For the sake of Linux Mint we need to force the issue

[ThistleWeb]

Like any project, people get involved to help improve it, advocate it's use, help users etc when they feel an attachment to the project. We choose to invest our time and in some cases money to help the cause. We do it because we care about the project; in this case the project is Linux Mint.

I haven't ran a Linux Mint system for a little while now, my desktop has a temporary AntiX install, the new PC will likely have Crunchbang and my netbook is Crunchbang so why do I care? While I distro hop for my own tastes, Mint has been my go-to distro for users new to Linux regardless of what I currently use myself.

When people are new to something, they need encouragement, they need to know they're not being left to dangle in the wind when they have an issue. While I offer myself as a one-to-one support up to a point, I always take the time to explain about the forums, show them IRC, explain that solutions for other distros are also applicable to them (if it's the Ubuntu base, I show them the Ubuntu forums etc). I empower them to explore on their own as they get more comfy with Linux.

What impression do they get if the one time they need help, the forums and the IRC are in the middle of their all too regular time out parties? They fall back to me, which isn't an issue, unless they can't get hold of me.

When you're in a totally alien environment, something goes wrong and your anxiety levels multiply. Experienced Linux users don't have that same issue, we know there are other places to look for help, or to just leave it for a while and try later. The inexperienced could easily come to the conclusion that it was some amateur project that's now dead. They could easily get the impression that if the website can't cope with what it's designed for, how good is the OS? They could easily get the impression that Linux really is an amateurs game, and that switching back to Windows is the only proper OS option, even with the security and stability issues.

If you take the time to write a tutorial that addresses an issue, you want people to benefit from that tutorial right? I do screencasts with the motivation that some people who are searching for that knowledge find it, watch it and find it helps them. If the forum is down every day for hours at a time on a regular basis why would you post a tutorial here? The extension of that is would you spend your time writing it at all or do something else?

The biggest problem I see here is the deafening silence. When you have a passionate community of people, many of whom REALLY care about the project, and know the downtime is a running joke, they try to get it addressed. This used to be a long running issue which was eventually addressed by switching hosts I think. It has returned to the point where every day for a while now, for several hours at a time the forums either time out or give a MySQL4 error of too many connections. We have tried raising this in the forums and are met with a deafening silence from those in a position to address it. Nobody who can fix it has joined that thread to say "we hear you, we feel your frustration, let's figure out a way to fix this".

http://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?f=58&t=78744

I don't see any point in continuing as we are, I see a new approach is called for to get the point over. Any community project is dependent on the participation of it's community. Linux Mint is dependent on users helping each other, we are it's oxygen. It's time we used that to force the issue. I suggest we start to withdraw our individual oxygen supplies until these issues are addressed, or at the very least they've been acknowledged. I suggest the only topic we contribute to is the fixing of these issues. All other topics will be left unanswered, all threads or posts we'd usually help the moderators by reporting go unreported. The IRC help channel is left to fester etc.

We need to answer silence with silence.

[Habitual]

+1 and
'What he said'.

[Roken]

I'm a "Partial Yes". Whilst I fully share the frustration, and support the sentiment, I'm also one of those people that finds it hard to ignore a plea for help if I'm capable of giving that help.

However, I'm not prepared to waste hours of my time battling with the forums in order to give that help. If I click reply and everything happens as it should, then I'll reply. If, OTOH, I click reply and then find I either have to wait 10 - 15 minutes for the reply page, or click "Send" half a dozen times before my reply is registered, then I'll simply leave the question unanswered.

[wayne128]

+1

I thought I have good patience for many years.

this one wears me out.

it took me another 20 minutes to read this and reply this post.

and I voted Yes.

[monkeyboy]

In am demanding my money back. Seriously I am willing to bet that the powers that be are aware of the situation and are addressing it as best they can. What would be nice however is a little heads up on what is going on.

[MALsPa]

What would be nice however is a little heads up on what is going on.

+1!!!

[rhodry]

I voted no!

I do care about this distro and I want it to succeed. I understand & share some of the frustration, but, your approach is tantamount to using a sledgehammer to open a chestnut, IMHO.

Why take an action that actually contributes to providing the maintainers with more problems than they already have to deal with. By the way, I respectfully suggest you will not "force" anyone to do anything.

I live in a part of the world where time differences mean most of what I can contribute to is already covered by time I see it - and, yes, it is frustrating that the server slows down my contributing when I can; but, seriously, we are talking about one man and a handful of volunteers here. I think they do do an outstanding job all things considered and I will continue to support their efforts where I can.

Thank goodness some of you don't repesent me at the United Nations is all I can say!!

cheers,
rhodry.

[MALsPa]

I agree with rhodry, so I wouldn't vote "yes." But I'd like to see more communication about this issue coming from whoever is working on it. Maybe I've just missed it?

