[MPlayer-users] Mplayer Build Testing

[Reimar Döffinger]

Hello,
On Wed, Oct 31, 2007 at 10:50:35AM -0500, Daniel Taylor wrote:
[...]
> My suggestion, if you are a contributing developer and see someone
> complaining about a bug that you know is already fixed say something like:
> "This is a known issue that has already been fixed",
> follow up with either:
> "Upgrade to version x.x.x or later and you will no longer see this
> problem" if you know where the fix is, or "upgrade to the latest
> available version, we prefer that people run off the latest version." if
> you don't know where the fix was (or are just really uptight about
> people running anything older than head).

Minus the politeness-flurry (which given the number of non-native
speakers is not necessarily any more polite since it makes things harder
to understand) quite a few answers are of that kind.

> Too many of the responses to people with problems is "compile it in
> debug mode from version control head or we're not going to listen to
> you". While that is a reasonable response to people posting questions on
> a developer list, it is really too high a bar for a users list. In fact,
> I'd wager that better than half of the people who get this response have
> no idea what you are talking about when you say it.

We don't ask for debugging info for fun. If we do, most of the time
there is just nothing we can do without it.
If you can't do that you can still wait for someone who can do it to
have the same problem.
Or do you expect that in each reply we explain all this? I can imagine
where we would end up: In endless mails composed of pre-composed
text-blocks 90% of which the original poster doesn't care or already
knows about, at least if they read _any_ of the docs.
IOW: the typical reply mail from amazon and similar institutions which
to me are at the pinnacle of impoliteness. I'd take a mail with 10
f-words and a few personal insults over that any time.

> I understand that everyone posting answers and helping people out here
> is a volunteer, but if you are so fed up with answering the questions
> that you can't put yourself in the end user's shoes for long enough to
> compose a polite reply, you probably should refrain from hitting "send".

I do wonder why if someone has a real problem he/she/it would prefer no
reply over a impolite-but-helpful reply.
But maybe the bigger problem is that there probably is a big
disagreement about what is an impolite reply. Maybe this is the right
place to emphasize that whatever cultural background you have you are
most likely in the minority. On MPlayer lists I think this is especially
true if you are from the US...

Greetings,
Reimar Döffinger
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