Martin Grasslin: Fanboys and Trolls in the ACT community
Martin began participating in KDE in 2008. In 2013, he got a job at Blue Systems and deals with it “professionally”. His notes will focus mainly on the conclusions he made while blogging about the development of KDE Plasma and KWin.
A year ago, I had strong political convictions: I was a fighter for civil rights, and attempts to restrict them, censorship, made me dissatisfied. Freedom of speech seemed the most important, because democracy in my eyes was able to cope with any radical views, even with opposing democracy itself. I supported the Pirate Party of Germany during the last election (due to the new censorship law). Moreover, I became a KDE developer; probably because the ideas of SPO attracted me.
However, my opinion has changed: today I believe that not every opinion requires respect. Moreover, I not only consider it permissible to use censorship in the comments, but also advise others to do the same. I wonder why? No, I still think that human rights are very important.
')
You can join the ranks of the developers of an open project, create a blog and write to it about your successes, achievements, ideas. And one day to understand that you are hated just because you are a good developer. When you achieve something, you are insulted, humiliated, called a dictator *, even compared to Hitler (yes, it was like that; someone even compared me with the worst mass murderer in history, just because I do free software and have your opinion). They say that you need a lot of patience to work in Open Source. Patience? True? We are improving the world, donating our free time and efforts, giving all our code to the community, and what do we get in return? Insults ?! It is simply unthinkable! Even if people do not like a product or prefer another one, they should have no reason to pour out their hatred on it. Even if it is Microsoft, Apple or Google: there is no reason to attack them.
I started my blog with notes about KDE performance improvements . Although the majority expressed gratitude, there were also attacks in my direction. Well, why, why should they attack a person who has improved performance? They usually say “haters gonna hate” (haters will hate), but does this explain anything? Should we tolerate these comments? Do we deserve hatred if we simply improve our programs and report them to those interested in using blogs? Now I just delete such comments, that's what changed in me. I learned to endure, but I do not want to be patient, it does not suit me.
After some time, I began to observe the behavior of these "haters". For example, I noticed that after every release of GNOME or Unity, hatred against KDE increases. Strange isn't it? Especially when you consider that KDE4 was already quite mature and ready during those releases of Unity and GNOME. Why attack KDE? Yes, during KDE 4.0 there were indeed reasons for hatred and disappointment, but why should they start again?
Surely, if we go back to the days of KDE 4.0 / 4.1, we will see increased hatred against GNOME. SPO users are quite reverent about the applications they use, one might say fanatically. But not only this divided the KDE and GNOME communities: the choice between KDE Plasma and GNOME Shell is hardly objective. Not to do without emotions, prejudices, which are often put at the forefront when choosing between GNOME and KDE. We call these users “fanboys,” but, in my opinion, “religious fanatics” are more appropriate.
From the point of view of such fanatics, GNOME should not be used because they remove features, they are “interface Nazis”, they don’t think about their users. On the other hand, KDE is too complicated, ugly, slow and unstable.
Each such fanatic will inevitably encounter the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance . A good example of this is the appearance of GNOME Shell and Unity at about the same time. Fanboys were convinced that GNOME was the best environment in the world, but they met with a brutal release of the third version, which at the time of release was heavily unfinished, falling and forcing you to change habits. The absolute truth in the eyes of fanboys is the statement that GNOME is better than KDE was questioned.
How to solve cognitive dissonance easier? You can convince yourself that KDE is still worse, omitting it against the background of GNOME Shell and Unity, and a blog post about KDE performance improvements is a good proof that KDE is slow, and the news about fixed bugs proves instability. This explains the increased hatred against KDE in the moments of the emergence of new versions of other environments: fanatics are simply trying to resolve their dissonance.
Of course, GNOME Shell and Unity are just examples: the same thing happens with KDE lovers. For example, very often in the bug reports you can see the phrase "The next version is much better and solves all the problems." It seems that the fact that another user is experiencing problems is inconsistent with the perception of KDE ideality, and the fanboy is trying to resolve the discrepancy by mentioning that these problems have been fixed in the next version.
