Potential use case: "OSS Sins"

[SeanKilleen]

The title might need to be less incendiary / more inviting.

I'm thinking of situations where someone isn't familiar with how open source works, or more importantly when someone has an "old .NET OSS mentality" (e.g. Sense of entitlement, unwillingness to contribute.)

That stuff has to exhaust OSS devs. So what if we could give them a way to point it out, gently and tactfully, while saving them the time of having to articulate it themselves?

I imagine some examples might be:

• "Fix this bug!" (Aka please add a feature I want)
• "Here, I fixed this for you" (massive PR)
• "Rename everything how ReSharper wants it" (disregard for current project standards)
• Unwillingness to help solve a problem (eg treating it like a product)
• Vague issue descriptions that expect a lot of follow-up and don't help the authors see a problem quickly

I'm thinking we could design a section similar to http://yourlogicalfallacyis.com, but where we gently describe "your OSS mistake" and point to helpful tips and resources. Built-in teachable moments.

.NET OSS authors, what are the "OSS sins" you notice most when interacting with folks? Do you think having a section like this would help?

[M-Zuber]

People disregarding a projects road-map/direction (stated or otherwise) when asking for features. ex. A dev opens an issue on project X and is told: that feature/bug/ect, is wont-fix as it is not inline with the current direction of the project. When it ends there, everything is fine. I am referring to situations where the issue opener then bike-sheds/attacks/ect. This seems to usually come from a attitude of entitlement.

[rogeralsing]

And the other side of what @M-Zuber said, if OSS maintainers give after for such requests, resulting in project scope creep.

Another really common thing I have seen is where contributors "know better" than the authors, mansplaining why things work the way they do and how the authors should "fix" it, without the contributor having enough insight to the topic at hand.

[M-Zuber]

It is also a problem when maintainers mansplain to contributors.

[adron-orange]

Probably need an issue space for "what are we doing right" to focus on too besides just an OSS sins page. This one could get extraordinarily long - and just become a space for to kvetch.

[SeanKilleen]

@adron-orange. I see what you mean. In this case, I don't mind kvetching in this thread because we'll distill it into concrete / teachable points as things go on.

Re: the what are we doing right, from my perspective this use case would be serving as a utility for the OSS maintainers to reduce their personal time on common issues.

I do agree in keeping the tone light; any resulting web page would be designed to educate. Could you elaborate on how you think the positive angle would manifest itself in that context? Like a badge system for doing things right? Eg an OSS maintainer can thank someone that way, and it'd link to some sort of positive rep score? I like the idea but I'm wondering if it's in the scope of this particular project.

Feel free to start a new issue suggesting the use case; I'd love to hear more!

[adron-orange]

@SeanKilleen good point on teaching moments.

I tend to just focus on messaging around doing things right, well designed X, Y, or Z instead of bringing up to many broken/anti-patterns etc, only to mention them lightly but focus more on the things that work or things that we want to amplify that we want more of.