSS, & have seen some of this, but when you get asked the same questions over & over, & people don't even search for a solution to their problem themselves, & treat forum members like Help Desk Employees, I just past them by these days....

The BSD are not so popular in the mainstream & tend to be respectful still, but I did find the FreeBSD Forums to be sticklers for their rules, so much so as to be rude, so I no longer visit there.

My present main Linux forums are Linux Questions, & Dev1 Galaxy, whilst still visiting some others that remain civil too....

[blackhole]

Two of the challenges facing users of mainstream Linux fan sites (forums) for the last few years are as follows:

1) Bots. These were always a problem, but they generally posted ads or some copy and pasted generic comment and not much else. Now they are driven by the latest "AI" fad and are causing serious disruption.

2) "Help vampires", usually originating from certain countries, who are seeking to freeload from volunteers in order to do the job they are paid to do. They usually present an XY problem which is very frustrating for those attempting to deal with it. They also often resort to "AI" (see above) and want the volunteers active on the site, to check/correct the output.

These combined are contributing to a serious lowering of standards and an exodus. So some of the elitists may have a point - i.e. they may be burnt out and frustrated with dealing with freeloaders, or some may simply be a holes.

"Linux Questions" has been badly hit by this and they have lost most of skilled users over the space of the last decade. Only the Slackware subforum really thrives there. If you want to find a solution or just a pointer in the right direction, you're more likely to find something useful at stack exchange. The site reflects this downturn - nowadays it's plastered in some of the most intrusive advertising, and is in a general state of decay. Multi page political diatribes, in what is largely an unmoderated environment, are rife, with conspiracy theorists, the far right and others finding an open platform. If you participate there, it's difficult not to get sucked into these, so I chose to cease participating.

It's my view that Linux fan sites have become a playground for "activist" types and the lunatic fringe, as the technical brain drain, brought about by the widening gulf between users and (corporate) devs, continues. Those people fill the vacuum, as those with a clue depart.

[jggimi]

I was today years old when I learned the term "Help Vampire." It made me laugh out loud.

We've had them here from time to time since DaemonForum's inception. Actually, from before DaemonForum even existed: https://daemonforums.org/showthread.php?t=596

I believe our newbie-friendly-focus helps here. We -- all of us who answer questions here -- will hold hands and guide, when we can. If forced by communication difficulties, we will even sometimes help by serving one dreadful spoonful of answer at a time.

In contrast, the OpenBSD Project mailing lists -- that's my preferred OS too -- require greater self-sufficiency, technically and socially. Rudeness is sometimes a hallmark of misc@, though most rude posts there seem to be from end-users rather than Project members.

[frcc]

A good refresher/reminder.
ty

[LeFrettchen]

DaemonForums is my OpenBSD community, and it's a very friendly community, especially with newbies.

[jmccue]

Originally Posted by izder456

Hey all!
I was inspired to write up this blog on the topic of how many open source communities fail to be friendly to the new user.

These days, I think many people get excited to get a different system running on their hardware and come off as unfriendly. A few others get a bit tired of seeing the same questions over and over and come off as not welcoming.

From the blog you linked:

The *BSDs, however, are a little more DIY-ish than "normie" Linux distros are

To me this is due to how good the *BSD Documentation and man pages are when compared to what Linux has. Some Linux documents are useless and/or just point to an info page, which is probably not installed on your system.

But Linux forums has improved quite a bit, in the 90s on USENET, Linux Users would infect and troll other OS news groups constantly.

This happened on comp.os.coherent, which I used at the time. Because of that, many there went to a BSD when Mark Williams folded due to how obnoxious some Linux users were.

[jggimi]

On a few occasions, my patience with a member here reached some sort of breaking point, and I had to completely stop interacting with them. Not only did I cease responding, but I stopped reading their ... vampiric posts. (This forum software lets us have an "ignore" list. You'll know they posted, but it won't display the contents unless requested.)

In contrast, I have a large blocklist for @openbsd.org mailing lists. That blocklist is mostly trolls -- though I might have a couple of vampires in there, too.


---


Edited to add: I went back and looked at my ignore list. Three members are on it, and that's since the forum's start in 2008. One of them was banned for antisocial behavior, the other two haven't been active in years.

[izder456]

Sorry I sorta went vacant for a few days. I'll try to respond to as many people as I can here via quoting. Apologies if I mess up my BBCODE, I'm rusty.

Originally Posted by Head_on_a_Stick

So the Arch forums prioritise the community at the expense of newcomers, who are expected to adopt.

Yeah, I noticed the same thing about OpenBSD's community. So long as you do your homework, people are nice to you.

