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General fluff => General ENIGMA => Topic started by: cheeseboy on May 01, 2019, 08:04:22 am

Title: Leaving the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 01, 2019, 08:04:22 am
Josh and Robert have now decided being nice takes priority over progressing the project. Despite the fact noone does more to help new users set up enigma than me, they've taken it upon themselves to ban me from the main discords channel. Robert's now approaching 1 year on finishing something that should've taken a few days. Josh has pushed an update to JDI just in time for the 10 year anniversary. And TKG has rewritten the same dialog system for 20th time. Meanwhile, I've made huge efforts to bootstrap the IDE, write a new file format, implement MSVC, Android and HTML5 support as well as starting the CI to ensure less breaks. However. none of that is appreciated. I can't get even a little help. Even when I practically beg for it. Instead I'm banned for being an "annoying asshole."

I've removed my account from discord and removed myself from the organization on Github. TKG, and all the other people incapable of taking a joke can now rejoice in your "safe space."

I'm sorry I ever cared.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: hpg678 on May 01, 2019, 08:47:47 am
well, if this indeed is true this time, i for one am sorry for you to be gone. Your contributions have indeed been of tremendous help, no one will/should deny that fact but unfortunately, your conduct and behavior did clash with others and so in a democracy, the majority rules.


i for one will miss you as I have missed TKG and others who have left. I like diversity, of course to a point and depending on circumstance.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on May 01, 2019, 09:26:30 am
The question constantly begged was, what are we losing out on when you insist on harassing everyone who enters the channel? Some people put up with you, and some people don't. We've lost a lot of good people in the drama you created.

Your contributions are recognized and appreciated, and are the reason that I ignored request after request to ban you. But enough is enough. You're the reason I frequently take hiatuses, and most of the reason Robert is never on the main Discord. The last time you chased me off in one of your fits, forthevin and canthelp left. Now there's another. And at the point where one of the most talented people to show up and contribute to the project leaves two weeks later because he can't tolerate you, it's time to take action.

I'm not thrilled about getting rid of you, because unlike most, you were capable of being a leader. But there are ways of motivating people to do things to further the project—leading them—that don't involve harassing them. Until you can employ those tactics, I don't want you bothering people in the main channel anymore.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 01, 2019, 09:49:01 am
You're misremembering several things. a) I've never even talked to forethevin he was hardly ever on IRC. b) I got along with canthelp and he was annoyed by you not me. c) I'm not not responsible for all your problems.

Far more people have left the project due to your commit rate than in response to anything I've done.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 01, 2019, 11:02:58 am
Nope it's announcement. I've left the discord so now its safe for you to run in circles getting nothing important done without any criticism
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 01, 2019, 11:24:18 am
In all honesty, you are right about this. I have done nothing more than write and re-write the dialogs. I haven't done much else. You have done an incredidible amount to help this project and its community. If i knew i would be by an means a single reason for them to make this decision i wouldnt have left discord and I myself would have tried much harder to be nicer to you. I was never happy with the idea of you leaving. I have said stuff on the contrary in moments of rage but quite honestly i never would've looked forward to a topic like this and i did try to reconcile by distancing myself not just for my sake but also yours. I didn't know that would contribute to such a whiplash decision on Josh and Robert's part, and like i have told both you and them on the contrary to my angry behaviors i do care about you and do not hate you and have no reason to think anything negative of you. You're a classic prankster, and you are right i didnt and might still not know how to take a joke. I'm sorry that created such a huge problem for everyone here, but i highly doubt anyone got at it with you as badly as i did. I said more awful things to you probably more so than anyone on this earth ever has, I'm ashamed to admit.


I feel guilty about this, and I'm well aware i deserve to feel guilty. I'm sorry my conscience didn't kick in near enough to keep things afloat.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: HitCoder on May 01, 2019, 01:18:38 pm
so uh.. like..

"I'm not not responsible for all your problems."

Fundies, we're not responsible for your problems either.
and it's not a case of being nice or being a safe space. There's a difference between being critical to a reasonable point and helping progress, and being toxic and making people feel annoyed and avoid the server.

For a while I was avoiding the discord because you'd constantly @ me, and i know several others were in the same situation.

