[arch-general] A suggestion for the devs regarding rebuilds

[hollunder]

Excerpts from Allan McRae's message of 2010-02-09 01:50:02 +0100:
> On 09/02/10 10:05, hollunder wrote:
> > Excerpts from Allan McRae's message of 2010-02-09 00:26:37 +0100:
> >> On 09/02/10 04:49, Xavier Chantry wrote:
> >>> With every big rebuilds we get new breakage stories. It seems like
> >>> it's the norm nowadays rather than the exception.
> >>>
> >>> I am wondering if it's really only the users that are to blame.. or if
> >>> Arch is also to blame. Or if Arch was supposed to be an elitist
> >>> distribution and is victim of its success.
> >>
> >> I think the answer to that is in the question: What did we do different
> >> previously that resulted in far less of these issues?
> >>
> >> My impression is that nothing has particularly change in terms of how
> >> rebuilds are handled.  If anything, the whole process has become a lot
> >> more streamlined and cases of missing a package rebuild are now almost
> >> non-existent.
> >>
> >> So the cause must be... A change in user-base? Maybe just an increase in
> >> user-base resulting in more people who think Arch should be done their
> >> way and not the Arch way?
> >>
> >
> > I don't know whether you (I don't mean you alone) are just being cocky
> > or blind or I don't know what, but I've seen this attitude all over the
> > place and I don't get it.
> > By this attitude I refer to the total ignorance regarding these serious
> > problems, bye developers and regular users on IRC or right here.
> >
> 
> It might be being elitist, but saying so does not explain why there were 
> not such big issues earlier in Arch's history.  Maybe the target of 
> "competent linux users" does not accurately reflect the user base.  So, 
> should the target change or should the user base change?
> 

I can't speak of the past, I only use Arch since about a year.
It might not have to do with userbase competence at all, for example I
had few issues, a handfull of packages that wouldn't work because they
were already compiled against the new version while I still had the old
one installed, corrupted packages from pretty much all mirrors I tried
for a while, nothing serious, and I also don't run any critical system.

Fons on the other hand is certainly far more experienced and competent
than me, runs critical systems and had apparently bigger problems.

So if we look at this admittedly small sample then your theory of the
now suddenly dumb userbase seems wrong. What might be true is that with
growing popularity the ratio of users who know all of Archs quirks
inside out to normal users is likely changing.

Maybe the issues are somewhere else? I don't know. One observation I, as
a stinking normal user, could make is that there are few devs around
where users hang out. Let's see.. I know of one dev active in #archlinux
on IRC and about three devs active on this mailinglist, including you,
Aaron and the IRC-dev. So maybe it's the devs who detached from the
users and there's simply no-one around who could pass on the knowledge?
Sure you get pissed off by all those dumb users, but how should they get
wiser when everyone else is just as dumb? How should the userbase
change?

One thing is for sure, elitist and cocky behavior will alienate users,
competent ones as well, and alienated users wont help, they wont write
patches, they'll switch distro at best. Right now I see, especially on
IRC, a culture of slightly less dumb users with elite attitude
alienating other dumb users. That's not helping anyone.

I know, it doesn't really answer your question, but maybe it raises a
few new ones.

Regards,
Philipp