On 2023-05-26 05:31, HSN via fpc-other wrote:
Hello,
All other large projects and enterprises have reliable real time chat
support, but not us!
The obvious difference between FPC and "enterprises" is that FPC is an
open-source hobby project, whereas enterprises having some sort of chat
usually pay this using small part of money collected from their
customers. BTW, those enterprises having chat try more and more to
involve bots in those efforts in order to reduce the associated costs,
i.e. not all of these chats are human powered. It is not true that "all
other large projects...have real...time chat" (reliable or not). In
reality, many projects moved from real-time chat to other forms of
support (if they had such a support at the beginning at all).
Even the #fpc-dev channel is all but abandoned.
It used to have a bot giving information about things happening with
fpc. But not anymore. Something needs to be done about this.
Why on earth are we not allowed to have an official chat support
channel anymore??
It is not about allowing or disallowing anything, but simply matter of
not having members of the project team interested in this form of
communication and having sufficient capacity for it. Anybody interested
is still free to use IRC for FPC related discussion, that has nothing to
do with some channel being official or not.
This is a severe handicap and puts us at a big disadvantage compared
to other projects wherein developers can discuss things in real-time
whenever they like without any interference.
Not true. FPC users and developers have several other possibilities to
get support and discuss things. The manpower is the limit, not the
channel.
Lack of proper chat channels also discourages talented people from
joining our community and participating. I keep hearing people saying
that pascal is a dead language everywhere I go and to be honest the
condition of our chat channels does little to disprove this.
Not true. Real-time chat is anything but a modern and fancy
communication channel which might attract people interested in modern
and fancy languages.
Sometimes people have difficulties such as setting up the Lazarus ide
on their computer and need someone to help or at least the assurance
that help is available if needed. It’s not a good experience to
suddenly have a strange problem and have nobody to talk to. Forums and
mailing lists are great but they cannot replace real-time help.
The response from forums and mailing lists is often much faster than
support provided for commercial products, yet these products still have
their customers and users.
Potential users of fpc/Lazarus see that we don’t have chat support
and don’t even bother getting involved or give up as soon as they
have difficulty installing or using.
Not true. Real-time chat is very likely not the first/most preferred
support option for most new users of FPC/Lazarus and no, it is not true
that comparable projects all have this kind of channel available.
It’s currently nearly impossible to get any real-time help with
fpc/Lazarus related problems anymore because the people who are best
qualified to do this are either absent or inactive.
That situation has nothing to do with the particular communication
channel and/or the status of that channel.
It’s about time we had a active functioning real time irc chat
support again with active developers and fpc/Lazarus experts like
other serious projects do.
Yes I understand that people have real life responsibilities and no I
don’t want developers to take time away from writing code. However I
believe that this is more a problem of complacency that can easily be
solved if all users of fpc just contribute whatever time they can
spare to helping others in real time chat when they are able to do so.
Again, it is not like that real-time chat is the only option for users.
Yes, some users may prefer this channel, but the more communication
channel, the higher overhead and thus less capacity for the real problem
resolution.
.
.
It would be far better to have people who are skilled developers
endorse the irc channel and generate the content. I prefer a more
minor role of just helping with moderation and possibly answering
questions that are within my skill level.
.
.
Understood. However, as already stressed many times, the main reason of
FPC developers not being involved in the IRC channel is not related to
your role.
Tomas
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