Also, bigging yourself up and saying about how you got so much done, and that everyone is "taking so long" is a bit of a dick move. I have reason to believe other peoples' work is to a higher standard than yours (though it's not much in terms of evidence so I won't say i'm fully right because in all fairness it is true that you've done a lot for the project)

Alas, just because you get a lot of work done, doesn't mean it's not beneficial to sort of corner you off in the server -- also you're not banned, you were just restricted to your own channel so people could actually DISCUSS engima without you getting on their case.

I get that you're most of the time trying to poke fun, but there's a difference between poking fun and laughing at people getting annoyed, and poking fun and having everyone laugh with you.

tl;dr: grow up fundies lol

(oh also "I'm sorry I ever cared." is very passive aggressive, guilt-trippy, and uncalled for. don't social engineer like this just for the sake of it)
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 01, 2019, 01:36:15 pm
Nobody has done anything to fundies

I have, and to the point not only was i the world's biggest jerk/idiot to say the things i did i even created quite a show for everyone. As for everyone else, it's hard to say, I wasn't there recently. Some things i did were so awful im too embarrassed to repeat it. but we all know here what I did anyway.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 01, 2019, 01:44:40 pm
considering I'm one of only 3 people he brought up and complained about in the OP says something. But you're right, whether he brought me up for that reason is another matter. I'll just leave this topic alone now.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 01, 2019, 04:06:54 pm
This is my second most active year on GitHub with quality control way up since my most active year (2014/1500 commits). I have reached excessive levels of efficiency here and I don't have to take this garbage.

Yes, you've shuffled the same code around a lot congrats.

For a while I was avoiding the discord because you'd constantly @ me, and i know several others were in the same situation.

I only pinged people a) who I wanted to talk to. b) I've been waiting literal years on for something

Also, bigging yourself up and saying about how you got so much done, and that everyone is "taking so long" is a bit of a dick move. I have reason to believe other peoples' work is to a higher standard than yours (though it's not much in terms of evidence so I won't say i'm fully right because in all fairness it is true that you've done a lot for the project)

99% of Robert's work is redoing code he already wrote poorly and 100% of it can be can said for Josh. It's nice when they clean things up but there is no reason for it to take literal years. Anything that's been added to ENIGMA in past few years, It's likely I am either directly responsible or played a big part in it. It's not just my ego speaking that's a fact.


Alas, just because you get a lot of work done, doesn't mean it's not beneficial to sort of corner you off in the server -- also you're not banned, you were just restricted to your own channel so people could actually DISCUSS engima without you getting on their case.

That's like saying people in jail aren't banned from society because they can still call their mom. I helped a user with setup problems in #general just a few days ago and I've helped people with setup and gml/edl questions more times than I can count. If anyone asks a question I'm the first to help there but in the downtime I enjoy talking about other things. I will shit on useless changes like redesigning the event selector or the same bullshit being refactored for the 10th time. I would love to praise Josh or Robert for contributing something new in a timely matter but that'd be akin to finding big foot or a unicorn.

Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 01, 2019, 06:54:38 pm
Quote
99% of Robert's work is redoing code he already wrote poorly and 100% of it can be can said for Josh
That is 90% of what software engineers DO or Josh wouldn't tell me about other people's code he's always refactoring at work. Nothing works right when anybody first starts it, it takes time, that's what incremental software engineering is. Your forum title, "fucking moron", is RIGHTLY owed to you.

Nothing you write works properly first time but that's just the case for you. It's not that hard to make a plan and do it right the first time, only a "fucking moron" would spend 7 years rewriting the same thing 20x.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: EHeroEdgeman on May 01, 2019, 09:04:10 pm
Free fundies Enigma without Fundies is like a child without it's mother A child but a child without its mother
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Darkstar2 on May 01, 2019, 09:09:00 pm
Josh and Robert have now decided being nice takes priority over progressing the project. Despite the fact noone does more to help new users set up enigma than me, they've taken it upon themselves to ban me from the main discords channel. Robert's now approaching 1 year on finishing something that should've taken a few days. Josh has pushed an update to JDI just in time for the 10 year anniversary. And TKG has rewritten the same dialog system for 20th time. Meanwhile, I've made huge efforts to bootstrap the IDE, write a new file format, implement MSVC, Android and HTML5 support as well as starting the CI to ensure less breaks. However. none of that is appreciated. I can't get even a little help. Even when I practically beg for it. Instead I'm banned for being an "annoying asshole."

