Bad blood in the forums

General Feedback
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In general, when I browse other FOSS forums, people are generally very tolerant of the simple fact that FOSS projects are always in a state of flux and you will not get Apollo Guidance Computer levels of stability out of any such project.

Most people are in general friendly and approach problems constructively. However, here, I see very often the first post already calling the products, projects and people working and contributing to Purism-related projects shit. Most responses to that are calm and try to solve the problem, but it is very annoying and I, personally, already lost the drive to be here helping because people who need help are often rude. People who don’t need help use Purism products with little to no hassle and understand that some of the issues are due to the nature of FOSS. No one is buying into any open source project, especially hardware, with the illusion that they will get a “Apple-like” hermetic experience.

Instead of “Folks, I am having an issue to charge my phone, here are the symptoms”, we often get “This is crap, Purism is crap, the product is a scam, you all go to hell, my phone does not charge”. Incredibly enough, the community still helps.

My questions are:

  1. How did we get to this point?
  2. How do we make this a healthier forum?
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Citation(s)?

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Worst laptop Ive ever had

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That citation does not exactly match up with the exaggerated claim(s).

Selective attention.

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For a start, if you see a post that you find inappropriate, you need to flag it.

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Interpreted more broadly/vaguely, contribute.

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I’m speculating that Purism is seen as a consumer-product company. On the one hand, this brings people out of the woodwork who think all companies should ship as fast as Amazon and have technical support comparable to Apple (er, what Apple once was). On the other hand, there are some complaints that make a strong claim that the support they received was far from adequate—and while there are a lot of (to put it politely) exaggerators out there—at least some people have received a non-working product and didn’t get the courtesy of a replacement.

While I’d never claim to be a FOSS developer, I’m at least an amateur in the field, and contribute a bug now and then or release a project or two publicly. Related to that, I loosely understand what it takes to do engineering, debugging, development, and making a working product. So I’m way more patient than average. For instance, I’ve bought two Staber washing machines now, partly because rah-rah they’re made in USA, and partly because they’re designed to be repaired. In both, the off-balance sensor was way too sensitive and tech support let me know how to adjust it; and in one of them, the motor controller in the main board fried, so I had to wait a few weeks for a replacement. I think to the average consumer, much less the one who expects instant remedy, this would be completely unacceptable. But I know that it would be cost-prohibitive to send a technician to diagnose each problem.

I hate to make this such a long post, but the other part is why Purism is seen as a consumer-electronics company. Whether it’s through deliberate marketing on their part, or just that any shmuck can google “best private phone/computer” and find an article touting Purism, the result is that anyone from a hardcore-hacker, to ones familiar with the reality of making technology, to people who think that every company is Apple could buy a device. Unfortunately, there doesn’t appear to be a fix for this aspect—whether Purism is pushing for consumer attention or just getting accidentally is irrelevant these days.

The more difficult question:

Well that’s out of my wheelhouse. As a snotty brat about these things, my goal would be to try to find holes in their story and call them out for dropping their phone and wanting a free replacement—and I know it’s not helpful at all. I imagine that dedicated moderators could devise a pattern for responding, trying to tease out of the plaintiff (colloquially) what a reasonable and desired resolution would look like. Second, they’d try and educate them on the nature of being a “small” player in the tech market, and what it looks like for Purism to stay viable (e.g. handing out free laptops for every complaint may look good, but you’ll go broke.) From what I’ve seen, Purism is too understaffed to dedicate someone to this, especially the specialized communication training necessary to succeed (e.g., see non-violent communication).

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Everyone has the right to express themselves , especially those who paid 1400 USD for something that barely works. Some understanding is logical due to the FOSS nature but at least some basic functionality should work

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The problem with that argument is that claims can be made by individuals without any substantiated evidence and/or verification for defamation purposes.

