My feeling's of late about the XBMC Community Forum members attitude
#1
I figure I stick this thread in here so the overlords don't lock it right away.

XBMC to me is a open-soruce application develop by hard-working people who give time out of there life to make this application happen.

The community is the reason these applications exist, for people to use the application, others use it for testing, and others for both/other reasons.

I find of late that I've been using XBMC but there no reason to even post on the fourms anymore.

In the windows help section if I speak out of line or ask a question, the overlords (Jester, and other mods) lock down the thread fast. In truth this does not always happen but I see enough of it to bug me.

When a new person joins this community and they get attack for asking a question, well I understand that they should have common sense to use the search function or read the stickys pointed out at the top.

But what I've seen lately is them being told off, and there threads locked. Thats a great way to handle PR.

Now we have another issue where the Dev's seem fit to remove at random features that some of us rather just been left alone. Again bringing this up gets a thread locked too.

There was no discussion among the community or anyone for the matter of fact. Spiff just went and remove the main reason a lot of people use this application is to get proper data from for there movies.

Yes that other moviedata site is a nice idea, but IMDB is more complete it saves times and I don't need to worry about whats listed. That's why we have options.

Now the way the developers see it, is that lets just ripped out entire sections of the program and use another database that is years behind whats out there.

What I'm trying to say is that I feel scared to even post of the fourms anymore as it's not even really allowed, I know if I say anything I'll get screamed at for not searching before hand, even if I did.

I'm just disapointed I've been with Media Portal, Sage, Meedios over the years and never saw people as unfairly treated when asking simiple questions, or reasons why features are cut. Just flat out attacks, and it makes the whole place feel unwelcomed.

I don't care if anyone replies it's just how I feel about whats going on as of late with this community.
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#2
The scraping issue is a legal one. No one likes it, but open source projects still have to be legal and follow the rules.
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#3
For imdb scraping you could just use media companion or the one fekker has created.
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#4
Thanks for your post.

May I suggest that it is YOU, and the community as a whole, that has an obligation to make people feel welcome. This means you taking it upon yourself to respond to posts by newcomers in a welcoming manner and directing them to the appropriate stickies, manual and so on.

That way the folk who may not respond quite so nicely (as they've generally been doing this for years and thus tend to be a little abrasive) don't have to. They only respond now because noone else does, and to be quite honest, the negativity is kept at a very low level in comparison to many other forums I've been on.

If you participate and respond to newcomers in a positive way then it will be recognised and greatly appreciated by the XBMC team.

As for the IMDb thing: It's all explained in the original thread. I see little point in rehashing it here.

Cheers,
Jonathan
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#5
I'm not really getting in the IMDB thing myself, I just kept copies of my xml files before the change, so yah that was fixed.

Like I was saying, I've been here for only a few months and the feeling I got was not to nice.

I'll lend a hand to make the new people few weclome, in the non-touching way....
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#6
Or just contribute to tmdb. The tvdb would be where it is today without a lot of user participation.

Quote:Now we have another issue where the Dev's seem fit to remove at random features that some of us rather just been left alone. Again bringing this up gets a thread locked too.
Is there something other than IMDB that this holds true for?

Let me start by saying I don't really see this happening very much, but as for your points on threads being locked too soon & people jumping down other's throats... you have to understand that the devs are devs, NOT PR people. I'm not saying it makes rudeness acceptable, but I am saying that you can't expect certain people to be cordial and nice about dumb questions they've answered 50 times before & are easily searchable. It isn't their job. Their job is to make the media center. (also I want to mention I rarely see flat-out rudeness, a lot of answers are short and to the point, but that is different from rude).

Let me also say this, after a quick look through your posts, I can't see that you've ever answered anyone's questions, so you don't really have the right to complain about how questions are answered. You've given bug reports, etc, (which are helpful, thanks for that!) but as far as I can tell, you haven't ever seen a post and just answered someone's question without any benefit to yourself. Sorry if I missed something, but even if I did you haven't exactly been prolific at helping others (whereas someone like Jester clearly has).


Quote:saw people as unfairly treated when asking simiple questions, or reasons why features are cut. Just flat out attacks, and it makes the whole place feel unwelcomed.
links, or it never happened? especially to the flat out attacks....
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search and search the forum before posting.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please read how to submit a proper bug report.

