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Open source devs: please, please add screenshots...
(lemmy.world)
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this post was submitted on 14 Aug 2023
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Dear open source app user: feel free to improve the README file of the projects you come across by adding a few screenshots you believe are relevant.
Although I understand the OP's perspective open-source is a community effort and people should have a more proactive attitude and contribute when they feel things aren't okay. Most open-source developers aren't focused / don't have time for how things look (or at least not on the beginning). If you're a regular user and you can spend an hour taking a bunch of screenshots and improving a readme you'll be making more for the future the project that you might think.
When the last big Twitter migration to Mastodon occurred there were a lot new users complaining about things like documentation, bugs, etc. Old users and FLOSS supporters kept pushing the "its open source, write a doc or fill out a bug ticket" and evem included documentation on how to do those tasks.
Most people just continued to complain. /facepalm
We just don't live in a world where making the changes you want are encouraged. We have been thought to just accept whatever changes happen or at most file a suggestion that almost noone will listen to. Obviously open source is different but it's still such a tiny minority compared to how the rest of the world functions
The big difference here is there is already this "learning curve" about the whole fediverse that people were struggling with that many of us wrote blog posts and had toot chains we'd forward explaining how this universe works. Adding in links and screen shots and templates for how to submit a bug...
...I hate saying this but the vast majority of people are just lazy. It's not a culture issue or not something too difficult. People like to complain and not put in effort to things. People expect others to do things for them and don't get that free comes with a cost.
FOSS isn't really that small, it's just that most people don't do any type of investigation into what they use for technology. Much of what you use may have a for-profit company in front of it but huge parts of their products are open source andnyou can directly influence the products by actually engaging the projects themselves.
Yeah people are very much lazy and that's fine, you just have to work around that and well culture is one way of getting people to do what should be done.
As you say Foss does impact quite a lot of those company products however what is the important part of the casual user is what and how they interact directly with the products and well at no point are they expected to directly impact the project, it's just you use what you are given. That is why they have that people will do things for me mindset bc that is what happens with almost everything the use
I think this is interesting, certainly screenshots and giving an idea of how something works is important. It seems more important to many users rather than say developers. I guess developers have a different set of priorities, maybe it does make more sense for users to add screenshots or contribute as it is in their interest whereas maintaining and fixing critical bugs is more within the interest of the developer?
How would this even be communicated effectively to users? I find that most calls to support are vague and maybe if they were broken down by interest or skill set it would help people understand that they too could do something.
E.g. Having a headline that says contribute, and like a table with icons for different professions or areas people could contribute with different processes for each. I have friends who are good typesetters or editors, but they would not put in the effort to use github, they would prefer to use something closer to social media or word/docs at the most. It feels like github samples from only a subset of the population and is actively trying to ensure the comfort and curation of that community to the expense of others and collaborative work in general.
As both user and developer - user CAN contribute but the developer/maintainer SHOULD add the screenshots.
This mentality explains a lot of open source.
Yeah, and please have EASY setup instructions or complied binaries.
Why is your name red?
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Please read the first line of the "Principles that Guide Us"
There's both an ignorance and fear barrier to that.
A lot of people don't know they can, and don't know how. And even the ones that do know, often worry their contributions would be shit.
And there's folks that just don't think the project would accept that kind of submission.
I'm not contradicting your suggestion! It's a great thing to let people know that they can contribute without knowing how to code. Just adding in both an explanation as to why it's so rare, and hopefully allaying some of those worries for passersby.
I think it depends on the project. Some projects are the author's personal tools that they've put online in the off-chance it will be useful to others, not projects they are really trying to promote.
I don't think we should expect that authors of repos go too out of their way in those cases as the alternative would just be not to publish them at all.
Totally agree
What if I do a PR for a program that isn't even related to Linux and Linus still sniffs it out to tell me I'm a dingus :(
NGL I actually didn't know that I can do such a thing. I do still kinda have a closed source mindset in that anything I use I cannot change or Influence. Like I knew that other people can do that but I didn't know I can do that
Yeah, it's a thing :)
I've only done it once, and it wasn't pictures, it was rewriting a horrible section about how to install a program my cousin was trying to build. He abandoned it three months later, but still.
From what I've heard from people that code, it's polite to approach whoever is maintaining the project before jumping in, and it makes sense so that nobody wastes resources on something that isn't going to get used.
If the app sucks, few people will add the screenshots. Therefore, most apps without screenshots will suck. So new apps will need the developer to add screenshots, or people will assume it sucks.
And we're back to square one. The developer has extra responsibility to highlight the features.
This is good advice, but having a screenie there in the first place might make someone more likely to try it out.
One thing though: I’m likely not to stop and consider looking closer at an app if I can’t judge if it’s going to be what I’m looking for. I’m not going to go over random GitHub repositories and create screenshots for their projects. So if the assumption is that the user contributes screenshots I don’t think it will ever change anything for the majority of projects.