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Just my opinion on this…The history (since 2017 or so, from the crowndfunding of Librem 5) has been that Purism got peoples hopes up but due to some foreseeable and several unforeseeable issues there were delays and more delays. A lot of it was and is poor communications in broader sense (lumping in expectation management, community involvement, investor relations, technical information and almost everything but the kitchen sink). There were occasional bright spots and eventually things progressed, but the snafus were never dealt with, company management and leadership never hashed out the issues publicly, apologized and presented a strategy, plan or other sign of improvement. There were individual efforts to give support and do stuff but Purism seemed to be unable to receive it or even notice. I think the feedback got to be a bit much at some point, so rather than deal with, all got ignored (“bury head in the sand”), which is not a viable strategy for a company that (doesn’t seem to realize or like that it) is dependent on the community. Community, which in this case is crowdfunders, customers and also potential customers from the linux general community, were left in the dark and not treated as stakeholders in this. So, when problems did reoccur, there has been less and less good will, belief in the intentions and support for the actions. And there always will be snafus, but since there’s no good will and trust, every problem gets blasted loudly, as that seem to be the only way to get any response due to the undoubted pile of snafus that only one or two people still maybe handle. It has kind of created a downward spiral since good news and progress are heard of less and more seldom - and those have been mostly by individuals that are not in Purism payroll, if I’m not mistaken.

There’s genuine practical and financial challenges in the mix too, but it get’s a bit complicated and sidetracked to go into those when talking about the original question. Over the years I’ve seen many go through the same process of denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance (and/or resignation, i.e. leaving). Sound familiar?
[Btw. I think it’s for the (wasted) potential everyone sees - the potential that is still there]

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This way we start a toxic war. The flag system can also be very toxic (not speaking about anything specific). The way people react on it (nice and helpful) is the best we can do. It can help to take out frustration people have, while it doesn’t care if reasons are valid or not. The flag system should be used if people stay toxic after all the help people try to provide.

With a hidden start post, help and the “non toxic route” is not possible anymore. People who want to help out, cannot read what’s the problem. And people who get hidden for that post, become more toxic and more negative about Purism products.

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Most just My Options:

You’re talking about people that know Linux, know and experience whatever “FOSS” is and hobbyists that understand the products are in early development.
Those are not the kind of people the Puri ads are directed to.
The planet you orbit, and the one the ads push out are two very different things.

You have that in quotes. Do you have the sources? And, you quote "“my phone doesn’t charge”. " How is that “rude”?

  • Read the sales pitches then try a product - IMO, two very different things.
  • Instead of looking for fault, remember that the 'flag' post is available to you as well. If you flag any of those comments you quoted above, then I think you're on your way to cleaning house your way for everyone.
  • I fail to see what's wrong with "my phone does not charge"? Too short? Too clean and to the point?
I see your edit with how you prefer it to read. You'll never change everyone, probably no one, to write the way you want them to.
Click for my response...
  1. Be honest with the ads...
  2. Ignore what you don't like and move on,
  3. Don't introduce more censorship.
  4. People should get back their rights to complain without prejudice. (as long as they abide by the rules of course)
  5. Training people to post the way you would like them to post will need a detailed reference guide explaining how-to post for those you feel made this place as awful as you describe it.
  6. The 'community' decides, for the most part, if the community is offended the the post gets hidden for correction.
  7. Let the community make the decisions about how content should not be used.

    I believe that 1 person or more makes a community

We're always going find posts every where that we orbit that we might dislike. IMO, looks like you want to change people's **tone**.

BTW, anyone may hide another user’s posts until you decide to unhide them and their posts.

How to Mute or Hide:

  1. Click on the posters icon
  2. On the right side, click on "NORMAL" and a drop screen opens.
  3. You may choose Mute, Hide, or Normal.
In my honest opinion? I think these forums have some of the best Moderators around. They are very helpful, are focused on issues as described, and skip the tone.

I really do hope you have a great day…
~s

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Or, better still so one vote doesn’t convict someone they may just disagree with, if anyone doesn’t like the way someone posts, one may simply Mute or Hide what they perceive to be a bad author.

But you know all of that. Thought I’d mention it for others to see.
~s

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I don’t know whether such a config change can be made in Discourse, but if it can, it’s not something that I personally can change. And it also depends on who flags the post, to my understanding.

