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Wojciech
Wojciech

Posted on

Community friendliness on dev.to? C'mon, its a myth

I've been browsing feed, and wanted to comment on sth. First comment went through without any fuss, but - on the second article - gave me:

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I mean: I think I understand where this comming from, but this is highly discouraging.

There are many - way more effective - ways to combat spam than this shitty blockage.

The way it was handled here, speak volumes about person(s) who coded / manage dev.to; Unexperienced newbies.

Dont get me wrong: props for creating dev.to, but its essential to carry out indepth "investigation" on what are best practices prior starting things like dev.to

Top comments (7)

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andypiper profile image
Andy Piper • Edited

I have found, and continue to find, the DEV community to be extremely friendly. So much so, that I’m preferring to spend increasing amounts of time here vs other developer sites.

Additionally, describing the folks who run and build the site as inexperienced or newbies is remarkable - several of the team have significant experience across the tech landscape, and the site and community itself is several years old. I think it’s a rude and inappropriate way to describe the team, but that’s my opinion.

I’m curious what your thoughts are on “best practices” for community sites, moderation, etc. I personally do not like the terminology “best practice”, as it implies a single way of doing things that is “best”, I often think of “good practices” instead, because there can be more of a range of choices. Communities are complicated (I know this, I’ve worked in Open Source communities, foundations and projects for over 20 years), and I’ve yet to see a “perfect” way to organise and manage online conversations - or face to face conversations!

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring

One thing to keep in mind with tech is that it's similar to the medical industry: There are countless segments and no one person is an expert at everything.

Having worked on the same product suite for nearly a decade, I can speak to being thrown challenges that are outside your area of expertise. It doesn't mean you're a newbie, but unexperienced is plausible in the context of a single feature.

Given that Dev.to uses Forem, an open-source project, why don't you share your feedback as a Github Issue so they can consider revisions?

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labspl profile image
Wojciech • Edited

why don't you.........

Because of

Like many open source projects, we require that contributors provide us with a Contributor License Agreement (CLA). By submitting code to the Forem project, you are granting us a right to use that code under the terms of the CLA.

Source

Open-source and CLA? Hell fucking no. CLA's are generally opposite to what real open-source is.

I will contribute no code to their repo under current conditions. Because its not open-source as team can do everything with your code without even saying a word.

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring

I’ve only signed a CLA for code contributions, not GitHub issue discussions

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labspl profile image
Wojciech

I understand, but ( for me ) opening issue ( discusing feature/s and/or code ) is also way of contributing. I want noone to take my idea, write it as code, and attribute him/herself to it. Its a theft.

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theaccordance profile image
Joe Mainwaring

Well that's a rather selfish position for someone that's clearly getting value from OSS.

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labspl profile image
Wojciech

Well, TBH I wouldnt call myself selfish. Worry not, I do not feel insulted/offended.........

Getting value from OSS? Using != getting. :)
I create FOSS apps; but real FOSS, without CLA's and other shit. Want to help out? No problem. I recomend starting here

As Im writing this, Im also reading all the lies at forem website ( just scroll down ). Post debunking these lies is "under construction".