Bad blood in the forums

General Feedback
21

I did not criticize you here. Just was speaking in general.

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That’s a different setting though.

3 is probably a fair value for it - but it has no effect in a botspam situation where the new user automatically posts the same garbage 7 or 8 times before anyone gets to flag any of the user’s posts.

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Maybe there is a “please revise” flag or something similar that a moderator could use, where the post isn’t hidden immediately, but OP has some time to revise or else the post will be removed.

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26

How disingenuous. The part you quote is not rude IMO. The full quote, however, is IMO very rude:

“This is crap, Purism is crap, the product is a scam, you all go to hell, my phone does not charge”.

The question that must be asked is why you selected only a part of the quote – and arguably the only part that isn’t rude – to ask “how is that rude”. For clarity, I’ve bolded the part that seems rude and find it unfathomable that the portion you’ve selected is the only portion that isn’t rude.

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27

I agree.

It is, I suppose, possible to have interpreted those as five separate quotes.

However my interpretation of that part of the OP’s post as a whole was that the OP was illustrating and contrasting two ways of asking the same question (about charging a phone) - the constructive, sensible, focused, polite way that is likely to elicit helpful responses … and the rude, running off at the mouth, unfactual way.

However I think we are getting away from the OP’s point, which was about the vibe, rather than exact quotes and how they should be interpreted - because the text quoted does not to my knowledge actually occur in this forum.

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Full quote (assuming @irvinewade is referring to the correct citation):

Breakdown:

  1. This is crap → This is worst crap = 133%
  2. Purism is crap → Not applicable, since Purism is never explicitly mentioned.
  3. The product is a scam → Its a scam = 40%
  4. You all go to hell → Not applicable, since hell is never explicitly mentioned.
  5. My phone does not charge → Not applicable, since the quote is claiming to be about a laptop with no explicit manufacturer and/or model name.

See also:

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29

Having read through all and made my (oxford defines) opinions known, the sum, as of today, appears to be that it’s all about CONTROL. Some people criticize others for being too selective as to what they quoted. It’s too much or not enough or selected parts were quoted to distort the context.
‘No one can be like everyone wants them to be all of the time’…

To get everyone to post the same way (they) want the rest to post, can’t be done by the rest because not everyone is like ‘you’; the colloquial ‘you’ not you that is.

Too, not everyone can offer content that everyone agrees with. I may not agree with someone, but I can still Like their comment.

Aiming for the head of the nail.
courts-of-social-media

then I just remember I am in a forum.

My Solution: 1, 2,3, 4, 5 or all

  1. If we don’t like what someone says in a OP, or Response, or Reply, then we can move on. Done.

  2. If we don’t like someone because of their posts, We may Block or Mute them/their posts. Done.

How to Block or Mute
  1. Click on your Profile image to bring up a context menu.
  2. In the menu click to open Profile (bottom of vertical menu.)
  3. click to open Preferences
  4. in preferences, click to open User
  5. Choose to Block or Mute from the options.

  1. If we think a OP, or Response, or Reply breaches Puri’s definitions of How To Behave Around Purism’s House 101 or spot Spam, then as Purisms’ Forum’s forum-house FAQ states, we may flag it… on same page as Behave link above.

  2. If you are flagging a post by a respondent that you don’t agree with, explain why - without underlying insults, then don’t flag it - just move on.

  3. If we feel the Discourse/Forum has a issue, or we have a idea, share we should share it with the community.

The above are just my opinions that help to form my answer to your questions. I suspect you by now that you kicked the hornet’s nest :laughing:

~S
DISCLAIMER:
By having reading this you have agreed that I am not responsible for not following my own advice, and that you agreed to never point out any of my failings.

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30

Can’t speak for the laptop owners, but a lot of L5 owners such as myself are still mad at how Purism handled that whole debacle. And I’m not just talking about the crowdfunding backers, who often get dismissed because “you knew you were taking a risk”. I’m including preorder customers such as myself who were promised a functional phone within a couple of months. Which was obviously unrealistically optimistic, as is often the case with crowdfund projects, but even so: we’re 8 years later and still don’t have what would be considered a minimum viable product. What we have is a wonky proof of concept. And a very expensive one at that.

And if it was just a matter of Purism trying their best, but ultimately failing, that would be acceptable if they had communicated about that openly. But Purism has engaged in behaviour throughout the whole project, that can not be described as anything but unethical. E.g.:

