Banned from Fedora Forums

Warren Togami wtogami at redhat.com
Tue Sep 9 18:19:42 UTC 2008


Richard Hughes wrote:
> I've just been banned from the Fedora Forums [1]. 
> 
> I've been asking users with PackageKit bugs to report them upstream on
> the mailing list or in bugzilla, explaining what common error messages
> mean, and how to fix other problems.
> This, it turns out isn't what the forums are for. I guess it’s just for
> uniformed users telling less informed users how to "fix" things. My
> mistake.
> 
> I won't be even reading the forums anymore, and consider the couple of
> hours I spent on the forums answering questions and educating users
> about PackageKit wasted.
> These are all the posts I’ve made on the forum if you want to check any
> of my messages:
> http://forums.fedoraforum.org/search.php?searchid=7137995
> 
> A few of them are pretty blunt, but the personal critique of my skills
> as a programmer [2] and PackageKit is pretty blunt too (especially by a
> "Community Manager").
> 
> Advice to developers: Don't bother.
> 
> Richard
> 
> [1] http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?p=1078445#post1078439
> [2] http://forums.fedoraforum.org/showthread.php?t=192791
> 
> 

Oh dear.  OK, I don't know the full story here, but it appears that both 
sides are accusing each other of being disrespectful.  They seem to 
dislike PackageKit because it has been very broken for a long time 
(which I agree with), however that isn't reason to ban a developer for 
asking for debugging information with the goal of fixing it.

This is especially problematic when Fedora Forum is our #1 preferred 
place to direct end-users to for end-user support.  fedora-list is a 
dramatic pile of fail for this purpose.  We also want to promote greater 
participation of fedora developers on Fedora Forum in order to better 
understand what are the common failures and to encourage users to follow 
the proper processes to isolate the causes and test solutions.

> I've been asking users with PackageKit bugs to report them upstream on
> the mailing list or in bugzilla, explaining what common error messages
> mean, and how to fix other problems.
> This, it turns out isn't what the forums are for. I guess it’s just for
> uniformed users telling less informed users how to "fix" things. My
> mistake.

If this really is the case, then Fedora Forum is doing itself a 
disservice.  But I doubt this is truly the case because it would be 
completely unreasonable.  There seems to be upset people and hyperbole 
being thrown about.  Let's have some well thought out discussion instead.

Warren Togami
wtogami at redhat.com

If this really is the




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