Etomite Moderation

http://www.etomite.org/forums/index.php?showtopic=6432

A user criticizes the apparent utter lack of quality support and Dean goes crazy!

lol

Does he lock every other thread? Serious.

"6 User(s) are reading this topic (3 Guests and 0 Anonymous Users)
3 Members: opengeek, Mark Kaplan, walnut"

Hmmn.

Oh, and that link, without spaces: http://www.webdevbiz.com/etomite.cfm

I’ve looked back, and she does have a good case. I mean, she wasn’t a complete Help Vampire or anything, she was just banging her head against BUGS and oversights - eg1: someone search/replaced ^M but ended up killing some useful Ms and the "patch" is hidden at the bottom of a thread somewhere, eg2: there’s a Browse button in their TinyMCE that doesn’t do anything. Ralph fixed that one, begrudgingly:

"Yet another chunk of my day spent on non-income generating work..."

Everything else seemed to stem from a lack of documentation.

That said, I’m not particularly happy with anyone blaming a financial loss on the inadequacies of open source software; whilst she’s free to profit from her use of free software, she is at fault because she chose the wrong app in the first place and gambled on some software that she wasn’t already confident with.

Dean and Ralph are honestly way overworked. It’s just not possible to support a community of any size with a few folks, and so Dean probably got a bit snippy. The fact that that’s their choice is another issue entirely.

I agree with Paul’s last post after doing my reading.

@Ryan: on this last bit, if they are overworked might also be because they deter a lot of people which could have helped
This kind of moderating takes a toll, and a big one.

It’s not recent. As I said when I came here, when I found Eto 2 years ago I dropped it altogether because of the forum’s mood.
I guess I am not the only one. I don’t want my post closed, deleted nor participate in such a community. It does not invite contributing...

Imagine the MODx forums if the dev team was the only one helping out... woosh, you’d be all overworked too !

Being overworked and fussy about it isn’t the way to go about it. We all get to a point where we feel overwhelmed and, at times, we feel like lashing out at the people who ask dumb questions. Let me rephrase that...people who ask questions that appear dumb to us at the time. The reality is that there is no such thing as a dumb question...just dumb answers! Anyways...the point is this: Under no circumstances is it good to respond in such manner. If you’re overworked, fussy, and in a bad mood just simply say, "I’m sorry but I’m very busy right now. I’ll try and respond to your question later if I have the time." Saying nothing or saying something that might be implied wrong is not the way to go about it. Dean should know this and should do something about it.

One thing I noticed about this post...the name "Patty Ayers". In the past, she’s been an active contributor to the Macromedia Dreamweaver community. I don’t think she’s a slouch to the web development world. For someone like her to say that Etomite is slipping due to a lack of support on the forums...that’s saying something!

Jeff

I agree with it all, and is why I closed with:

The fact that that’s their choice is another issue entirely.

;)