Hello all, I just spent around 90 minutes reading through everyones comments (word for word), and writing up a reply offering my two cents.
First off - a few years back someone introduced a 5-for-1 system where if you triaged five other tickets, you could request for a core dev to give detailed attention to any ticket of your choice. I think this is an EXCELLENT way of giving something back to the community, keeping the ticket queue down, and getting the results that you need. >From core devs point of view - Posting a discussion to django-developers and raising a ticket in Trac are not for the lighthearted. If you want something in the core, you better have a good argument for it and be prepared to follow it through to the bitter end. If you simply post a suggestion without justification, then you can't expect the core dev to sign it off, they are not mind readers. It's also generally accept that although the core devs are polite, they will give you their brutally honest truth which can sometimes be misinterpreted as rudeness. The core devs are not here to be friendly, they are here to keep Django alive. >From users point of view - One of the responses from the core developers was, look if you want this feature, help us make it happen. But the majority of users are not familiar with the internals of how Django works, and would find it difficult to contribute the quality of code (if at all) required for inclusion into the core. Sometimes people want to help and contribute, but the process can be confusing and engaging with the core devs in a discussion can often be a frustrating thing for those who are new to the world of open source contributions. However, Tom raises a very good point when he said "why should I waste my time trying to jump through these arbitrary hoops? The short answer is I don't, I work on my own projects". Personally, I have become extremely frustrated at some of the decisions and lack of attention being shown on some of these tickets in the past. But it could also be argued that I should have stood my ground and put forward a solid argument. Yo-Yo Ma raises an important point of "The burden of proof is on the originator of an idea", and this is in-line with my above comments. Shai also raises a good point, that core devs time is scarce and often would like some other people to give tickets a flick over before going back to it.. core devs do not have time to give each ticket their full attention. Imho, if you want the extra time, you have to earn it (either in contributing, or putting forward a solid argument). Look at it like this, for every 5 minutes you put in, you can get back roughly 1 minute from a core dev (YMMV). I think really this all comes down to a lack of understand about the Django etiquette, and users feeling like the core devs are not really giving them the attention they expected. Therefore, I propose the following recommendations; * Make the 5-for-1 (or 10-for-1) system official, not many people seem to realise this exists. This will give incentive to core devs to spend a bit longer on a ticket, maybe even throwing in a pleasentry or two (optional). I often found that if I assisted with other tickets and showed myself to be proactive on the ML, then my tickets would usually get the attention of a core dev faster and/or with more detailed response. * Explain what wontfix means to users, and what they can do to change it (without having to read page after page of contribution instructions). Perhaps some sort of automated response that explains all this, and points the user to the mailing list. Until Kirby explained what wontfix meant a few posts back, I had assumed it meant "this is not acknowledged". To summarize my thoughts in a simple bullet point list; * Core devs are not here to be friendly, expect polite yet brutal honesty, with no pleasantries. * If you want 5 minutes of core dev time, spend 1 hour triaging tickets and link with proof (5-for-1). * Trac could be so much better * Explain what wontfix means to users, and that they need to present a solid argument with proof to get it looked at again Cal On Fri, May 10, 2013 at 6:00 PM, Simon <si...@exonar.com> wrote: > Hi, > > When I started using Python a couple of months ago, a quick Google for > frameworks turned up a lot of results for Django so I decided to give it a > spin. > > I'd like to give some feedback on my experience to date. There are a lot > of features I really love, some that are a little quirky and some that are > downright inflexible. None of this will be news - it's the same for every > framework. That said, I started to have doubts when I was attempting to > find solutions/workarounds to the problems I encountered. > > Today was the 5th or 6th time that I've ended up at the ticket system and > seen people saying "This would really help me" and a core developer saying > "I don't see the need" (rather arbitrarily IMHO) and closing as wontfix. > This is invariably followed by people asking for reconsideration which in > turn gets a "use the mailing list" with varying degrees of rudeness. > > While I'm sure it's not the real reason, sending people to the mailing > lists feels like a way of brushing disagreement under the carpet. There's > no obvious way to follow on from the discussion in the ticket to the > relevant discussions in the mailing list (if any) and visitors coming by > years later now have to go and hunt through an archive to find out if > there's any chance of a change. > > I feel that the general attitude expressed in some of the tickets is poor. > The one which prompted this post is > https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/901. I think comment > 20<https://code.djangoproject.com/ticket/901#comment:20> is > a good demonstration of my point. A couple of users were getting frustrated > at the lack of discussion/progress which resulted in a fairly sanctimonious > rant. > > Some other tickets I've ended up on have proposed patches and seem to have > sat in "Design decision" for years, which again gives the impression that > the core team didn't like it so just sort of ignored it until it went away. > > So, to be honest, the impression I'm getting WRT new features in Django is > "Don't bother proposing it 'cos it's not going to happen". > > There are > StackOverflow<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/9791947/how-do-i-refresh-the-values-on-an-object-in-django> > questions<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4377861/reload-django-object-from-database> > > (another<http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15821581/django-how-to-refresh-or-reload-models-from-database>) > on > the topic and numerous other sources pointing at this particular ticket > wondering why it hasn't been implemented. The only reason I can see is that > "jacob" wasn't convinced by the (first) use case. > > Now, I admit that I'm probably seeing the worst side of the problem, there > are probably hundreds of other features which did get in (which is why > there's documentation not tickets for me to find) but that doesn't make the > situation I'm seeing better, just smaller. > > Perhaps the fact that people keep posting on closed tickets shows that the > current flow to the mailing lists isn't a good one? Maybe either add a > "Start a topic about this ticket" link or maybe even just allow discussion > to continue on the ticket as many others do? > > I'm unlikely to use Django moving forward. There are a number of reasons > and I'd be lying if I said this was the biggest but it was a factor in my > decision. > > Anyway, I wanted to take a few minutes and share the impressions I've had > to date - perhaps this way, others will have a better experience in future. > > Thanks for reading > > Simon > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "Django developers" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to django-developers+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To post to this group, send email to django-developers@googlegroups.com. > Visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/django-developers?hl=en > . > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out. > > > -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Django developers" group. 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