I've removed my account from discord and removed myself from the organization on Github. TKG, and all the other people incapable of taking a joke can now rejoice in your "safe space."

I'm sorry I ever cared.

I can relate and I know the feeling of dealing with people who misinterpret everything and anything and cannot take a joke or comments that are classified as tongue in cheek - it's unfortunate that companies do not look at your overall worth - I've been terminated from a technology company after 5 years in service, despite having been extremely competent in my area and appreciated by the company, it only takes 1 misinterpreted comment to destroy your entire successful career no questions asked.  It's a shame to see this project ruined and destroyed over the "not getting along" between developers, this has always been a problem as far as I can remember and is probably one of the main reasons why the project has progressed slowly.   What's the use of dedicating years of effort to something to in the end get destroyed right ? I can relate,  I don't know what drama happened on Discord or what I missed or what pushed them to ban you but whether it is a open project or a company, people should work hard at keeping their talent, whilst containing any annoyance or disagreement (warning, discussion.....) some people / companies rather take the lazy, easy approach and get rid of people even though they were active - I thought this community was tolerant, you must have done something really bad ? what happened ?   Some people take shit seriously, it depends from WHO it comes from, you've said some shit to me too, I didn't make a fuss about it, because I knew the context - some people are mean by nature and mean most of what they say, I guess ENIGMA developers have never quite gotten along along those years, the sexual tension amongst you lot is the highest I have seen in any given projects - I guess it took its toll on the project - it's hard enough to find skilled coders to help with the project - some want to help but do not have the skills to do so, so is it wise to just get rid of the few people left, I dunno about that.

So lesson well learned right ?  Kiss as much arse as you can - never give you true point of view - and never do more than is asked of you, because in the end someone / some people will find any little thing ot destroy all your work over a few words.

Maybe I am saying all of the above because I am a big supporter of free speech and I strongly object to censorship - unless you did something unlawful, illegal, or that can get people in trouble, I don't see any benefit of censorship on a project that is basically having on a very thin rope, I will never support censorship.  There is a difference between being a troll and annoying and doing nothing and being annoying in the eyes of some people and contributing to the project.

Unless I missed some major development, I do not see why they banned you unless you hurt someone's feeling and made their butt hurt.

//edit: It appears after doing some reading that they banned you for conduct overseeing everything else (contributions, etc) - I guess in the end it all comes down to people's threshold of tolerance, while the "regulars" will be more lenient and tolerate all the jokes and trolling, some people (less regulars) might be turned away or such conduct might be frowned upon, it's unfortunate I guess but no matter how good you are or how much you contributed to something, in the end any individual or company will overlook that and take action if they deem things have gotten past a threshold.

Take my advice, it will be the best advice I can give someone - in many cases it is better to be a silent contributor.  My biggest fucking mistake in the company I worked for was being highly involved in discussion, sometimes hot topics related to tech,I've never been insulting or personal it was all a matter of ego and incompetence in trying to cover up  some shit, it was not about bad conduct but opinion, so yeah a different case - I guess they determined that your conduct pushed people away, from what I read they did not ban you from the project or even discord, just from the main channel.

 whilst a lot of my colleagues who were much less skilled than me, kept silent, they still have their fucking job, whilst on the other hand whilst I had the expertise and domain knowledge, despite 5 years of intensive involvement and good work, have lost my job.  Sometimes silence is gold - Discord is optional and is not necessary to contribute, and it's best to keep trolling or jokes or whatever outside of the general areas for those more sensitive to that - It is clear regardless of whether you were banned or not, many devs do not see eye to eye, and not only on ENIGMA, but everywhere, in the place I worked for, you had a group of devs who wanted change whilst another group wanted status quo or adhered to bureaucracy and shit - tough luck if a given project had all devs that were 100% on the sa me bloody fucking wave length life would be so much better indeed.

On the flip side of the coin people who really care about a project should overlook anything they find annoying and learn to ignore it and focus on what matters - those who are overly sensitive to criticism, trolls, or what not should stay away from the heat or just learn to channel out what they do not like, some people can't be bothered to channel out and will leave I guess.


Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 02, 2019, 08:26:11 am
I'm going to step back in here long enough to say that the one time I'm being nice to the one person everyone else is treating rather poorly of course I'm being ignored by him. I'm practically taking his side in that i think he should still be on the main discord. Clearly there's a better way to resolve this than booting our only good programmer out. Yeah Robert and Josh are good too but fundies is making a lot of good points everyone is ignoring just because they way he is saying it isn't so kind.

Edit: skimming over darkstar2's post it makes me happy to know I'm not the only one being civil here. I didn't see the second page when writing this. Not to mention i almost forgot about hpg.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 02, 2019, 08:33:31 am
Free fundies Enigma without Fundies is like a child without it's mother A child but a child without its mother

Either fundies made a second account just to post this or we have a GMC'er spying on us. No thanks to this being on the home page.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Darkstar2 on May 02, 2019, 11:32:51 am
Free fundies Enigma without Fundies is like a child without it's mother A child but a child without its mother

Either fundies made a second account just to post this or we have a GMC'er spying on us. No thanks to this being on the home page.

Old news - or did you just realise this now ? :P  At least the spies should make good use of this site, and report back so they can UNDO their fucking mistakes, so it could just be one or more spies to monitor if anything illegal is being said or done, so they can collect the $$$....This is how things work.  :) I seem to recall years ago some officials there mocking and bashing the project here, it's vague, but I recall them stating that they do things right and that people here don't know what they are talking about or doing anyways - They should look in the fucking mirror.


Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Darkstar2 on May 02, 2019, 12:42:12 pm
Darkstar, this is what everybody keeps missing. I actually mostly agree with you (disagree with a few things I'll point out below), but this is not about who's right or who's wrong. It's about fundies driving people effing crazy.

Right so I guess in this world, you cannot be both competent and driving people crazy at the same time, unless you are a president :P  :D or other politician(s) :P

I understand the point which is what makes things difficult because sometimes a person can be extremely talented and skills but somehow they sink themselves into a hole - People tend to forget easily and will look mostly at the negative traits of a person no matter how much you contributed, I know first hand :D  It does not matter if you work 5 years, 20 years 40 years for a company, the moment there is lack of chemistry and your views do not agree with someone important enough you are done - some companies care more of their image than their profits, I'm not saying this is the case here, this is just some fucked up random example :D  Point being, a flamer, troll etc who has no use would get kicked out, what about one that is a good asset (and not just an ASS :P ) is BANNING the only solution ? Or would exploring other methods first be better then banning for last if all else fails .........

Quote
If people want to read the kind of disparaging, racy, vulgar garbage he writes, they should go somewhere else and not be on a game engine project.

Nope people do not want to read ONLY that, people who know him can tolerate it to some extent, newer people or some with lower threshold might not, again, is removing your big asset the ONLY solution that is the question, and not whether it is ok to subject people to such conduct.  Some people know that shit is said online, and most of the time it is not meant, and that some people only do that to draw attention and most importantly REACTION, this is not to say that there are no genuinely mean and disgusting people who mean everything they write, but that's another story.  Sexual tension is quite high around these parts, and on Discord too, perhaps more wanking - nothing like a good wank before a long coding session right ?  :D  Good points are made on either side, question is not who is right or wrong, question is were there any other solutions ?

As far as I remember there was some racy, vulgar and disparaging shit written in ENIGMA's own code, which gets distributed to everyone, which is worse, in your opinion, ok when I joined the project I channeled it out, but some people would normally just be offended and say fuck off, yet nobody seemed to mine back in the days that there were some vulgar comments and references inside the C++ code.

Quote
I also hate this entire topic because none of it is genuine. It's just an attempt for him to make everybody feel sorry for him and stir dissent. That doesn't happen after you've gone and insulted or pissed off literally everybody who tried to help you.

Well I guess that's how some people show their gratitude and appreciation, maybe they do not mean to "insult" - I see people around talking shit to one another whilst at work, then after work next thing you know they are at the same orgy session.


