Yesterday, I opened a topic on the forum about the shortcomings of Joplin and also sent it to the developers because this issue is related to the program itself that only the developer can address. However, I received a response from a developer that was not constructive and discouraged me from bothering them. What's going on? I am explaining the deficiency in the program in detail and offering contributions for its improvement. Is this the response I should be getting? Do you want to support open-source applications and free software while also aspiring to be the dictator of the forum? As a Joplin user, I would like to express my protest against this attitude.
My answer was maybe a bit short but I don't feel it was rude, I just said this after you've sent me two PMs to answer two of your forum posts:
Please don't send me PMs. The help you get from other members is as valuable as mine, and I don't have time to answer you personally every time.
And you did get answers from developers and long term members, and their answers are as good and often better than mine.
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Okay, I had forgotten that I had sent a message before, and that's my mistake. However, while a simple response like "we are aware of the issue" and "we are working on a solution" was available, I couldn't find it appropriate for you to say "don't PM me." Because the topic I opened concerns only the developers. Also, I didn't notice any developer responding to the thread. Everyone acknowledged that there is a problem, and it needs to be resolved, but no one volunteered to solve it. Anyway, if it was my fault, I apologize. Have a good time on the forum.
This isn't true. Joplin is open in many ways - source, community and contribution - and has many more contributors than "official" Joplin developers. Anyone can submit a PR if they can justify a feature and develop it.
As Laurent has said, there is no need to PM people (myself included), if we want to respond then we will. Many of us are purely volunteers, I don't get paid to be involved with Joplin. The purpose of the features category is to gather support and interest from the community. If a feature is particularly desired then it will attract the attention of developers (official and community) to implement.
Your topic isn't actually novel either, if you have a look it has been mentioned before (How Am I supposed to find Notebooks when adding notes?) if you want to see prior discussion on the topic - this topic is particularly relevant as back then it also didn't attract a huge amount of attention from the community.
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I didn't say anything against that. The nature of the open-source program is already like this. But my priority was to reach the developers on the forum. Because there is a deficiency, and other members who wrote on the topic are also aware of this deficiency.
The reason for sending a private message was only to inform about a topic where developers could contribute. Because there are dozens of topics on the forum, and I thought there might be a chance of overlooking the topic I opened. I really don't understand why a simple PM is being exaggerated like this. If you value communities so much, why do you react this way when community members try to reach out to you? It's truly demoralizing...
So, in your view, the opinions of someone using the application are not important. Only the majority's opinion matters, is that right? If someone makes an important and useful suggestion for the application, will it not be considered because the majority did not express that suggestion? This discourse really sounds like a joke... I must also express that I condemn this attitude.
I have great respect for the effort you put into the application. But please, approach your members trying to reach you for "valid" reasons and their "suggestions" in a more constructive manner. You won't lose anything. On the contrary, you'll gain...
But my priority was to reach the developers on the forum.
And you do that by just opening a topic, you don't need to PM people to call attention to it, especially not multiple times. At most you can tag people but if you don't get a response there is normally a reason for it.
Because there are dozens of topics on the forum, and I thought there might be a chance of overlooking the topic I opened
Exactly, in the nicest way yours isn't any more special or important than anybody else's. It might be to you but imagine if everyone did that for topics they opened.
So, in your view, the opinions of someone using the application are not important. Only the majority's opinion matters, is that right?
No, it seems that it is you who doesn't understand what the benefit of a "community" actually is. Not everyone's individual ideas or concepts can, or should, be implemented. Joplin is used in different ways by so many people and that is where the community shines. It might be that somebody can simply suggest a different way of working that gets around the need for a particular feature at all. It might be that somebody can suggest alternatives to the feature. Somebody might identify that the problem isn't general and actually what you see as a lack of functionality might be a bug. There are so many different reasons why community feedback is important and in many, many ways often better than feedback from anyone involved more "officially" with the project. That includes people from the community who may seek to create a PR.
I feel you are making a bigger deal out of this than it really is. Yours is one topic amongst many but you have deemed it more special and more deserving of attention than anybody else's to the point of sending people several direct messages just because they have a blue J logo on their profile. The topic in question is generating valuable discourse from long term and active community members and developers, I don't see any reason why it should require explicit feedback from specific people. Trust me, people do see things even if they don't reply to them. It is great that you are passionate about it and thank you for creating the topic but please have some respect for the time and resources that can be devoted to the project by people.
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If I had known that sending private messages would be such a big problem, I might have considered tagging. But then I could have faced a question like "why are you tagging the developers, what if everyone does that?"
What I want to convey is this: If I were bothering you with a feature that wouldn't affect your comfort as an ordinary user and application user through PM, you would be right. I would even respect it if you banned me for it. However, what I'm pointing out is more than a feature deficiency. I'm saying that there is a bug-sized issue for the mobile application. I shared visuals in the thread. So, I'm not advocating for an ordinary feature that would make it easier for me to use the application. I'm addressing a serious issue that significantly affects my comfort using the application. Please distinguish between these two! The fact that the topic is not important to you does not change the reality that there is a serious problem that makes the usage difficult at the level of a "bug." Also, I would like to remind you that people who wrote in the thread agree with me.
Thank you for your explanation. I respect your experience in application development. At least, I believe I achieved my goal and conveyed the issue to the relevant individuals. The decisions you make from now on are up to you. Although I would prefer you to write in the thread I opened for the issue I am experiencing, I am glad to see your polite and constructive tone, even if we have different opinions. I wish you a good time on the forum.
I'm adding the title I opened for those who read the thread here:
What I would personally do in a situation like that is to make two topics and link them. Adding a search box is a feature suggestion that can live separately from the issue with the sub-notebook display problem (which is what you originally did). For example the latter problem could in theory be partially solved by allowing horizontal scrolling when it overflows like that and I'd even say it could probably be logged as a bug directly onto GitHub instead. Having two different issues like that in a single topic can get rather confusing and can steer the conversation to or away from either one.
For the record you already had somebody particularly influential in Joplin development commenting on your topic (look at the top contributors to Joplin - Contributors to laurent22/joplin · GitHub). This is what I mean by not needing to target people with the blue Joplin icon, your voice is plently loud enough just posting a topic, there is literally no need to PM or ping people when the topic is already getting attention from the right crowd.
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