[samriggs]

As far as slowness goes, that can be a normal thing if theres a ton of traffic hitting the forums at once, I found a bug in phpbb also that gives the mysql error and is stated on the phpbb bug list, They know about it and I reported the bug as well, so I know they know about it, maybe getting some more involved in the forum to try and fix this error would be helpful, more money to get better hosting (which I know they are doing, because I read it somewhere a while ago, so its not a dead end, they are attempting to make it better) The question is, with the flood of people running from ubuntu's disater of unity (sorry but I perfer gnome but thats only my opinion and isn't worth a hill of beans) and fedora and opensuse jumping on gnome 3 (which I am using with lmde xfce) alot of folks don't want that change yet or maybe not at all, so they run to the mint or arch or whoever isn't using gnome3 or unity, which one is the mint. thus we have a flood here, which is good but hard on the servers.
Do they know about it. YES, are they trying to make it better YES.
are they superhuman? NO
When I first came here I never found a place so helpful and trying to help others out, I found so many answers that I rarely had to ask, although I did when I needed help and most of the times 90% I'd say, I found the answers through this forum, and also tried to contribute in my limit knowledge when I could as others do.
The question is what is causing the slowness, traffic or the phpbb bug (I'll try and find it again, I know its on the phpbb list)or both.
The mint mentioned something about getting better servers to deal with this, (which cost money if you ever hosted a website before anyone who has knows that too much traffic can cause slow downs big time), if its the bug, trying to find a fix would be greatly helpful for anyone who runs phpbb, not just the mint, hopefully they fixed this error by now, I haven't checked it since and my php tech parts haven't been in action for years and forgot a lot of what I used to know or I would even dive in a try and find a fix for phpbb if I could.
Anyhow I do back up the mint, are they perfect, heck no, no one is perfect, are they good, yes they are, as far as I am concerned, which is why I stay here.
I can put up with some slowness while they go through the ways needed to fix issues, knowing that they do try. What more can I ask from a place, they listen, there helpful, they try.

[MALsPa]

The thing is, even if people are jumping from Ubuntu, looking at how frequently new posts appear at the Ubuntu forums compared to here, seems to me that the traffic over here is nowhere near as heavy as over there. But I'm not seeing these frequent slow-downs at the Ubuntu forums.

Anyway, hope it gets taken care of.

[lmintnewb]

Just 2 cents, while it's obvious TW isn't happy with the situation and has reason to be irritated. Honestly expecting this thread to take off and become some boycott that moves Mint HQ to immediately redress it is silly. Taking oneself too seriously. Am sure people who are helped with trouble shooting a Mint related tech issue appreciate the help they get, well errrr ... some of em.

It's not like this forum hinges on any one persons devoting time to it. I don't even use LM anymore, but still like the distro, the community here and these forums. Think it's silly to try to withhold participation and expect the Mint devs to respond well to it. What are they supposed to do email every regular here and apologize that the server wasn't working ? Post a thread and do the same or what ?

Guessing this forum is an asset to Linux Mint itself. They no doubt do receive revenue from it and doubt they like seeing it having performance issues either. I mean it's not like it's by design. Only somewhat familiar with what goes into hosting and admin'ing a high traffic web forum. Sure it's no cake walk though. Now that I've typed a pointless bk in response to this. I mainly come here cause I like seeing what other nixers are doing and do like sometimes being able to help someone figure out a technical problem. Agree with TW in part and see the other side too. Don't intend to boycott the LM forum. Guessing the Mint devs are trying to sort things out if only out of self interest.

I try not to take myself so seriously as to believe I'm essential to the success or failure of the LM forums, shrugs. Agree with the sentiment TW ... it is annoying to deal with a web server and forum that isn't acting right ... for sure. Not sure how constructive it is to take the approach you're advocating here though ... Mentioned, this is only 2 cents .. Worth exactly that much.

[MALsPa]

What are they supposed to do email every regular here and apologize that the server wasn't working ? Post a thread and do the same or what ?

Well, posting a thread and letting people know what's up might not be a bad idea.

Mint's a great distro but this problem with the forum slowness kinda stinks.

[samriggs]

Ubuntu uses vBulletin instead of phpbb which probably makes a difference somewhat.
Which also has a price tag attached to it.
phpBB is free.
Another thing to look at is how many servers does ubuntu have to that of the mint?
Another thing to look at is how much money does ubuntu have to play with verses the mint?
Ubuntu was top dog for quite awhile until they came out with unity and probably had a ton of backing, the mint starting reaching new heights since the unity scandle hit this year, it might take a bit to catch up with less servers to play with, less funding to spread out, etc etc etc all these things have to be taken into account before making any type of judgement.
What they have to work with and what they have accomplished ina very short time is amazing, like I said is it perfect? of course not, I remember the flood that came in, I came just before the flood hit, all the servers were flooded because they were not used to this amount of people coming in at once from what I understand it, which is understandable, a lot questions came flooding in a lot of a lot of things all at once, but one thing that stood out through it all for me was, they listen, they really do, clem listens and gets involved, the other volunteers (I stress the word volunteers) get involved as much as possible, we have to remember they have lives also.
It not as easy as whoops we have a flood we need more volunteers and more money, more servers better this better that all at once.
Give it time, this place is a great community and they do try their best.
I remember I used to run a site for flash/php and it went smoothly years ago, then I was asked to be a tech reviewer for some flash/php books I asked my name not go in the books and my site not go in them either but they did it (got talked to into it), I got swamped, I had to get better hosting with more bandwidth, I had my emails flooded daily with questions, not only me but others that became tech reviewers also, its not as easy as one two three, wish it was that easy but its not.
It would be nice if we had better backers better supporters, hopefully that will happen.
One thing we can do now is to all pitch in the best we can or when we can and help this project.
It is free, it's based on volunteers for the most part, the more help the better.