Quote from: Darkstar2
What's the use of dedicating years of effort to something to in the end get destroyed right ?
[quoite=Goombert]
This is by no means a break from the norm, most time is spent on software maintenance not design or development. According to a publication from Cambridge University's Business School, programmers spend 50.1% of their time debugging software (page 5 of the pdf).
[/quote]

I agree, my point was not about enigma it was about in general, LIFE, what's the fucking use anyways, some people work their tits off to succeed and make something of their life, only to get strings of bad luck and destruction of everything they worked for, I meant that, not code, yes you are right, a lot of time is spent on maintenance, most developers don't get shit right the first time, especially not when you are dealing with hundreds of thousands of line of code, even the expert coder, you can have the best attention to detail, there WILL be fuck-ups you discover as bugs, you fix those motherfuckers of bugs, only to create new regressions, you fix those it works for a while, you then add shit because you are on continuous development, and yet you will break something, that's where good QA comes in handy and having regression tests, as far as sloppy coding and being really bad, that also exists - but one of the bad aspects of an open sourced project is just that, being open, a develop has no contractual obligation or incentive to stay, so basically a developer can start shit, then just fuck off and leave something they did not finish, which is broken and left broken, and when you have a lot of that in your code from different devs and at the time there was not proper QA and regression testing, who picks up the shite in the end and all the pieces ? Existing devs, including you who is doing maintenance work and clean-up work, so it's no surprising that most of the time is spent on maintenance - a lot of companies have absolutely horrible QA.

I had a strong base in coding, logic, etc, just not much in C++, yet ENIGMA has caused me to want to learn more and get interested in that aspect.  I was not too fond of the new system of installing ENIGMA, but now I think it is the best method, which I even prefer to pre-made scripts and old method, yes it takes a lot of space, but storage is cheap (outside SSD :D) and I think people should take the time to learn this process and get their hands a little dirty, there are many advantages to the current system of installing ENIGMA- just a git pull away from updating instead of having to re-install the whole shit, there is big value to that.


Quote
I'm convinced Josh did this. We've all told fundies many times what he's doing bothers us, and he seems to be the obstinate type that you just can't give any constructive criticism to. We haven't even banned him, he can still join and post to that channel. Rather than take people's feedback and change his behavior, he'd rather scream about it and stomp his feet!

You haven't banned him ? I thought he was banned from the specific discord channel no ? and was given his own channel?
I guess in a way if this is true the doors were still open, he still had/has the option to contribute silently, it's hard to stay silent when there is so much sexual tension though :P

Quote
This is actually about a skilled and talented coder, who's also respected among GameMaker users, sending pull requests to ENIGMA only for fundies to annoy that person off. Josh made it VERY CLEAR in his post that fundies is costing more than he's worth because he's scaring off more people than he has talent to make up for.

So I guess everything solution was exhausted right ?  By any chance, are the people he is allegedly turning away talent to be contributors or just users ?  When I joined ENIGMA as a new user, it was CHAOS on the forum, flaming, insulting, vulgar, derogative, it was an all out flame war on the forum, I and others stuck around I guess, sometimes it's best to stay away from specific topics and not join the conversation, learned the hard lesson - sometimes when you join specific topics the flames get higher and higiher.

Silence is gold in some cases, though not always, but some :D

I guess decisions like these can be a community decision, if he was found to annoy a majority and a majority want him gone, then there is nothing much else to be done and it is unfortunate.   Long life and continuation to ENIGMA hopefully.

But I guess from reading it seems it was determined by some that majority made the decision


Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Darkstar2 on May 02, 2019, 01:23:01 pm
Привет, как ты ? ты в порядке ?  :D

Major fuck up time :D  Robert something tells me you accidentally sent a private e-mail as a forum message or a PM as a public message -  :D :D :D  Either that or you've had a few shots of Vodka, either way you will likely realise it eventually :D

Don't worry though, I've done that too, only in my case it was far more embarrassing, I actually sent a FB messenger text to the wrong contact - don't worry mate, I did not read all of it :P


Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Dragonite on May 03, 2019, 08:08:46 pm
That's unfortunate to hear. Your contributions so far are appreciated, and I wish you good luck on any future projects you engage with (or start by your own). I also hope you improve your soft skills, so that this kind of clash doesn't happen again.
I respectfully disagree with Darkstar2 instance, though. I don't see this as a free speech issue - people aren't making you unable to talk, or attempting to censor what you say. You're completely free to write your thoughts to a blog of your own, or publish them on social media as you desire. Your patches to ENIGMA (I assume) won't be rejected neither. However, it seems that your behavior clashed with the rest of the team. This feels more like they are showing you the way out because they couldn't stand it anymore.
Disclaimer: I don't use any of the chat channels for ENIGMA. I've seen posts by you here that came off as rude (to me) - I'm assuming the others are talking about that.

