Slashdot Mirror
A Bit About Freshmeat
So a good friend of mine works really hard on his web
page. He overhauls the thing to create a new look and
feel for it. He ads tons of user interface improvements
and in general makes it faster, smoother, and better looking.
He put it up today and got his ass flamed for all his hard work.
This guy works long hours, he doesn't get paid a nickel for his work.
And the world thanks him by insulting him.
You don't have a right
to flame people for changing their websites.
Besides, not all change is bad.
Sit back and give it a chance. And while you're at it, a huge number of you owe scoop
an apology. He's created one of the best sites on the internet,
and he never charged any of you a nickel for his uncountable
hours of work. Flames are not the way to say thanks to someone
who creates something so great and never asks anything in
return.
</RANT>
Update: 01/02 12:08 by S : Freshmeat's back up.
I agree, that really boiled my blood. I saw the new layout this morning, I thought it was pretty damn cool looking.
I liked the old Freshmeat layout, but thought the new was even cooler.
"Well you stupid fuck, look at you now!"
-- Tony Montana to the body of Alberto, "Scarface"
The new freshmeat.net is pretty god damn slick, and you can eat phuck if you dont like it
Damn now i know that the design for freshmeat was quite a change, and being acostomed to designs like it, i must say it couldve been implimented better then it has been now, Which i think a lot of the flaming ment to say in essence.
:)) choping of heads, then a bunch of friends enjoying our hoby. This in a way is our greatest good, and our darkest evil.
./
But the thing to keep in mind here is 1) it is a free site, so please think before you flame, and for scoop, please keep in mind that of the things we like about the linux community is the 'vocalness' of our little group, We shout, we scream, we flame we rant and we flame some more, ask john kratz, who writes here, or any other profesional, who wrote about linux.
Sometimes we look more like the french renecainse (yea i know i cant spell it
So to quote one of johnz quotes on
"As soon as you post something online, you will get flamed. If that doesnt happen, ill quit since it would nobody is listening to me anymore"
I thought the new freshmeat looked really cool. What happend? When I looked a few hours ago there where only comments saying how good the new freshmeat looked. The only bad thing that a couple of people mentioned was that quickfind should be moved to the top of the page.
What can we (I) do to get the (new & improved) freshmeat back?
if you don't like a website, or anything for that matter, don't view it! and if you really do want to, you will put your dislikes aside if you rely on the site.
eet sum dIP
I agree this really pisses me off. Scoop like 3/4's of the linux community puts in a ton of hard work for no money, for what to get flamed thats screwed up. I saw the layout and I loved it. Spesically the graphic at the top. It was phat. I think that freshmeat its a hell of a site. It would be a shame if it were taken down for good.
Iggie
i never even saw the page. anyone got a mirror of it, or a screen shot? there's just that message from scoop there now.
No wonder I couldn't get into freshmeat earlier today. Now scoop's replaced the opening page with a rant of his own. I surely hope that this isn't the beginning of the end of one of my favorite sites. I like looking at 15-20+ new and/or updated programs staring me in the face every day. :-)
And I didn't even get a chance to look at the new layout yet. Scoop, if you're listening, don't do anything too drastic to us yet. Not all of us have seen it. I may or may not like your new layout. Let us give it a chance for a little while. You could have given us a warning about drastic changes, but that's not a good reason to start massive flamewars. (Perhaps hangovers from last night are contributing to this effect? Can we call this the freshmeat effect??)
I'm sorry that I missed the new stuff, (it's not there anymore) :(
But Freshmeat is one of the best sites on internet!
Freshmeat and slashdot.. that's where I check out all new stuff. And both is really great.
Just had to write this...
Wow. I had no idea how dependent I had become on freshmeat until he took it down. I never got to see the new layout, but I've no doubt that it remained an excellent site. I would have hoped that of all people, open-source folks would be willing to embrace change, or at least give it a chance.
This kind of behavior makes us all look bad.
It looked great to me the short time that I was
able to see it. Honestly...I don't know what's
up with some people.
Umm just a quick reminder for the ppl who are addicted to software releases: www.xshare.com .. its a freshmeat alike, and also has a way funky interface design :) This might be just the thing to tigh us over till scoop takes a cold shower and gets back into the 'real world'
Well, I was at a bowl game over new years and I missed the big change in freshmeat.net. I can offer two opinions: No matter how bad it may have been flaming is stupid. Second: Why the hell is the site semi-canned? Only slightly more stupid than flaming is to respond to flames...
I did see the new look. It is very good. But I only saw positive comments on freshmeat. Nobody complaint about the new look.
So is this for real? Maybe somebody just hacked the site.
I cannot believe that people really flamed scoop for all his good work.
To scoop:
Love your site new and old. Ignore the assholes man.
To the jerks griping:
If you think you are any better go out and build your own damn site with your own money and time and lets see if you appreciate his and everyone else's hard work that went into it.
Orac
I had a chance to look at Freshmeat's new layout and I thought it was rather nice. I didn't like the new logo, but I wouldn't flame the artist for it. Yet I can't help but wonder, could I have told scoop that I didn't like the new logo without actually offending him? I hate flames, but I really hope scoop is open to criticism.
The links were still there.
(The nice little icons at the bottom of every item.)
The icons near each item, that look like a house and watever else provide desired functionality.
i couldn't have said it better myself!
Well, I wrote a thank you letter to him for all of his work, and I suggest everyone do the same.
Also, this should perhaps be a lesson to all of those people out there complaining about Rob's work. Maybe they'll shut up now.
I cannot believe that people really flamed Scoop. The new site looked wonderfull. And I only saw comments from people that liked the new look.
Maybe this is just a joke?
Has anybody seen these flames? The flames weren't on freshmeat two hours ago!
