I have a slightly different experience. I find aggressive users very easy to ignore. What does drive me mad is that some non-hostile users put zero value on my time.
I’ve painstakingly implemented debug logs and carefully prepared issue templates yet I still get these “does not work (EOM)” (effectively) issues. In the back-and-forth that ensues, sometimes it takes three or four attempts of asking the same question to get what I need, possibly separated by a day each time. Sometimes they’ll eventually realize what they missed was documented in the first place and would have been obvious if they followed the issue template to begin with.
Then there are users expecting me to help with an incomplete, out of context code snippet, or quite the opposite, with their 5k LoC repository, hoping I’d fish out the 50 or 5 lines that are actually relevant on my own.
These users are not outright assholes, so it’s somewhat harder to justify passive-aggressiveness against them. And they may have actual issues locked behind three or four back-and-forths.
(For the record, I got maybe a total of $10 in donations from thousands of hours of FOSS work. Actually a high profile project I worked for did receive sponsorship, but nothing went into my pocket for obvious reasons.)
I’ve painstakingly implemented debug logs and carefully prepared issue templates yet I still get these “does not work (EOM)” (effectively) issues. In the back-and-forth that ensues, sometimes it takes three or four attempts of asking the same question to get what I need, possibly separated by a day each time. Sometimes they’ll eventually realize what they missed was documented in the first place and would have been obvious if they followed the issue template to begin with.
Then there are users expecting me to help with an incomplete, out of context code snippet, or quite the opposite, with their 5k LoC repository, hoping I’d fish out the 50 or 5 lines that are actually relevant on my own.
These users are not outright assholes, so it’s somewhat harder to justify passive-aggressiveness against them. And they may have actual issues locked behind three or four back-and-forths.
(For the record, I got maybe a total of $10 in donations from thousands of hours of FOSS work. Actually a high profile project I worked for did receive sponsorship, but nothing went into my pocket for obvious reasons.)