trac excitement
Posted by Luke Schierer under Pidgin | Permalink | | Leave A Comment
In the days immediately preceding the 2.2.0 release, I called for some time to be spent looking at the growing backlog of bugs and enhancement requests that has accumulated in trac since we went public with pidgin and finch. Sean in particular responded beyond my hopes, closing more than 100 tickets in just a few days!!
In related news, Ethan, with the help of one of the trac developers, managed to nail the source of our continual problems with trac. By eliminating the drop down that listed the people to whom a ticket could be assigned, he radically reduced the performance hit we take by running trac on our server. The load average has dropped from 10+ to 3-5, and the CPU utilization is down in the 20-40% range instead of the 100-110% range (possible only because we are a vmware guest I suspect, how else could you use 110% of your processor?).
Overall, we are responding faster to more issues since we left SF’s trackers for trac, while still maintaining a relatively fast development cycle. In the months to come, hopefully we will nail an even greater chunk of the incoming tickets, and come up with a better way for translators to interact with the project.
Despite this though, we are continually being told that we are unresponsive to our users, and insulted for our decisions. Only this morning, for example, we were told that 90% of users think that every change we have made since the first 2.0.0 beta is a step backwards. When the user failed to come up with anything other than vague insults and obvious red-herrings in more than 10 minutes, we removed him from the channel. This is regrettable, not that we removed him, but that it was necessary. We try very hard to listen to everyone who approaches us with comments and criticism of our work. While we cannot take all the advice we receive, it is physically impossible, and in fact do not take much of it, we have reversed unpopular decisions and/or worked with various segments of the user base to come up with some compromise.
Still, I honestly think that (almost) no one really cares about the exact graphic used for the available state. For years I have seen people asking about replacing this graphic or that graphic, or even all of them. Such people have been genuinely concerned that the specific graphic used for this or that was poorly chosen. The complaints about the green circle do not (with a few rare exceptions) match that pattern. Rather, people complain about the graphic being “huge” even though it is the same size as the protocol icon it replaced. Alternatively, they complain about it being ugly, but want to replace it not with a different icon representing available, but with an option to use it as an emblem over the protocol icon instead. If the icon itself, and not the removal of the protocol icons, was the problem, then returning the protocol icons and returning status to an emblem would not be the solution. Similarly, the icon is clearly only “huge” in relation to the very small emblems that previously denoted state.
That being said, it will be interesting to see if the complaints change in light of the new option to see protocol icons merged in for 2.2.0. I suspect that they will not, though hopefully the (relatively) few users who tried to remain rational in the firestorm debates that have come up since 2.0.0, will be pleased.
10 Responses to “trac excitement”
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Pidgin developers seem extra-picked-on, and I’m not sure why that is. Perhaps it is that people who use IM frequently are also more likely to get on IRC and complain (as opposed to someone like me, where I’d have to start by downloading an IRC client and figuring out how to use it).
I like Pidgin. I liked Gaim. I liked the old icons. I like the new icons. I’m easy to please. I used Gaim and continue to use Pidgin because I support free software, and because I don’t want all the adware and other encumbrances of commercial IM clients. I appreciate all the time (and, it would seem now, real money) that you and the rest of the Pidgin developers are spending on a client that I can use freely (both libre and gratis).
I think there is a strong chance that the Pidgin developers suffer the wrath of a vocal minority. I suspect that there are a number of people who are silently cheering you on, and an even larger number who simply don’t care either way and will use whatever you deem best. (Some of us have more important things to evaluate than whether the icons you chose are the best possible choice.)
So thanks. A true, heart-felt “thank you” to you and to the other Pidgin developers. And chin up — I suspect a lot of us are on your side. :-)
I never weighed in on the protocol icons thing, because I saw great benefit in the removal, but my old-ness loved the old way of having them there. I really appreciate making it a switch, so they don’t have to be there, or they can be.
I think the reason you might get so many complaints on changes is that for a number of users, GAIM/Pidgin is one of the most important applications on the system. For me, Pidgin is more important than my phone - I use it many times a day to communicate with my servers, to talk with other people at work, and to chat with/arrange gatherings with friends. Changes to it make a big difference - if some changes are good for a majority but bad for a minority (or vice-versa), then complaints are inevitable.
