[infinity0]

>> fuck webpack

>> sorry to hear you feel this way! [..]

>> [..]

When I first read the quote, I thought "that's nice of webpack". Then I saw this:

> The greatest power you have for haters or trolls is love.

I would not call someone saying "fuck webpack" a hater or a troll, I would call them a frustrated user. OTOH, you can turn a frustrated user into a hater or a troll by dismissing their concerns or by trying to shift the blame onto them by calling them rude.

Venting your frustration is an absolutely understandable behaviour when faced with unintuitive software, especially for users who don't understand what they're using (including software developers!) - they're in a position of lesser power, feel helpless, and need an outlet to express this. No developer should be taking these expressions as a personal attack, nor belittling it as rude or trolling.

Because of this, I saw the original quoted interaction in a new light - upon a second look, it is a bit unsubstantial, bordering on virtue-signalling. A proper quote that actually indicates caring about your users, would include responding to a specific problem from a very frustrated user, by actually fixing the issue. Not just saying nice words.

[wellpast]

I don't think it's acceptable in any situation to express your frustration this way in a public forum, especially for OSS. Thoughtful critical pieces are fine and necessary, but I don't think blatant vitriolic "cathartic" outlets should be encouraged at all -- in this case, it is being encouraged by the maintainer, but I don't think that helps anything.

I get the frustration...I've said "Fuck XYZ" a thousand times for a thousand different software XYZs but to take that to a public forum is suitable behavior for a toddler, and does harm.

How many nights & weekends were spent building Webpack? How many nights & weekends coming up with "fuck webpack"? Show some respect and at least spend a few hours in thoughtful critique. Civility must still have a place, even online.

Tangentially, Rich Hickey recently responded (I think appropriately) to a similar outlet re Clojure [1].

[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/Clojure/comments/73yznc/on_whose_au...

[avenoir]

I agree that screaming something like this on Twitter when you're in temporary rage is nothing but childish. But it's also hard to ignore that someone who represents webpack was able to resolve the situation calmly and civilly only to call the person a hater and a troll later on. This, in my eyes, is a breath away from screaming obscenities on Twitter.

[Ar-Curunir]

Lol you absolve frustrated users of all blame. Even if you're frustrated, it's not difficult to be civil.

[infinity0]

I don't consider it uncivil for someone else to say "fuck [my project]" after having trouble with it. I would consider it uncivil to write me messages saying "fuck you, you are an asshole for writing [my project]".

Maybe that's just me.

[patcon]

I personally feel that's just you. I'm genuinely happy for you that you can be unfazed, but many many people can't -- it costs them and taxes them. Someone not sticking up for those latter folks makes for a world where only folks with your brand of relating can cut it. That's kinda needlessly limiting, when the cost of things being better is just setting our collective arbitrary bar a little higher :)

Holding people to a higher standard doesn't make the world any worse -- it just means those people have to adapt, but that makes for a world that more and more of us (even those without your sorta soft skills) can navigate. That seems healthy?

[wellpast]

Whatever you want to call it, it’s a temper tantrum. It’s what children do in supermarkets.

[stevebmark]

Sean Larkin's favorite game is to respond to every single Tweet containing the word "Webpack" and not help them in any way

[thelarkinn]

Hey maybe you are victim of this and I missed out!

I don't consider this a game, I take it pretty seriously to help others. However, I am human like many others and as of late I've been a bit caught up with family. If this happened to you then by all means I can own it and apologize. Otherwise shoot me a DM if you really need help and if I can't help I'll find someone who can

[thelarkinn]

It's more then nice words. It's showing you listen, it's empathizing, it's putting yourself in that persons shoes. To fix things like usability we have a lot of long work ahead of us and we want to do so.

I don't consider that person a hater etc. I think maybe the transcript of my talk didn't really mean to couple that statement with that slide etc.

[naspeh]

Anyway, thanks @thelarkinn for great write up, it's just good success story to learn from. Keep rocking!