This is actually about a skilled and talented coder, who's also respected among GameMaker users, sending pull requests to ENIGMA only for fundies to annoy that person off.
Please tell me you are not talking about YellowAfterlife...
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 03, 2019, 09:19:21 pm
Please tell me you are not talking about YellowAfterlife...

Ya, I convinced YAL to contribute something and yet he also lists me as the cause for him leaving (For making a joke about quitting his job to contribute more.) Also, Josh has claims I scared him off despite him being openly emo past few months. Josh also claims I've scared off other developers but honestly any devs that left, left due to lack of progress from Josh. Even though I fight w/ Robert and TKG they still contribute. The have a false narrative of me being poking fun at people is scaring away devs but in reality, our good devs all left due to lack of contributions from Josh. Yes I like to poke fun and be abrasive but I've always been far more helpful and forthright in trying to help people contribute than any of the people who casted me out.

TKG and I fought like dogs and cats but even he'd admit I still answered any technical questions he had even in the face of him being a complete asshat who refused to listen.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Dragonite on May 03, 2019, 09:53:31 pm
Please tell me you are not talking about YellowAfterlife...

Ya, I convinced YAL to contribute something and yet he also lists me as the cause for him leaving (For making a joke about quitting his job to contribute more.) Also, Josh has claims I scared him off despite him being openly emo past few months. Josh also claims I've scared off other developers but honestly any devs that left, left due to lack of progress from Josh. Even though I fight w/ Robert and TKG they still contribute. The have a false narrative of me being poking fun at people is scaring away devs but in reality, our good devs all left due to lack of contributions from Josh. Yes I like to poke fun and be abrasive but I've always been far more helpful and forthright in trying to help people contribute than any of the people who casted me out.

TKG and I fought like dogs and cats but even he'd admit I still answered any technical questions he had even in the face of him being a complete asshat who refused to listen.

That's just... very unfortunate. That's the best I can say.
YAL's relevance for the whole community around Game Maker cannot be understated. He has built a lot of cool stuff (https://yal.cc/works/) (many of them free software). Most notable ones are GMLive (a fully functional GML interpreter that allowed you to live edit your code), and sfGML (a Haxe->GML compiler that allows you to use high level language features with GM projects). I can't think of anyone better from GM community that could join ENIGMA, not even former programmers from YoYoGames.

Well, what's done it's done. Hope you sort things out with other members and you all can get out of this without hard feelings for each other.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Darkstar2 on May 04, 2019, 10:13:03 pm
Robert, you seem to have ignored that you sent a personal and very private e-mail on the public forum instead, are you aware of this ? :P

Also why the heck did the title of this topic change ? It's so cheesy now   I could make a very good pun on the title itself on the making love to the project part, but I know 100% that I will be misinterpreted so yeah....

I preferred the old title because it is more representative of the topic re: someone leaving and not someone fucking it - because nobody makes "love" nowadays they "FUCK" :p
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: Josh @ Dreamland on May 04, 2019, 10:18:02 pm
That's what sucks so bad about this, fundies. You're always very helpful, and you're always very irritating. And sure, oftentimes, you're trying to be playful, or maybe the person in question has earned your particular variety of caustic honesty, but it doesn't matter. The bottom line is, you make it unpleasant for prospective contributors to be in the chat. I feel it, Robert feels it, YAL feels it. Maybe, as you say, YAL had other reasons to leave and you were just the straw that broke the camel's back. Generally, you can fix that with an apology. You've gotten better about giving those, and no one has thrown them back in your face (except maybe Rusky, because yeah, that bridge is going to take a thousand years to repair). An important aspect of apologizing is not repeatedly doing it again.