Recently, this dissonance can be observed in Ubuntu fanboys. Mir was a test for those who believed in Canonical, believed that they always did the right thing. In several of my posts on this topic, I could observe how they tried to cope with their dissonance. There were even such arguments: I became the cause of all the failures of STR, just because I do not support Mir. Canonical created a very difficult situation for them: their every argument, an attempt to resolve dissonance, was quickly refuted. There were even arguments like “the development went too slowly, Canonical had to do something” (which, obviously, decided nothing, for they could well have invested their strength in the development of Wayland).
Yesterday I saw another fanboy in the comments on my blog: "Please re-read your message, make it logical and correct grammatical errors." An excellent example of changing the reality in their favor, an attempt to annul my argument because of a typo.
It seems to me that these religious fanatics are a big threat to STR. They behave too irrationally, they only harm, use emotions where they should not be used. They just prevent us from working. In general, this is not a problem of free software, it can be observed throughout IT. Apple has the same "wonderful" fan fights. However, only in open source software, fanboys can directly affect developers and their nerves. In the proprietary world, they are blocked by the marketing department, which is trained to deal with such cases.
We must find a solution to deal with them. My choice is to block them in my blog. I can tolerate trolls, they are easy to handle, but fanatics are another matter. They are here only to humiliate you in favor of maintaining their views on the world. And so I call them religious fanatics, they behave in exactly the same way! Any religion motivated by fanaticism must be eradicated, and fanaticism in STR is no exception. Yes, you can tolerate them, but such incidents simply should not be. No matter how much your patience, a comparison with Hitler will undermine him. And if, for example, the GNOME developer stops working because of the KDE fanboys, this does not mean that GNOME lost a developer, all free software has lost it. He is one of us. We are one big community.
Final note: please do not tell me that I behave like a fanatic when I criticize Mir. Criticism is very important and useful, but only for the time being it is constructive. I have never attacked the Mir developers or their products. I just showed that their solution is wrong and listed the problems that may arise in all of us. No more.
* Yes, some free software developers are called generous dictators. I do not agree. There is no such thing as a “generous dictator”. Any dictatorship is unacceptable, as well as his characteristic of “generous”
A year ago, I had strong political convictions: I was a fighter for civil rights, and attempts to restrict them, censorship, made me dissatisfied. Freedom of speech seemed the most important, because democracy in my eyes was able to cope with any radical views, even with opposing democracy itself. I supported the Pirate Party of Germany during the last election (due to the new censorship law). Moreover, I became a KDE developer; probably because the ideas of SPO attracted me.
However, my opinion has changed: today I believe that not every opinion requires respect. Moreover, I not only consider it permissible to use censorship in the comments, but also advise others to do the same. I wonder why? No, I still think that human rights are very important.
')
You can join the ranks of the developers of an open project, create a blog and write to it about your successes, achievements, ideas. And one day to understand that you are hated just because you are a good developer. When you achieve something, you are insulted, humiliated, called a dictator *, even compared to Hitler (yes, it was like that; someone even compared me with the worst mass murderer in history, just because I do free software and have your opinion). They say that you need a lot of patience to work in Open Source. Patience? True? We are improving the world, donating our free time and efforts, giving all our code to the community, and what do we get in return? Insults ?! It is simply unthinkable! Even if people do not like a product or prefer another one, they should have no reason to pour out their hatred on it. Even if it is Microsoft, Apple or Google: there is no reason to attack them.
I started my blog with notes about KDE performance improvements . Although the majority expressed gratitude, there were also attacks in my direction. Well, why, why should they attack a person who has improved performance? They usually say “haters gonna hate” (haters will hate), but does this explain anything? Should we tolerate these comments? Do we deserve hatred if we simply improve our programs and report them to those interested in using blogs? Now I just delete such comments, that's what changed in me. I learned to endure, but I do not want to be patient, it does not suit me.
After some time, I began to observe the behavior of these "haters". For example, I noticed that after every release of GNOME or Unity, hatred against KDE increases. Strange isn't it? Especially when you consider that KDE4 was already quite mature and ready during those releases of Unity and GNOME. Why attack KDE? Yes, during KDE 4.0 there were indeed reasons for hatred and disappointment, but why should they start again?
