carol and gimp and me
I am glad that Dave has picked up the topic and made this a public discussion. After all this is about how the GIMP project and its developers are being perceived by the public.
I know very well that I have myself more than once hit the wrong tone on mailing-lists, forums and in Bugzilla. I will not try to blame this on the fact that English is not my native language, although I often just feel misunderstood. If my attitude has shied away potential contributors, please realize that I am very sorry about that and that I am working on my communication skills. If I should have insulted anyone, I apologize for that.
Carol however is acting on a different level. To me it appears that she is actively trying to hurt the GIMP community wherever she can. She has lately crossed the line quite often. Her behaviour on the GIMP mailing-lists has caused myself to avoid using the lists if possible. A few weeks ago I was close to turning my back on the whole GIMP project, simply because I got so sick of her behaviour on #gimp and the GIMP mailing-lists. I observed myself being agressive and working on GIMP simply wasn’t fun anymore. Instead of dropping the whole thing, I started to /ignore carol on IRC and that has helped me a lot. Unfortunately ignoring her doesn’t solve the problem of her attacking people on the lists and in private email. We aren’t going to stop that but I feel that it is important that innocent newcomers have a chance to realize that she is not speaking on behalf of the GIMP project. She shouldn’t be sending her pamphlets using a gimp.org email address. Perhaps we all need to be more careful about what we are using the gimp.org address for. In the case of Carol however, I don’t think that asking her to stop is going to work. We tried that more than once. It is now time to do something and revoking her gimp.org address seems like an appropriate measure.
To put all this into the right light, let me add that we all want the old Carol back. I remember the time when I very much enjoyed chatting with her and I very much respect the work she has done for GIMP. Her tutorials are a good resource for our users and without her work we would probably still be using the old gimp.org website. If there is anything we can do to get her back as a positive contributor, we should do it. First of all though it is important to keep her from doing further damage.
August 31st, 2005 at 7:48 pm
Hi Sven,
I have been observing the gimp community since past six years.
Problem seems to between, people who hack on/contribute to Gimp because they are interested in it and those people who are paid by their company to work on it.
The latter tend to be grumpy and tend to treat volunteers as their slaves. The volunteers obey Newton’s third law.
Here is an exact case.
August 31st, 2005 at 8:02 pm
[...] ;ve noted a few links about an individual dev. on the gimp who is wreaking havoc for them. Talk about a crank! I’ve found the best way to deal with issues lik [...]
August 31st, 2005 at 8:12 pm
ravi, there are no GIMP developers who are being paid to work on it. GIMP is entirely driven by volunteers.
August 31st, 2005 at 8:27 pm
3.
ravi, there are no GIMP developers who are being paid to work on it. GIMP is entirely driven by volunteers.
neo, here in this case, it is a tech-challenged redhat employed visual designer v. Carol(who is fustrated for unknown reasons).
Carol seems to have tried to help her initailly later, has lost her patience and some offensive replies.
What Carol has done is certainly objectionable, but her point of view is also reasonable.
August 31st, 2005 at 8:38 pm
If this was the only such incident and if Carol was willing to admit that she did something wrong, noone would be making such a fuss about it. Unfortunately the mail to Diana is just one example of many. During the last two years, I have several times been very close to asking for her email address to be revoked. So far I resisted that urge because I felt that it is a very drastic measure and I still respect Carol for the work that she’s been doing for GIMP. The mail to Diana however was the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.
August 31st, 2005 at 8:39 pm
> tech-challenged redhat employed visual designer
I only see Red Hat here, I don’t know any of her tech-challanges or visual designer skills. Just because someone works for Red Hat doesn’t make him or her become an expert. It’s just someone who had luck working for them. Nothing more, nothing less.
August 31st, 2005 at 10:30 pm
Me, if you care to have a look at Diana’s blog or talk to those who worked with Diana (Andy Fitzsimon as I have understood), may be your doubts will vanish
September 1st, 2005 at 5:46 am
I only see Red Hat here, I don’t know any of her tech-challanges or visual designer skills. Just because someone works for Red Hat doesn’t make him or her become an expert. It’s just someone who had luck working for them. Nothing more, nothing less.
I think her constant “nagging” through the bug reports caused that ire.
It is true that no one can expect her to be proficient just because she is employed by a cool open source company. But, if you see some of her bug reports they are about the bugs’ management tool than the Gimp.
But Carol’s behaviour was uncalled for and offensive… she should correct it.
September 1st, 2005 at 9:14 am
It’s really a shame. I’m not able to understand what Carol is doing, as well. I met her in Norway (GimpCon 2004) as a really, really friendly person. I would never have thought, that Carol is such a friendly person if I only know her by her mails. Maybe she didn’t cope with the fact, that she isn’t the maintainer of the website anymore (or is she the maintainer again, because Niklas resigned because of the lack of time?). I’ve the feeling, that this problem relies on problems with the webpage years ago and you need to dig out that cruft and discuss it again.
September 8th, 2005 at 11:26 am
Sven, there are two issues raised here: Carol, and the feedback to bug reports.
First topic. Carol:
As you know, if Carol is the number one controversial personality in Gimp world, you are the second one. In Dave Neary blog, I noticed a French post by Raymond Ostertag (who is a highly appreciated French member of this community). Raymond ask for some humanity towards Carol, because she has been giving a lot and argues that excluding her might only make things worse.
Perhaps carol has been suffering of a “burn out” phenomenon lastly. I have to say that I am puzzled by her since 50% of her posts are normal or useful and 50% are worth absolutely nothing. But that is still somehow a good amount of help for newbies.
Second issue:
In another post on Dave’s blog, I noticed a comment about the way many bug reports have been closed as WONTFIX, NOTABUG (NOBUG?), To me, it could be solved by a simple rule of conduct. At least 2 developers would be needed to close bugs for these reasons. When one opens a bug and it is closed after 10 minutes without any discussion is rude to bug reporters. They are likely not to report a bug again. Bugzilla itself is rude for this (I mean the way bugzilla works is rude, not the developers).