FWIW, I disliked losing the protocol icons, and if they’re back as an option, I’m happy to have them back. That said, the continued efforts to improve the interface, even knowing that I won’t agree with all of them you have or will ever do, are welcome - rocking the boat exposes us to different way things can work and occasionally might change our minds. I may have occasionally complained, but in the end, pidgin is as important as vim to me - that’s saying a lot.
I just installed 2.2.0 today, and I looked at the protocol icons… nice, but now I’m used to them not there. Maybe I’ll use them eventually. At any rate, each release of gaim/Pidgin has been an improvement in my opinion. Sucks that the developers get so much flak because it’s just getting that much more indespensible to me with each release! Don’t let the vocal minority fluster you, you’re doing great work.
Well, The new Pidgin is AWESOME. But every time I get in #pidgin, somebody is a jerk. It’s usually somebody with op powers that then kicks random people for no good reason. I mean, if you really want to dominate the IM world (which you are clearly in a position to do, as Pidgin is the best IM out right now, and lots of neophytes agree on that, by the way), you should try to build more good will by not being total dicks in the irc chan, or giving total assholes op powers. I have not been kicked, btw, so I’m not crying sour grapes, but I see it all the time, and I’ve been called stupid, seen other people similarly abused who genuinely did not deserve it. I think you need to totally re-orchestrate who has op powers in the chan, and encourage the devs or whoever it is in there being a dick to grow up and knock it off.
Then implement a good speex chat plugin and dominate the world. That is my most earnest hope!
Thanks again for such a great IM client!!
Wait, obviously it worked TWICE, but it was giving me errors…. Something is up!
I am a slow moderator. Comments are partially moderated partially to prevent spam, and partially because this is my site and I will not tolerate foul language here. I’ve seen a lot of unmoderated comment sections degrade into one or the other.
Luke,
The Pidgin developers do a great and often under-appreciated job. That’s one of the problems with Open-Source. People get conditioned to the stream of freely collaborated software and take it and the process for granted. This will only get worse in the future.
I rarely weight in on such matters, this is the first time I have ever commented on Pidgin even though I have used it for years. However, like Joe V said “I like Pidgin. I liked Gaim. I liked the old icons. I like the new icons. I’m easy to please…”
I have been aware of the whole menu and protocol icons for some time and was simply glad to go along with whatever got rolled out but I must confess that I like the protocol icons in Pidgin 2.2.0. For someone like me who has accounts on almost every IM and who has friends with multiple accounts themselves it is a nice feature to have a visual cue, for example, to see which account I am referring to at a glance so that I can access the correct logs to copy and paste info.
The Gaim/Pidgin 2.0.x beta process was one of the longest betas I have seen for an Open Source utility. And since betas imply that things are in flux and may not work properly or even work differently after the final release it is silly (for users) not to expect that the process is anything but “one step backward and two steps forward”.
[...] Some of you may have noticed the massive ticket-closing in the last week. That could be because… we are trac addikts, like the pidgin guys. [...]
I believe that the problem always is in the motivation for a comment. Usually, comments have stronger motivation when they derive from dissatisfaction rather than satisfaction. That tends to lead to the the impression that “everyone” is dissatisfied, when actually what happens is that very few of the satisfied ones take the time to show their position.
Therefore, I here expose my satisfaction to the current state of Pidgin. Even if some details of the UI could be changed to please me even more, they’re in a state that’s already pleasant.
With that being said, I’m one of those that prefers seeing the presence status over the protocol icon.
I understand the idea of abstraction that Pidgin wants to defend. I also think that it’s impossible to have 100% abstraction due to the implicit differences between the supported protocols (take IRC versus AIM, for example). So in my humble opinion, it’s just a matter of deciding where the abstraction line is being dropped.
In the other hand, I don’t think that the above should be a priority over improving the core (Purple), for example.
As I said before, I’m already happy with the current way and I’m just wasting your time while giving my 2 cents about what would make me even happier.
Don’t give up! :) hri