this post was submitted on 02 Mar 2024
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Lemmy

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Everything about Lemmy; bugs, gripes, praises, and advocacy.

For discussion about the lemmy.ml instance, go to [email protected].

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cross-posted from: https://discuss.online/post/5768097

Greetings Lemmy community,

I wanted to express my frustration with the Lemmy developers for consistently closing my reported issues as "not planned" without involving the community in the decision-making process. It appears that the devs prioritize their own interests, such as developing Android thumb keyboard apps ([email protected]), over listening to user feedback and addressing community priorities.

Given this approach, I have decided that I will not be contributing to this project in any capacity. It is disheartening to see a lack of consideration for user input and a focus on personal projects rather than community needs.

For reference, you can view the list of my reported issues on GitHub for Lemmy here:

  • Lemmy Backend Issues: Link
  • Lemmy UI Issues: Link

Fortunately, there are still opportunities for me to contribute to projects like SubLinks and PieFed, where developers are more open to community input compared to the Lemmy platform.

Thank you for your attention, but I regret to say that I will not be engaging further with this project due to the lack of user-centric development practices.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (1 children)

You sound entitled as hell and most of your ideas read like stuff a project manager comes up with when trying to justify their job and I say that despite their being some good ideas in there. Anyway, it's Saturday night, surely there's better things to do than whine about the developers not implementing what you want?

[–] [email protected] -3 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Not saying the approach is undeserving of critique but you getting this personal is absolutely unprofessional under a mostly constructive but critical post like this.

There is place for discussion here and we are all part of this community. Shushing others this way doesnt feel right.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago

Honestly, I'm inebriated and so I have no doubt that I could've been a lot more fluffy in my approach. I also see at least one spelling mistake, so that's double bubble bad by me.

Since you're not OP, I can be unabashedly honest. Anyone that has been around open-source software knows that bug reporters are as unappreciated as they come, despite being a vital cog in the system, but holy hell, there's no stamp card, you don't say I submitted ten ideas, crown me king.

There's literally a monthly Q&A where the OP could have a broader discussion about priorities and direction. There's also a whole Github repository just for discussing ideas and direction, it's the RFC one.

Anyway, I'm going back to enjoying my Saturday night.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I see both sides here.

On one hand, you do have some good ideas in there, and I understand wanting to write them down and push for them.

On the other, I'm also a developer and too many issues can become spammy, and every day at work I mark issues as "not prioritized" or "won't do". They may be valid ideas, but I'm heads down on other more critical work that I need to focus on now.

I think it's important to remember that the devs are two devs, they don't have a project manager/PO to regulate issues and prioritize them. It's also an open source project, so a more valid use of time would be developing features yourself or gathering people who want to implement them and opening pull requests, rather than opening a ton of issues.

Also, I think you'd get things across the finish line if instead of opening 20 issues, you focused on one, maybe two, and pushed those really hard. Prioritize the issues yourself. Get those one or two done, then focus on the next. If you catapult 20 over the wall then it just looks like 20 issues and none of them are particularly important. The phrase "If everything is important, then nothing is important" definitely applies.

That being said, I'd definitely appreciate more transparency from the devs on the roadmap they envision, issues they want to focus on, and if they have capacity for us users to vote on our most critical features.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)

I don't really care all that much about any particular issue. I enjoy copying the ideas suggested by others in the fediverse and transforming them into new issues, as many individuals do not take this initiative.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago (1 children)

It's developers working on their time to build an app they want. You don't have the right to demand they do things your way.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 9 months ago (1 children)

I'm confused. I opened the first 6 issues featured in your lemmy-ui link and you closed them all yourself?

[–] [email protected] 5 points 9 months ago (1 children)

The project is missing developers, if you want to then implement them yourself , or fund raise the money using a bounty platform like polar, some of the ideas are fairly controversial and linus law of trail and error apply here, with that said i think lemmy could benefit from a add on system like those wordpress and discourse have and those ideas can be checked out.

Personally i had them accept some of my feedback before (e.g. i am the one who requested the ability to block an instance which got implemented despite one of the developers were against it and the other suggested i should switch instances).

Just try to be prudent and persuasive .