However, with Arch in particular, I've noticed some of its long-time users belittle other users when they notice a problem on their system but lack the vocabulary to properly explain it. This often leads to the newcomer being blamed for the "Help Vampire" problem, when in reality, they just didn't have the right words.

I have found myself asking OpenBSD users, (usually over on IRC on the Libera network) fairly basic questions without the correct verbiage, and am usually pleased to know that the users are forgiving to me even if I didn't use the right words to explain myself.

IDK if this is a problem with Arch in particular, but Gentoo's userbase seems to do the same thing: misidentifying legitimate issues in communication, which shuts out users.

Originally Posted by bsd-keith

I visit a good number of Forums for FOSS, & have seen some of this, but when you get asked the same questions over & over, & people don't even search for a solution to their problem themselves, & treat forum members like Help Desk Employees, I just past them by these days....

YES! Please please please do your homework, or at the very least, show some grace when you ask questions. Forum members and IRC lurkers are not your mom. They *will not* hand-hold you. Totally agree with you here dude.

Originally Posted by blackhole

1) Bots. These were always a problem, but they generally posted ads or some copy and pasted generic comment and not much else. Now they are driven by the latest "AI" fad and are causing serious disruption.

YEP! I co-administer a Facebook group and we actually have a rule on post quality for this reason. Way too many bots and SEO sludge.

Originally Posted by blackhole

These combined are contributing to a serious lowering of standards and an exodus. So some of the elitists may have a point - i.e. they may be burnt out and frustrated with dealing with freeloaders, or some may simply be a holes.

To a certain extent, I am also elitist, at least when it comes to not being super hand-hold-y to newcomers. For example, read my dotfiles's documentation. I can understand the perspective. Interesting that you point this out.

Originally Posted by jmccue

To me this is due to how good the *BSD Documentation and man pages are when compared to what Linux has. Some Linux documents are useless and/or just point to an info page, which is probably not installed on your system.

Yeah, I find GNU's documentation to be incredibly lacking. Nothing to say here, other than that I concur with this experience.

[Head_on_a_Stick]

Originally Posted by izder456

with Arch in particular, I've noticed some of its long-time users belittle other users when they notice a problem on their system but lack the vocabulary to properly explain it. This often leads to the newcomer being blamed for the "Help Vampire" problem, when in reality, they just didn't have the right words.

Which users would that be? I've been a regular for over 10 years now and I'm the rudest person there by a long way but I would never have a problem with ignorance, and I've certainly never seen anybody else act like that. The boards do have a specific rule about respectful behaviour[1] and the staff are very rigorous in their duties.

Things have changed recently though because Valve contributed significantly to Arch and are now changing the support to Discord. There was a fake "discusssion" on the mailing lists involving the current forum staff but it basically involved them being told what was going to happen, which lead to most of them resigning. So there's not many old folks left over there and we will probably all depart when Discord arrives, leaving the trendy kids to take over.

Originally Posted by izder456

I find GNU's documentation to be incredibly lacking

The documentation for systemd is absolutely excellent, as good as the OpenBSD man pages, maybe even better.

% apropos systemd|wc -l
298
%

[frcc]

I wonder what the forums would look like today if our Etiquette was temporarily replaced by the Etiquette of the 1950's.

[blackhole]

Originally Posted by Head_on_a_Stick

Things have changed recently though because Valve contributed significantly to Arch and are now changing the support to Discord. There was a fake "discusssion" on the mailing lists involving the current forum staff but it basically involved them being told what was going to happen, which lead to most of them resigning. So there's not many old folks left over there and we will probably all depart when Discord arrives, leaving the trendy kids to take over.[/code]

Sometimes it doesn't take corporate take over / funding / influence for a move to a platform like that - but in that case it certainly looks like that's what happened. The biggest problem with Discord (apart from the format, which I'm probably too old to make sense of) is that it's a walled garden and the content is not available to all on the web via search engines. Not exactly in the spirit of free software, but perhaps to be expected from a games / digital distribution software company.

[scottro]

I think that @izdar456 is quite right, that sometimes there are those who are too quick to label someone else a help vampire. Yeah, you see the Please guide me step by step to set up a webserver, but a lot of times, people just don't know what to ask. I also thing, not only on tech forums, but everywhere, there's a lot of truth to the statement Honesty without empathy is brutality, and it's my answer a lot of nasty fols who say, I'm just being honest. Seems to me, in my old age, that most of the meaner comments I've seen just came from mean folks, not honest ones.
These forums, from the very first, have always been pretty nice, and I've found that even my stupid questions get answered nicely.
Maybe it's the sites I visit now, but things do seem less toxic in many forums, though I don't visit the Arch Linux ones so can't speak for that one. Last time i was there, I did think they were closing a lot of threads without a good explanation, but I wasn't a part of the community, so maybe they had reasons.