Surely, if we go back to the days of KDE 4.0 / 4.1, we will see increased hatred against GNOME. SPO users are quite reverent about the applications they use, one might say fanatically. But not only this divided the KDE and GNOME communities: the choice between KDE Plasma and GNOME Shell is hardly objective. Not to do without emotions, prejudices, which are often put at the forefront when choosing between GNOME and KDE. We call these users “fanboys,” but, in my opinion, “religious fanatics” are more appropriate.
From the point of view of such fanatics, GNOME should not be used because they remove features, they are “interface Nazis”, they don’t think about their users. On the other hand, KDE is too complicated, ugly, slow and unstable.
Each such fanatic will inevitably encounter the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance . A good example of this is the appearance of GNOME Shell and Unity at about the same time. Fanboys were convinced that GNOME was the best environment in the world, but they met with a brutal release of the third version, which at the time of release was heavily unfinished, falling and forcing you to change habits. The absolute truth in the eyes of fanboys is the statement that GNOME is better than KDE was questioned.
How to solve cognitive dissonance easier? You can convince yourself that KDE is still worse, omitting it against the background of GNOME Shell and Unity, and a blog post about KDE performance improvements is a good proof that KDE is slow, and the news about fixed bugs proves instability. This explains the increased hatred against KDE in the moments of the emergence of new versions of other environments: fanatics are simply trying to resolve their dissonance.
Of course, GNOME Shell and Unity are just examples: the same thing happens with KDE lovers. For example, very often in the bug reports you can see the phrase "The next version is much better and solves all the problems." It seems that the fact that another user is experiencing problems is inconsistent with the perception of KDE ideality, and the fanboy is trying to resolve the discrepancy by mentioning that these problems have been fixed in the next version.
Recently, this dissonance can be observed in Ubuntu fanboys. Mir was a test for those who believed in Canonical, believed that they always did the right thing. In several of my posts on this topic, I could observe how they tried to cope with their dissonance. There were even such arguments: I became the cause of all the failures of STR, just because I do not support Mir. Canonical created a very difficult situation for them: their every argument, an attempt to resolve dissonance, was quickly refuted. There were even arguments like “the development went too slowly, Canonical had to do something” (which, obviously, decided nothing, for they could well have invested their strength in the development of Wayland).
Yesterday I saw another fanboy in the comments on my blog: "Please re-read your message, make it logical and correct grammatical errors." An excellent example of changing the reality in their favor, an attempt to annul my argument because of a typo.
It seems to me that these religious fanatics are a big threat to STR. They behave too irrationally, they only harm, use emotions where they should not be used. They just prevent us from working. In general, this is not a problem of free software, it can be observed throughout IT. Apple has the same "wonderful" fan fights. However, only in open source software, fanboys can directly affect developers and their nerves. In the proprietary world, they are blocked by the marketing department, which is trained to deal with such cases.
We must find a solution to deal with them. My choice is to block them in my blog. I can tolerate trolls, they are easy to handle, but fanatics are another matter. They are here only to humiliate you in favor of maintaining their views on the world. And so I call them religious fanatics, they behave in exactly the same way! Any religion motivated by fanaticism must be eradicated, and fanaticism in STR is no exception. Yes, you can tolerate them, but such incidents simply should not be. No matter how much your patience, a comparison with Hitler will undermine him. And if, for example, the GNOME developer stops working because of the KDE fanboys, this does not mean that GNOME lost a developer, all free software has lost it. He is one of us. We are one big community.
Final note: please do not tell me that I behave like a fanatic when I criticize Mir. Criticism is very important and useful, but only for the time being it is constructive. I have never attacked the Mir developers or their products. I just showed that their solution is wrong and listed the problems that may arise in all of us. No more.
* Yes, some free software developers are called generous dictators. I do not agree. There is no such thing as a “generous dictator”. Any dictatorship is unacceptable, as well as his characteristic of “generous”
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/183600/
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