[Fandangio]

Whilst I understand the frustrations it would be very sad if the kind assistance of the more experienced users were in some way with held. That said the fact they are unable to post anyway brings that situation about quite naturally.

I'd rather people were encouraged to donate or sponsor mint in order that we all receive first rate services (which are not free). There was a similar thing going on at another website I frequent (Formula 1 based). The live race chat was capped to 20 users as a free service but for more was an annual subscription. We had a whip round, found the money and got the service implemented.

[lmintnewb]

Yep agree ( MALsPa and da infamous Fandangio ) ... just don't see it as the end of the world myself. There are other forums afterall. Sure Mint doesn't allow it on purpose. I don't doubt there's much that goes into running a high traffic web forum. Mucho headaches, rear pains and things that can and do go wrong. Not as smoothly as Mint HQ would like, shrugs. Good with the bad and all that. If TW has a stroke worrying about this it won't make the forum run any better.

As for my participation ... not to worry. Mint probably wishes I'd stop coming here. My advice is often just as likely to break somebodies PC, as to help em fix it.



PS afterthought:

If someone really wants to help, take up a host LM forum collection eh. And/or if you or someone you know is a master forum admin and server admin guru. There ya go ... volunteer some skills and time. If you can show LM ya honestly know what you're doing and can help, doubt they'd flat out reject any offer to help get the Mint forums running better.

[MALsPa]

just don't see it as the end of the world myself

Yeah, same here.

[ThistleWeb]

A large part of the frustration is the smell of Apple in all of this. Note how Apple deal with people. The users scream at them that there's an issue affecting a lot of their users and that they'd love it if Apple responded, even acknowledged they'd heard the screaming. Yet Apple stays silent, no comments, no responses, no nothing. It may be that Apple haven't heard, it may be that they have and are working on a solution but the users have no idea because Apple chose to stay silent.

It's times like this that Mint seems to be modeled on the Apple approach to issues. I wonder if people who say "they are aware of it" have seen evidence of this or if they're just speculating. I'd hope so, but since nobody has chipped in to let us know, I don't assume it's the case.

In the FOSS world, one of the advantages is the openness in communication, where people aren't restricted by holding back bug fixes for the next paid version or some product launch.

This is about getting their attention.

[tinca]

I personally take it for granted that the people running Mint know about the problem concerning the slow, or at some times impossible task of accessing the forums. I am happy to sit back and have a cup of tea or two and wait for the improvement which I am sure will come. Expecting or demanding that I be kept in the loop is an arrogant assumption of my importance in the great scheme of things.

If I cannot get on the forums then I will try again later or wait for the next day. I am 73 and disabled with a damaged spine, and I do take some comfort being able to read the chatter on the forum, but it is not the be all and end all. The forum tardiness is annoying at times, but be patient, take a deep breath and find something else to do until the problem is resolved. Trying to put pressure on Clem and the team seems to be somewhat rude.

My 2 cents worth.

Best regards Keith

[lmintnewb]

Get what you're saying TW. Sure LM doesn't want to loose people who are active or helping out in their forums and promoting LM. End of the day though, what are they supposed to do about it ? Make a server that can handle X connections run smoothly with X +200 ? Pay for better hosting, to give away more free software and free support for it ?

Still like LM, think it's good linux and does seem a good gnu/nix option for people migrating to nix. For that matter ... LM, seems to try to have summin for everyone ... newb 2 guru. But for the most part ... IT'S FREE. The majority of the userbase of any Mint release isn't paying a red cent. So it's their choice and their gain in getting a free alternative to proprietary software. Even if everything may not be perfect and peachy keen in all regards.

Mint obviously knows it's an issue though for several reasons. Like ... they didn't go through all the trouble of building up LM with no desire to see it do well. Plus they get revenue from the forum ads and etc. So yeah ... think it's safe to say they are aware of issues with the forum and want to resolve it too. I could see being more upset it LM had money pouring out it's ears. Don't think that's the case though.

Now if you'd like to file a class action lawsuit against LM HQ for inadvertently facilitating forum addiction ... Where do I sign ? Errrr ... but, since they make and give away software free. If we win ... what would we get ? Sighs ...

[randomizer]

If someone thinks that changing the software might help then I might be able to offer some assistance there, although not in the immediate future. I technically own a licence for the complete (but non-mobile) vBulletin 4.x suite that I purchased for a project at work which never got fully off the ground and was subsequently dropped. Since I bought it using my company's money I'd probably still need to get approval to reuse it for something else, but I don't think it would be a huge issue.