You should also recognize that Rusky isn't the only person crying to me about you. I can't imagine you disputing that when shit heats up, you tend to escalate it. Actually, I can imagine you disputing that, because every time I point it out to you, you claim you were just doing tit-for-tat, eye-for-an-eye. That doesn't make the situation any better and it's not how you earn points with people. Logic is normally on your side in these disputes, but logic seldom has bearing on feelings, and while you discount them, feelings are a huge factor in when and how users will contribute to the project. You can't just write them off as bullshit; they factor into reality.

If you would get better at recognizing when enough is enough, the world would be your oyster. People can be fun. You can rib people. But you have to know who you can rib about what. Everyone has their own sore spots. You can call those "triggers" and pretend that this is all some conspiracy-level kindergarten feel-good horseshit. I will not deny that such a camp exists; every movement has extremists. But that's not at all what this is about. We're not trying to participate in some movement. You don't even go against the morals of the movement. The primary reason I continued to put up with your behavior (in spite of complaints) is because you were never deliberately racist or sexist or otherwise disparaging against any group. We're looking at the feelings of the rational individuals you choose to attack. You even boast it as your special talent—finding people's sore spots and using them as leverage. You do this regularly as a form of engagement, like some child who believes that every kind of attention is positive attention. And it brings a lot of people to resent you.

To be clear, this isn't about any one person. The question is, if you stop fostering this environment of perpetual antagonism on the Discord, will more contributors show up?

And unfortunately, there's only one way to answer that, because you just will not leave people alone. It may be that you honestly are incredibly bad at handling social situations. That would be pretty sad, and you're getting no benefit of the doubt there from Rusky and co because (A) he's sick to death of you, and (B) all of us are convinced that you are smart enough to where you shouldn't be so bad at picking up social cues. You need to recognize that you can't rationalize away how people feel. It's so simple not to bother people. No one's forcing you to interact with them; if you ignore them and stop taking jabs at them, you'll get along fine. Even Rusky would eventually move on. No one on the Discord is so petty that just the act of you speaking upsets them.

This isn't a big change I'm asking for. And you're not even 30; you're by no means too old to make simple changes to the way you conduct yourself to just get along with people. And yes, some of the people I'll be asking you to get along with have short fuses, and a couple of them appear to be legitimately stupid. But there's dignity in being polite with belligerent idiots, and I've seen you do that. It sucks when it becomes a routine, and if you see that happening, I will gladly ban those people. But generally, the really dumb ones leave quickly. It's people like Rusky that you have trouble with. It's when you see potential for contribution that you start to harass people.

Don't.

Just because someone is capable of assisting doesn't mean they are willing, and just because they are willing doesn't mean they are eager. You can (and, if we're being honest, do) get a lot of mileage out of Rusky. And if you don't, well, Robert does. I'll try not to speak too much for Rusky and YAL, but I'm sure they'd agree with much of this: I work all day. This request I have for you? The laborious task of getting along with others? That's rolled into my job. When I get back from work, I don't have a whole lot of energy to spend actively contributing to a project; the energy I have will depend on whether I've been putting up more with bitching from my customers, my toolchain, my coworkers and superiors, or just life at large (mower breaks down, ants on my fucking table, junk everywhere, shit to replace). Everyone has their own life to live on top of whatever volunteering they're doing on this project. You seem to already be under the impression that you are not the only cause of YAL's despair on that particular day, so it seems you're aware of this to some degree. But when someone's already had enough, your ribbing (even if you're joking) can be too much. And again, simply apologizing and then backing off is likely all it takes to fix that.

I will cede that, yes, many of our problems fall on me. I am not a manager. Most of the glue that holds this project together is the fact that our contributors and users all want this project to succeed. This has made it possible for me to be very low-touch in terms of disciplinary action and making sure the team gets along—functions required of a conventional manager. I'm not well-equipped in general, and you are a challenge to which even a typical manager is not well-fit. That's something I could improve. Apart from that, I will grant that canthelp left because I left. But what you should acknowledge is that I left because while I was my busiest with college, you were giving me tons of shit every day and then explicitly told me to leave because you apparently thought that you and canthelp would just run the project without me. Or maybe that was just another cry for attention. I don't remember, but I actually did completely leave, for over a month if I recall. I caught up on my work nicely without that headache in my life. But without me there, whether because they lost hope for the project or didn't want to put up with you, they left. But you can't deny your role in that, because I wouldn't have left if you hadn't made being there so unpleasant.

