it isn't a zero sum game

[truelove]

Often, people will say things like "I like this, but I really want to see [their favourite pet feature] first," in the comments discussion of dw_suggestions. Now, denise has already written a lovely entry, detailing why this is irrelevant and unproductive, but I still want to talk about it.

I think a lot of people don't really understand Dreamwidth development -- it's something that happens in the background, and new features come along, and that's all they really get. The regular code tours help in making things more transparent but I don't think the sense of who and what development is has really spread past the volunteer culture.

Here's the thing: it's a volunteer culture. There are, currently, only two paid developers: mark and fu. There are only two people whose job it is to work on this site; their work is, you can be sure, directed.

This site would not be possible without the other developers: the volunteers. Those volunteers decide where to put their time based on the things that matter to them, be it their own use of the site, or the greater good of the site. When you compare the worth of various features and say oh, well, but that isn't really important, you're putting down their decisions and efforts and it's very frustrating.

I'm a contributor to this site -- I have a CLA filed with Dreamwidth, and I have contributed a single partial patch. It wasn't anything big; I colour-shifted the dreamwidth logo for Gradation Vertical. That happened because I asked what was holding up its rollout and was told that they lacked a logo. So I went and made one.

If someone had suggested that their favourite feature was more important than rolling out yet another site scheme when we already had three, it would've really upset me. It would have felt like being told that I had wasted my time, that this thing that I spent some energy and effort on because I cared about it personally was somehow not worth it -- even though it improved the site for me and others.

Dreamwidth development is directed but not linear, and it is not a zero sum game. And talking about it like it is is unproductive -- counter-productive, even.

Comments

[yvi]

Oh, thank you! I have been meaning to write a post like this for a few weeks now (I might still). I do this in my free time and if I have a spare hour and want to implement something and then see people going on and on about how "but other things are so much more important", that is off-putting.

Thank you for writing this!

[truelove]

I've seen you mention it a few times and it's something that's been getting under my skin lately, so I felt like saying something myself! Especially because I'm someone whose contributions are so tiny in terms of dev work; I've done no coding at all. But I still get a warm fuzzy feeling knowing that my little bit of photoshop work helped make the site more accessible for myself and others by making it possible for the dark scheme to go live.

I would love to see your post, too! I think what frustrates me most is that it seems to come from a serious misconception of what dev is like on this site... and I've always thought of dev as being very, very transparent to the users. Which means maybe my perception is wrong? I guess a lot of users probably don't pay much attention to anything but their actual use of the site. But then that means telling people, hey, this is what dev is really like.

via network

[jumpuphigh]

As a user, I am appreciative of all that the volunteers do. It's part of what sold me on fully migrating to DW. Every little piece counts and I get excited over and over again that there is room for everybody's abilities as devs.

[baggyeyes]

Thank you for this.

I've always looked at the bugs babydevs get into as what they feel they can handle - not what they want to get done necessarily. Then as they feel more confident, they tackle bigger, complex things.

It never really seemed to me to be feature driven, but accomplishment-driven.

[batrachian]

"We have no right to complain about the people who are doing the work we should be doing."

You wanna fix it, fix it yourself, is my stance. Isn't that the whole (bleep)ing point?

[azurelunatic]

This. SO much this.

[triadruid]

I said this on Denise's entry as well when it came out, but I think this is a vast over-simplification. When X is being discussed and R is the favorite pet feature, and X and R are TOTALLY unrelated, then this should be largely ignored. On the other hand, it's OFTEN the case that the R being mentioned is closely related to S, and will in fact change the implementation/make it easier to implement S, it makes sense to say so. And that's usually when I put in some sort of prioritization comment.

On the other hand, when R has 90% "*grabby hands*" support and X has 80% lukewarm "it'd be nice, but I won't be using it", I think that's valuable information for the devs as well.