Another user/developer banned from GNOME's bugzilla without any warning

"Just stop" sounds like a warning to me.<p>Olav's comment about google plus and mailing lists suggest to me that Felipe has been on a crusade about this topic and using and soap box he could find. As any sort of community or project admin, the behavior of being told no and the constantly raising the issue and trying to drum up support is really annoying and likely to result in this type of situation.<p>I mean, I haven't used gnome in years or followed the community, but just reading the OP's post defending himself made me want to ban him. We can argue all day about a platonic world of argument and enlightenment where tone doesn't matter... But we live in the real world with real people.

Felipe, I'm completely unsurprised you got banned. This post is just continuation of the behaviour you can't see.<p>People are human. It doesn't matter if you're technically in the right, or that you think things should be some way - if you piss people off, they are going to tell you to stop pissing them off and then eventually they will do something rash.<p>In this post you just drag out the dirty laundry again and go through it painstakingly, and then post it to a public forum (HN) for everyone to see.<p>Just learn to let things go, for God's sake. You wouldn't have been banned if you just said 'sorry' or 'ok, let's agree to disagree' and started talking constructively.<p>Your goal is to talk them round to your point of view, not make them never want to talk to you again for fear of you blowing things way out of proportion.

Well, what did you expect? GNOME's processes and communication with users exactly represents the general state of the project, it's an uninspired big pile of shit, it always has been, it always will be.<p>And of course, if you argue against GNOME's dogmas, you will be sidetracked because of some bullshit like your tone (which IMHO was totally fine, and you even argued your case with sources, examples and all) and then banned because you took part in the off-topic discussion (or even for talking back). That's how every sneaky bastard on the internet with a ban-hammer proceeds.

Mostly off topic: is it just my filter bubble, or does this flavor of deep, hate-ridden flamewar only show up in OSS projects that touch end users?<p>I mean, on the server side, the worst kind of flamewar I've seen is TJ Holowaychuk disagreeing with Rails defaulting to CoffeeScript. It got us some drama and pictures of cats.<p>But end-user OSS? That's been a pit of hate and anger ever since Torvalds posted a kernel to some newsgroup.<p>In fact, it's one of the things that keep me from trying out stuff like Linux for real. If a question like 'which audio driver do i best install?' can only be answered by reading through a multi-year flamewar, why would I bother?<p>Now, since i've never really tried (or well, not in the past 14 years), the above might be entirely untrue. Still, to me, 'end-user FOSS' and 'hate and anger' are somehow symbolically linked.<p>Does this make sense? Do people recognise this? Or am I simply a closed-minded fool too fast in his judgment?

Crazy to see Felipe banned, but then he's always been one for expressing a strong opinion... strongly. Love his technical posts, been reading for over a year now.<p>Also, GNOME seems to be having a difference of opinion with the loud minority (or is it a majority? I honestly don't know), about how they run the project. Is that a problem? I think so, but then one of my favourite projects (Elementary OS) is run similarly... and it works well there.<p>The difference is, GNOME has been around forever, and I think end users feel invested in it. Over the past couple of years, it feels like it's been "taken away". Whether or not that is correct is up for you to decide. I'm not fussed either way: I use Unity ;)

It's hard to tell if GNOME developers are defensive because they are under attack or if they are under attack because they are defensive.<p>Bottom line: These people, weather they are arrogant, impolite or unsympathetic to users does not refute the fact that they are <i>giving</i> their time to the project.<p>GNOME has been under fire since the famous GNOME 3 release and I would understand the remaining developers to be a little touchy on the matter. At some point, you either stop - or you decide: Fuck this - I will just ignore user-input, because it sucks.<p>There is nothing more demotivating for developers (especially those working for free) than a loud group of people displeased with your work.<p>Do I agree with the way they communicate back to the community? Hell no! But they only deserve half of the shit storm they are getting.

Playing the devil's advocate in a way: I'm not surprised that he got the ban. After Olav wanted to stop polluting the topic with this meta discussion about "tone" and "speculation", Felipe kept going on anyway, about how complaining about "tone" is unsophisticated (which is actually getting personal). It made him come off as wanting the last word, and that, I think, made them trigger the ban.<p>Of course, whether or not Olav should be so concerned about "tone" in a text-based medium is another matter entirely and I'll refrain from making a judgment call on that.

Can we edit the title to say (2011)?<p>The fact that you're bringing this up two years later only serves to validate Olav's viewpoint.

The secret to getting anything critical of the GNOME project to the front page is to post before anyone is awake in Raleigh, North Carolina.

I really dislike this kind of flame. The author got banned over a year ago, and now, because of the recent threads on the "No." in the gnome-terminal bug, the author tries to fan the fire by bringing this up. Then, he posts his blog post on HN using the third person: "Another user/developer banned ..." If you are going to post your own blog post (nothing wrong with that usually), don't make the title look like someone else talking about you.

This was in September 2011. Are you really holding a grudge for this long ?<p>My suggestion would be to forget about this and move on. No offense to anyone but GNOME is just dreadful and there are so many other Linux/FOSS projects that desperately need people. Help them out instead.

@filipec: Dude, that was two years ago. You're still on about that?

I banned GNOME from my desktop also without any warning.

Does anyone personally know people in Red Hat's management or the GNOME foundation's board of directors?<p>If so, it would be a good idea to engage them and convince them to fix the problem.<p>Red Hat has the authority to fire the many GNOME developers they employ, and the GNOME Foundation owns the trademark and can thus ultimately remove commit rights and Bugzilla admin rights from the problematic developers.<p>It's clear that the issue is now so big that this is the level at which corrective action needs to be taken.

This was in 2011... Is he still banned?

And this is what happen when two dicks-wannabe nerds meet online. I'm tired of watching argues like this.

I'm curious, has there been any kind of response from the GNOME team about the now-infamous "No"?

As I see it, Felipe WAS being abrasive in tone, and I can see why people would be disturbed by that. But if I were the administrator, I would never have banned him for this without first giving specific, actionable feedback on how to say the same thing in a different tone. People have different strengths, and some may be brilliant programmers or have excellent UI design ideas while being rather poor in social and communication skills -- without actionable feedback they cannot improve. And "just stop the way you're acting" is not actionable feedback -- in fact, responding that way ALSO demonstrates poor communication skills.

Yeah, writer was kind of dickish, got banned. Meh.

Olav should get banned for this -_-

Wow. I wonder what the OP would do if people treated him the same way.<p>"Wrong.<p><a href="http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=60101" rel="nofollow">http://code.google.com/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=60101</a><p>2273 people starred this issue and may be notified of changes."<p>You are wrong. You ignored the second part of that statement: "or if they do, it's not nearly as visible as something like 'votes'." By ignoring that, it makes your declaration of "Wrong" wrong. Any assertions made by this are also "Wrong."<p>"In my experience however adding voting does not lead to annoying comments."<p>In my experience however adding voting does lead to annoying comments.<p>This completely proves my point, and I can now move on.<p>"I'm not acting in any way."<p>That's wrong. You have to be acting in some way. The lack of acting would mean you aren't participating in the flame war you started. Indeed, that statement is not only wrong, but makes you a liar.<p>Wow.<p>You know, it's so much easier to act like the OP. You don't have to think, or put for much effort. Just mouth off.<p>"And complaining about "tone" is not precisely considered a sophisticated way to engage in a discussion"<p>Sure, but acting like a self-entitled little bitch is much, much worse.<p>Go ahead, complain about my tone there.