After the interesting post about “non-violent communication” (and the following discussion), I had another post in mind about the last CSC newsletter titled “Half a million members and only one single voice?”. Guess what? I’ve taken my time to dig into some other stuff and prepare the results to donate it as my voluntary work somewhere else.
Recently I stumbled over a CS profile where the box “How I Participate in CS2″ was filled with:
I help the project by directing everyone I meet to www.bewelcome.org
Sorry for wasting your time.
Midsch, please do explain, you’ve left me awfully confused!!
Valerie
“Midsch, please do explain, you’ve left me awfully confused!!”
its simple,he is one of the people who are now supportive of bewelcome and state so on their profile.
i can only suggest people to do the same and put a bw promotion in the place that is the incentive for most people to be on cs: the hosting box.
i put there that if people want to get hosted, they should try bw.
zakOr already explained it: I’ve had the the choice to spent some time on writing a post here or spent the same time doing something else. Call it time I wanted to “donate” to something. He is also right how I spent the time, but that’s not really important. But I think it is important to give some kind of statement on my profile and spread the word about (better) alternatives …
Sometimes I feel like flagging the same dead horse here again and again … so, why not go out, get some fresh air and afterwards do something else? Something more fun, productive and challenging than still trying to change CS?
Still: the pure existence of OCS, the collected informations, the discussions is worth some time. But not if it stops other things.
I always wondered why midsch who had done so much bug documentation (more then anyone else before and after him). Went out quietly and never shows much bitterness about it here or on cs.Guess it is emotional maturity or channeling ones energy into things more productive?
You wondered? Really?! The man has class! What other German would join my fledling, Polish Nowa Huta group? None, that’s who!
I’m not looking for a kiss-ass here, but it’s more than apparent how those selfless volunteers are missed. Have a peek at Cocroach, it’s become a void of communication.
It’s interesting to note that most of the people posting are newcomers; posting and posting. Replies are scarce or non-existant. Sure, we are used to that but how about those 28,000 newbies per week? Clueless!
What a difference a year makes…. People like Midsch (and Anu, and Kaspar, and…) are sorely missed. People like Valerie (and Margaret, and..) are my saving grace. And, well, there are my CouchSurfers, too. How can I forget those???
Thanks for being nice
Even if I still think my work for CS was useful and necessary (at least Casey told me so in one of his two personal mails to me), the practical use is sometimes overrated. Of course after the bugtracker was installed, I fed the tool with some information which saved time and work. Some members of the techteam (guess how many of them are here now …) appreciated the work and opened up channels to get work done. So some nasty bugs were fixed and some ideas improved. Still there was a invisible wall between the decision makers and the rest. And in one damned night all the people who communicated and worked with me left the team. So besides the fact that there was no way left to get things done for me, it was also a matter of personal integrity to stop volunteering. Also I finally realised that my idea of a good setup for a hospitality network and my ideals of volunteering (free licences) doesn’t fit into the CS corp. design. Call me an utopist, but I can’t help it: creating a better world is still on the list.
At cockroach itself I found my personal niche to do something useful. In my opinion this is just the job of a good moderator who knows a bit about the topic. Here I declared myself to be in charge (and later was promoted to moderator), but some more people helped out as well. Transfering the info from technical unskilled reporters to the bugtracker, giving help with workarounds or just explaining how to use the side is not much, it became just important because it was one of the rare place where members get public answers (and usually in a short time). I still think this would be easy for far more places, it’s not a matter of single persons (there are a LOT of them). The problem is again: communication. The avarage user doesn’t have to bother with technical details, but he could expect some answers i. e. form a cockroach moderator. But with no or not enough access to information, without communication channels to people who have this information, you can only try to calm down people (or straight away lie to them). Not my idea of useful work and after a while they notice anyway.
For me this communications failure is so obvious and it could be changed so easily. Probably it won’t happen at CS, but as I mentioned before: I can waste my time somewhere else. I. e. following interesting discussions here. Working for BW. Or just going out now and meet the local crowd.
Cheers,
midsch
PS: Emotional maturity? Phew. I’m older than the avarage couchsurfer, so maybe I learned some lessons before … I hope so! Furthermore I was only a spare time volunteer and didn’t know the main people in person. In fact the first one I met was Anu* some time after my resigning. So I never get hurt in a real personal way. Ok, in a way it was a rip off, but compared to experience, fun and learned things, I still think it was worth my time.
PPS: Nowa Huta – someday.
hey GmU! so nice to see you!
thanks too for your nice posting midsch.
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Hi OCS managers –
i see some spam made it onto this comment list – meanwhile days ago i posted a content-full post that had a list of all the ambassadors and the links to posts on which they had complained – so far it has not shown up. Could you please look for it?
and you might need to implement a capcha module if spam is appearing.
thanks!
i would post some meaningful links here too, but fear this comment would not go through either.