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== When the frustration kicks in == | == When the frustration kicks in == | ||
Misunderstandings may arise during a forum discussion. After all, most people here aren't native English speakers. But fighting on the forums is just a huge waste of time and energy. That time is better spent on what our developers enjoy: creating software and new features. They are willing to help ''if provided with enough information'' on the problem at hand. Otherwise they wouldn't hang out on the forum. And they are not getting paid. | Misunderstandings may arise during a forum discussion. After all, most people here aren't native English speakers. But fighting on the forums is just a huge waste of time and energy. That time is better spent on what our developers enjoy: creating software and new features. They are willing to help ''if provided with enough information'' on the problem at hand. Otherwise they wouldn't hang out on the forum. And they are not getting paid. | ||
== Voicing Opinions == | |||
{{FGCquote | |||
|Of course everyone is entitled to have an opinion about anything, and also (within limits of politeness) to express that opinion, to dislike certain things and to request changes. That's not under debate - the question is very much one of how.<br><br>If you make a public statement 'feature X is broken', that's pretty much forcing the attention of the maintainer to your post (unless he accepts the public perception that feature X is indeed broken and he doesn't care - which many of us don't do, because we do care to deliver decent work). And it's a statement of fact, not of opinion. It's not that you don't like how things are personally, it that you claim they're objectively wrong. It's the equivalent for crying 'Fire!' - the fire brigade will have to come then. | |||
|{{cite web |url=http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?p=212604#p212604 | |||
|title=<nowiki>Re: Sky to Dark at Night (was: Eye Candy & performance Issue</nowiki> | |||
|author=<nowiki>Thorsten</nowiki> | |||
|date=<nowiki>Sun Jun 15</nowiki> | |||
}} | |||
}} | |||
{{FGCquote | |||
|But, if you call the fire brigade without reason, you'll see a harsh reaction. In reality you will often have to pay a fine, and in FG, you'll be considered a time-waster and an ignorant person if you call things out as broken just because you don't understand them properly. Because just as the fire brigade doesn't enjoy being called for nothing, developers don't enjoy being forced to react to some non-existent problem and to have people imply that they'd be too stupid to get it right.<br><br>But the reality is tricky. More often than not, the problem is sitting in front of the computer screen. I've had an autopilot going mad on me, crashing the aircraft. The reason turned out that I hadn't read the manual, which said quite clearly the AP needs to be handed a well-trimmed aircraft, I wasn't aware of that and handed a badly trimmed aircraft over and got what I deserved. The AP was doing what it should have been doing. In another case, I tracked a malfunctioning AP to me having activated auto coordination, which the AP could justly not deal with. | |||
|{{cite web |url=http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?p=212604#p212604 | |||
|title=<nowiki>Re: Sky to Dark at Night (was: Eye Candy & performance Issue</nowiki> | |||
|author=<nowiki>Thorsten</nowiki> | |||
|date=<nowiki>Sun Jun 15</nowiki> | |||
}} | |||
}} | |||
{{FGCquote | |||
|Frequently a seemingly straightforward issue is not. Menu texts becoming invisible if ALS is turned on seem like a no-brainer - ALS must be at fault. Except it's not. ALS doesn't ever render menu items, and ultimately the thing was tracked back to an ATI driver issue - it occurs on ATI cards only, and also on other OpenGL applications outside FG, and ALS seems to trigger a resource scarcity somewhere the driver can't deal with gracefully.<br><br>Personally, I make damn sure I have plenty of evidence before I call something broken. I have called shader code inefficient in the past - that was after going through it for two weeks and coming up with a patch to demonstrably speed things up. That's the level of evidence at which you can feel entitled to call something broken.<br><br>And if you don't have the evidence but still feel something is not how it should be - you can ask a question. It makes a world of difference to ask 'I have a problem with feature X - I get this, that's not what I am expected, can somebody take a look please?' rather than state 'X is broken and needs being fixed asap'. Nobody will call you ignorant for asking a question - but making a statement of fact when you're not in possession of the right facts - that's the definition of ignorant. | |||
|{{cite web |url=http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?p=212604#p212604 | |||
|title=<nowiki>Re: Sky to Dark at Night (was: Eye Candy & performance Issue</nowiki> | |||
|author=<nowiki>Thorsten</nowiki> | |||
|date=<nowiki>Sun Jun 15</nowiki> | |||
}} | |||
}} | |||
{{FGCquote | |||
|Many people don't even mind getting and answering feature requests or suggestions if they come in a polite way and with background info. Several additions to AW came out of mails 'I would be interested in a feature XY because I want to do Z, and right now the problem I'm facing is YXZ, do you think we could do that?'. I don't mind spending some time for someone who's interested in something, has some background knowledge and is interested in discussing the how. But I do mind spending my spare time for rude demands after somebody cried 'Fire!' to get my attention.<br><br>So, the idea is not to tell people off for commenting about things, or for asking about things. But if you don't have the knowledge and make statements of fact as if you do, that's going to be exposed, and if that feels uncomfortable, you have no one to blame but yourself. If you lie and others expose you, they're not rude, they're justified in doing so. If you feel you need to comment about technical re...on't like something, that's not the same as something being broken - one is a statement of opinion, the other a statement of fact - so why not keep these apart? <br><br>Likewise, if you are a paying customer, you can demand a service for your money. If you're not a paying customer and want a service, it's better to ask nicely. Just like you would in real life.<br><br>It's actually sad that I have to point out these differences. It should go without saying that if one doesn't really know, one makes careful statements, and if one was wrong, one apologizes for having claimed something false. It's a mystery to me why so many people think the rules of how to interact with each other in a friendly and professional way are suspended online. | |||
|{{cite web |url=http://forum.flightgear.org/viewtopic.php?p=212604#p212604 | |||
|title=<nowiki>Re: Sky to Dark at Night (was: Eye Candy & performance Issue</nowiki> | |||
|author=<nowiki>Thorsten</nowiki> | |||
|date=<nowiki>Sun Jun 15</nowiki> | |||
}} | |||
}} | |||
== In conclusion... == | == In conclusion... == | ||