Same story for YAL. Maybe he had a bad day at work. Maybe he was tired. You made it unpleasant for him to be in our Discord. He left. Was it logical? Maybe not; he clearly cares about this project, and he could have blocked you or muted the channel instead. Is it justified? Absolutely. No one needs that stress in their life.

From where I'm standing, the easiest way to lower stress was to remove you from the equation. Personally, I feel as though it's worked well; I don't have to put up with your banter until I'm good and ready to open this thread and see what you're on about. Robert's actually sending me things in the main Discord instead of over chat and email. There's a sense of peace and normalcy. Why do you insist on taking that away?

You are one of the best contributors this project has had. I would love to have you back any time after you're done waging war on prospective contributors' personal sense of peace (this includes Robert and me). There are ways to motivate people without inducing stress, anger, or anxiety. This isn't just feel-good karma mumbo-jumbo; burnout is real, and it slows and craters projects.

Until then... good luck.
Title: Re: Making love to the project
Post by: cheeseboy on May 05, 2019, 05:02:06 am
How about we don't edit other people's words, thanks. Put the topic back as is.

@Josh

I do like to play, I do like to argue and if you all are too fragile to handle it that's too bad. I'm sorry for you. I'd bet I'm more stressed than any of you but I put up with being called an idiot or whatever without crying for bans or censorship. I've had a "Fucking Moron" badge on my account for 10 years now. Honestly, this project had stagnated a few years back and I gave it a second wind lately. Hopefully, it can continue without me. Maybe, YAL or whoever will step up. But, Honestly I do, and have, played nice with people irl enough. I don't want to worry about everyone's feelings in some online hobby group. I don't really have any will/intent to change. I'm not so fond of Rusky / Robert or whoever that I'm going to change my personality just so they'll like me more. I'm in multiple communities where I get along with others but software devs seems to have the most fragile egos. I put a lot of work into the project and even though part of me wants to see it burn right now because of your attitudes I do hope you finish it even without me.
Title: Re: Leaving the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 07, 2019, 03:52:33 pm
cheese, if you would please, understand. You dont need to be told that. You do understand. Thats the problem. You are right about most the stuff you are saying and everyone is whining about you leaving while pretending they want you to.

And yes, I am an asshat who doesn't listen but admits these things. Asshat for the win!

I love you guys. All of you. This is a community with special needs. That's why I joined it. I have special needs.
Title: Re: Leaving the project
Post by: faissaloo on May 10, 2019, 04:11:40 am
Just saying, I wouldn't waste my time justifying myself to this guy.
Title: Re: Leaving the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 10, 2019, 02:03:40 pm
If you are refering to me, I'm definitely not justifying myself. I went on and on about how bad I feel about this whole situation, and my most previous comment was me just trying to lighten up the conversation. In all seriousness, I hope this is something we can all put behind us and continue working together, including cheeseboy, whatever that may look like.
Title: Re: Leaving the project
Post by: faissaloo on May 10, 2019, 04:22:01 pm
If you are refering to me, I'm definitely not justifying myself. I went on and on about how bad I feel about this whole situation, and my most previous comment was me just trying to lighten up the conversation. In all seriousness, I hope this is something we can all put behind us and continue working together, including cheeseboy, whatever that may look like.
Mostly referring to Josh, you need to stop blaming yourself for the behaviour of others.
Title: Re: Leaving the project
Post by: time-killer-games on May 10, 2019, 07:29:14 pm
As proven by today's discord session, I unintentionally cause a lot of hell and strife for everyone whenever the discussion ever goes political or religious/anti-religious. It's not just fundies to blame, as he wasn't even around to be a part of what just ended. If my lack of self control continues i think im going to leave discord regardless of fundies not being there, as I'm part of the problem over there.

Sometimes I have even done it intentionally, but that was mainly toward fundies so while one could argue thats more reason for him to not be on there the same could be said for me because my behavior regardless of who else is involved its on me.