In my experience, once one person flags, noone else can flag. If Discourse can be configured so that a post is only hidden once two (or such other number) regular users have flagged, I would be happy with that. However in that case, I would prefer that the flag state of a post (unflagged - the default of course, partially flagged) be visible to all. “fully flagged” could only be inferred because the post would be hidden.

There are also multiple issues at play here e.g. the distinction between “off topic” and “impolite / offensive / rude”. This topic is probably focused on the latter. And flagging is also used simply when a post is in the wrong category or is otherwise technically deficient. And flagging is also used when a post is spam.

While that’s all true, that isn’t specifically what the OP asked for (other than partly going to explain “how we got here”).

Yes, some people will say “Make Purism a better company” and we would all benefit from that and that could indirectly improve the situation that the OP highlighted but what the OP asked for was for the “Purism forum to be a better forum”.

I understand why you don’t like this but if the community is to set a standard for discourse (lowercase) then the community needs to communicate what is appropriate and what is inappropriate, at least in the opinion of the person doing the flagging.

One thing that I would not like to see is that the community communicates that opinion inline, so that many topics degenerate into narky metadiscussion, and thereby go off topic, and become less useful for someone who actually wants to get information on the topic.

Indeed. However everyone has the agency to choose how and where they do so, and to anticipate the likely response to that expression, where response doesn’t specifically or exclusively mean a post that someone makes in reply but includes in greater generality what someone thought about the original post and/or the original poster.

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That’s exactly what that was, part of the the path that’s taken “here” (even though individual experience may vary) - the path that often has brought out the less than positive tones (number two on the list I mentioned) with devices and Purism. It’s not an explanations to all the posts, but it’s the history that has greatly influenced the culture. Not knowing, not recognizing and not reconciling with history pretty much guarantees that there’s going to be repetition and suffering in some form for it down the line - whether we’re talking about Purism or the community. And individually people are at different stages in their process (some never get past the first stages and skip to resignation). [yes, i know, a bit kitchen psychologistic, but just go with it]

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To be clear: I’m not speaking so much about me at this point. It’s more general analytics. And it’s not “the community”, because few people are not the community (important difference here).

What I’m trying to say: if we stay helpful and friendly, lots of people become more calm which helps those people, our community and the project itself. At least partly. Or in other words, it reduces the “bad blood in the forums”.

If you want to see a much worse solution, check YouTube. That overblocking causes to more toxic behaviors and more upset people. Sadly most people do not even know that it’s YouTube and not the specific channel. And here people may blame Purism for actions of a part of the community. I just want to say, if we want to reduce the negativity, it does not help to hide each toxic - sometimes we should deal with it in a positive way.

Edit: that is especially truth for the reason @JR-Fi wrote about.

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This. I’m not a fan that most of the discussions tend to go this way. It’s not a about “censoring” or “tone” but the general content, relevancy and usefulness of the forum. I’d like it more technical, but developing oriented, but I suppose those have evacuated elsewhere and are content that the “meta crazy” and how its dealt stays here. It’s not all the threads and there are threads (even good ones - at start, anyways) that are just for this. There’s clearly still audience for it and and an outlet is needed, and some enjoy it, but I bet there are still more that don’t care for it - regardless of who’s more right, wrong or odd or what real or imagined conspiracy may lie behind it. Topics often get hijacked by these discussions. Unfortunately it’s hard to separate those into their own threads or categories within the forum with the tools that it (or any platform) offers. So, in this imperfect world with these imperfect tools, with this imperfect community etc. we try our best, I suppose.

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So if Discourse could separate flagging from blocking?

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I just think a first post that is kinda toxic (as long as there are no following toxic posts) is something we should tolerate. It’s not fine, but I guess you got my point from previous posts. The way how it’s implemented (technical or social) is something I do not care much, as long as it works somehow.

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And you’ll note that I did. Even though noone flagged the topic’s OP as inappropriate, I still reviewed the post. I decided that it was “toxic” (vague, unfactual, offensive) but I decided to let it stand on balance. Clearly the OP of this topic has a different perspective but did not express it explicitly.

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