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#7
I'm not a dev, but I can see where their frustration comes from. Within the last few months I have noticed a very large surge of newcomers to the site. That surge brought an absolutely astonishing amount of very basic questions that would have been easily answered if most of those people did a simple search for what they were looking for. The other thing I've noticed is that a lot of the new people have been just throwing out requests all over the place. The thread for AEON Stark alone was driving me nuts because poor Duncan has been working pretty hard on a skin and trying to make it really incredible and all these brand new people to the forum were basically making requests and constantly asking when he'd be done. You can't blame them for getting grumpy. They've put countless hours into this project and don't get a penny for it only to have people bitch and complain and ask for new features on a daily basis. Then, as soon as they fix a bug or add a new feature, someone else comes along with another request. What these guys have brought to us for free is what many of my clients pay $10,000 to $20,000 for so I can see why they get grumpy when people bitch and constantly request things.
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#8
Since I've seen to stir up a nest of hornets as I expected as much.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=43935

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=43876

These are two exmaples of people askign simiple questions, yes they have been anwser, yes they should have used the search, yes I understand why we have stickies.

But instead of making these people feel unwelcomed and telling them off, locking there threads, and tell them go here and there to search instead of just anwsering the question so they can get a better understanding and then telling to check the manual in the future would have been better.

I spent the last five years working in IT as serivce and support for a number of large compaines. I would to tell people off and read stickes, hell it would make my life easier but I anwser the same questions more times then there are threads on this fourm.

http://forum.xbmc.org/showthread.php?tid=42703

Another example, this person was rude and expected help right away and got mad at us for not hlep within the same thread. But I don't think it's really good to tell him off Tongue

Anyways there's about 20 theards alone I can bring up that are locked and those users are pushed away cause they don't understand the manual or what we are talking about in threads.

With the experince of people I work in life with on a daily basis, I'm amazed half of the people that are new even know what a sticky in a fourm is let alone how to create a XML file or add settings to it.

Most common users expect to work, when asking for help, it's a real request for help. They are stuck and want help.

And then going off and saying I don't help much is untrue.

I've posted a few times to people that requested suggestions on various matters.

I would not mind anwsering more often, but most of the threads are locked, before more then two people can read it.

Just saying I think the way some thins have been handle in the past has not been for the best, and I feel bad for those users.
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#9
I have to aggree with the moderators on this one.
As you will see from one of your above links i was involved with a noob and to be fair to
the bloke in question he new little about computers and i agree with you on one point some of the moderators are too quick to respond with a tongue lashing and then closing the thread. as happened to me and kirk who i was helping, but i soon sorted it all out after several pm's to jester and kirk.
but you must have noticed over xmas that a lot of newbies were posting really stupid questions which to be honest annoyed the hell out of me. and they expect answers at the click of a button and can't be arsed to do a proper search.
most of them have not got a brain cell between them. so i can understand the moderators views on this, though i still think some of there comments are childlike. but on the other hand if you take the time to ask in the correct manner and do everything you can to resolve your issue then they will go the extra mile to help you...

So basically it's upto the newbies to do a little more info hunting before asking for help
And for the moderators(not all of them) to learn to be more understanding as we were all newbies at one time. Remember First impressions count
XBMC Frodo 12 - Windows 7 - Asrock Ion 330HT - Aeon Nox
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#10
I do agree that there was a lot of crap posted.

I gave up even checking half of them, cause of that over x-mas as I recall the Windows forum alone was flood daily with posts.

Oh well guess all I can do is lend a hand as much as I can and hope it gets better.
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#11
it won't as long as there are pc's sold to people as they were washing machines then we
will have to put up with them asking silly questions.

We will just have to learn to be more tollerent towards newbies
XBMC Frodo 12 - Windows 7 - Asrock Ion 330HT - Aeon Nox
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#12
And thats what I was hoping to bring to light.

I just feel that we not just one person, but everyone gets a bit jumpy at newbies.

Like I said right now as we speak I'm working at the service desk. I spend my working life helping people understand the basics points of how to use a computer. Yes my job is much more advnance then that but somtimes we all have to anwser the simiple questions..
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#13
And more than once now I see you say, that it's your WORK, meaning you get PAID to do it.

See where I'm going with this ?
Always read the XBMC online-manual, FAQ and search the forum before posting.
Do not e-mail XBMC-Team members directly asking for support. Read/follow the forum rules.
For troubleshooting and bug reporting please make sure you read this first.


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#14
I am and I do understand the difference Smile
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My feeling's of late about the XBMC Community Forum members attitude1