  • Repeatedly postponing the promised shipping deadline, missing it, and not communicating about it until weeks later.
  • Hiding behind the pandemic to explain the delays, for a product that was supposed to ship in January 2019.
  • And while the pandemic did exacerbate the pre-existing shipping delays, that still doesn’t explain the state of the software upon release. They had dev boards long before that, the software development would have been unaffected.
  • Claiming they finally started “shipping”, while not mentioning that their definition of “shipping” was delivering a handful to their internal staff, to augment their dev boards with final units in the correct form-factor.
  • Moving preorder customers back in line, and giving new customers who ordered years later preferential treatment, by starting up a second manufacturing facility in the USA, from where they sold a more expensive version (understandable; higher labour costs). The explanation given was that for some reason the parts, which are manufactured in Asia, were available to the US plant but not the Asian one due to supply line issues.
  • Trying to upsell preorder customers who got bumped back in line to this more expensive product. Essentially saying “we decided to move you back in the queue, and if you want us to move you up again, you need to pay us more than what you already paid us”.
  • Breaking the contract they had with preorder customers by denying them refunds. The original refund policy stated that a preorder customer would get an immediate refund if at any time prior to shipping they changed their mind. This was updated so that you could only get a refund once your phone was ready to ship. And applied that retroactively to customers who ordered under the old refund policy.
  • Finally deliver a phone-shaped object with an abysmal battery life, and applications that run slow, despite prior claims that having a lower specced processor would not matter due to the the applications running on bare metal rather than a stripped down Java VM layer, as is the case on Android.
  • Asking their customers to donate in order to fund software development for a product that was supposed to ship in a production-ready state years ago.
  • Unresponsive support. Until you call them out openly, at which point they suddenly become very eager to help.
  • Making the “user-replaceable” battery a proprietary form-factor, not available anywhere else, and refusing to sell replacement batteries outside the US unless the customer also orders a device along with it.

And I’m sure I’m forgetting a lot of stuff that happened over the years, as my memory ain’t the best and I haven’t kept notes or anything.

So here we are today, 6 years after we were promised a functional phone. With a device that technically could be described as a “mobile phone”:

  • It can make calls. Not sure if they ever fixed that bug where the phone would take too long to wake up from sleep to answer an incoming call, but you can always call back.
  • It can send and receive messages. Not sure it can handle MMS, that might’ve been fixed by now; initially I don’t think it could.
  • It has a browser. Technically; it’s unusably slow, but it has a browser.
  • It even has GPS navigation. Again, so slow it’s unusable in practice.
  • It has a camera that’s slow and low-res, low quality.
  • etc…

The pattern here is: “technically” the feature is present; it’s unusable in practice, but since it’s “technically” present we can list it as a feature.

And now it’s gotten real quiet on the L5 front lately, no news, no updates, nothing. Apparently the people still working on the project are a skeleton crew at best. Yet, no mention of that on the website. The device is still being sold as if it’s an actual functional product that people can use. They still sell the “made in USA” version for a whopping $2k, presenting it as a premium product. Can’t imagine anyone being happy with a barely functional device that won’t last a day on a single charge after paying $2k for it. So is it any surprise that people come to these forums to vent?

That’s not our responsibility. It’s Purism’s fault for never addressing their mistakes, let alone fix them. If Purism doesn’t want people criticising them in their own forums (or outside, e.g. on Reddit, should they start suppressing such criticism), then they shouldn’t do business in such a way as to invite said criticism. It’s not up to us to compensate for their failures to behave in an ethical manner.

About the only positive I can say about them is that at least they allow this criticism on their own forums, and don’t try to censor it by deleting posts.

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31

Fault and responsibility-to-resolve are not the same thing.

There’s a saying (that I am applying in respect of “bad blood in the forums”): Who owns the problem?

Answer: We do. Not Purism.

It’s a community forum and most Purism staff either don’t visit the forum at all or visit it sparingly because it is often not helpful or constructive to do so. (So the venting becomes a vicious circle.)

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For me, the disappointments about purism have piled up, which has led me to the assumption that displaying it in the forum will not make the situation worse.

It’s such a shame that we won’t get a working/usable phone in the end (i wanted it so badly).

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33

all the way to

all-thumbs-up-2-free

Some folk won’t want to agree, or critical for fear of retribution in one form or another. I’m not one of them.
My L5 should perform as advertised - it’s not.

The one saving grace for Purism is the volunteer support we get in the forums. The people at Purism Forums really know their stuff.
Unfortunately, we’re here because L5s don’t come close to measuring up to the hype in the ads.

Caveat emptor

~s

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NOTE: If the L5 was to act like a real cell, there wouldn’t be a problem in the Forums.

~s

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Missing the point. This topic is about the forum not the phone.

We can’t fix the phone but we can fix the forum.

(Well, no doubt, some participants have the expertise to fix bugs in the Librem 5. Patches welcome, as they say.)

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OPINIONS: Nothing more nothing less.

You’re missing the point.

POINT:
If the L5 worked, there wouldn’t be any posts complaining about other people’s posts. The L5 IS part of the topic. The L5 (and other hardware) are the reasons for the “Bad blood”.

If anyone doesn’t like to read what someone has said, move on. If they don’t like some of the people here, Mute or Block them.

That in itself would even make Pollyanna happy to read here.

If anything needs fixing, it’s other people’s inability to tolerate others.

Remember that ‘‘viral’’ saying that floated around a few years ago where others tried to change the masses with something like “Learn to be tolerant of others.” The saying fits and has merits.

A complaint can’t be “bad blood”.

~s

1 Like