First of all, im not -to- crazy about the new look, its got a lot of tables (takes AGES in netscape on a slow box) and i dislike the dark header being on the bottom, and the details for links... only costs bandwidth! :) But on a whole, nothing lethal and all in all a good site still, and hey we're all used to iterations rite :)
.. like we do now)
But second and most of all, flamers make us look bad, yes, but scoop's behaviour also makes us look VERY bad, one of the few top sites for linux just closed its gates on a lonely rant of one guy, denying ppl there publicity they got to count on, denying us our releases, and making us all look like unprofesional shit-hot-heads.. Flamers and site maintainers alike.
I just can see why he didnt put up a good and strong rant on the coverpage above the releases, and host a forum online (like slashdot, or even ON slashdot
This wouldve saved us all a great deal of pain, and embarisment.
There is no excuse for the many flamers, but there is also no excuse for this over dramatised 'exit stage' action scoop just pulled, and i would be the first to offer the same services as freshmeat does, and would also like to point out that www.xshare.com does the same thing (and has a nice outlay)..
Anyways guys, keep it real, and dont let the new year start out with such a bad hangover.
Loosing freshmeat for good would be a disaster. I certainly hope its removal is just a wound licking (or is it a skin thickening) time. I didn't have a chance to see its new look, but I don't care much what it looks like - its the site with the most valuable content. More valuable than slashdot. No insult intended - freshmeat just deals with the most critical domain - getting to know just what is out there.
As anyonw who has developed something on their own will tell you, telling people about your program used to be much harder than writing it. Freshmeat helped a lot with that - at least for spreading the word amongst the in-crowd.
Loosing Freshmeat, and having no replacement, is one of the most Microsoft enhancing things I can think of. If the flaming came from pro-Microsoft people, they have exceuted an excellent divide and conquer move.
I like the new layout, but so what.
It's his site, he puts in the work and he can make it look anyway he wants.
Freshmeat is to me the most valuable Linux resource on the net, and I am dismayed that the knee-jerk flame 'droids have caused such an annoyance. I hope the new freshmeat page will draw apologies from at least a few of these people.
Scoop, please try to ignore these people, or if you like, post the mailto: for those who offended you on freshmeat or in this forum, and I am certain they will hear from more than a few people who are also upset with their actions.
Here is hoping that you will restore the site soon, but in any case, thanks for the massive quantity of work you have done in the past to keep us informed about the latest in Linux software.
Just a silly concept, but havent we just shown the Microsoft collective (wink) how to kill linux? Just send out a few (read relative to the amount of ppl working for ms) flames from there addresses, and *BANG* there goes another product, developer, image, etc ... FUD in action..
:))
Hmmm for you paranoids out there, mebe this was already the first microsoft FUD action??
if you think your so slick why don't you put a fuckin sight of your own muther fucker, stop your fuckin whinin get off of your ass and do some of your own fuckin work instead of crying about some one elses work you fucking asshole
Just a question. How many people who are now saying that the site looks great and that scoop shouldn't have been flamed actually flamed him themselves and are just posting to make their conscience feel good?
The new look looks awesome. I think we should email scoop on what a GOOD job he did. He deserves a thankyou and some good comments on it. I'm gonna mail him. Its damn worth it.
... for ruining the image of the linux community, we now look like a bunch of 14 yr old adolecents who cant deal with reality.
Any person on the net will tell you that exposure will draw flames, but this is often just the smaler part of a larger community. Just the part that feels no one listens to them and rebels.
But on the other hand, if freshmeat is taken down THAT easely, im gonna have to find a more reliable resource for my self, since i dont want to point my homepage to some site which may be taken down on a whim and a bad hangover.
So thanks again, for ruining my day
I personally favored the new look over the old (although, the old one was a nice design itself), and though the layout was very appealing, with the boxes surrounding each release, reverse text/background color, etc. Change (or more accurately, a little variety) is always good. If nothing else, it adds a bit of excitement to an otherwise boring day. You who flamed scoop should now be well aware the consequences of your actions -- would you rather have a freshmeat which has a poor design (according to you), or no freshmeat at all? Think about it next time BEFORE you press send on that sophomoric flame. And to scoop: don't allow the naysayers to frustrate you. The work you put into freshmeat.org is self-evident, and appreciated by many. There will always exist those whose main goal is to bring others down ...such lusers are to be ignored.
I've a bad feeling about this. I've still got the 'newlook' in my browser cache, and none of the links to appendix records and such work. I really hope he didn't do a quick 'rm -rf *' in a fit of madness! I really hope he brings the site back on line!
Someone else commented that both the actions of the flammers, and Scoop's reactions to those flames make the Linux community look bad. Unfortunatly this is very true. Freshmeat is/was a very high visability web site, and was monitored and used by a lot of people in the computer industry. These actions really hurt Linux's credibility.
Personally I liked the new look, my only complaint was that the search field was at the very bottom.
Silly bickering over minor flaws in a web site's design is an example of the lack of unity in the Linux community. We Linux users need to unite and move forward as a strong, professional, and intelligent force if we want to combat corporations like Microsoft.
1) Speaking as a long time web design person, I loved the new Freshmeat.net look.
2) If you don't like it, *politely* e-mail the author with *constructive criticism* and don't forget to praise him on the good points of the site.
--
Aaron Shaver - aaronshaver@usa.net
SkinnyBo - DALnet IRC
Owner, RapidFire Entertainment
( members.xoom.com/rfeo )
I like freshemat very much, and I think the new design is cool, but I don't like the background color, it should have been an image instead.
Don't feed your pearls to pigs.
I just emailed scoop thanking him for freshmeat. I
can only hope that others do the same. While a
large number of people may have flamed, I can't
believe there are not more of us that truly
appreciate his site. WE NEED TO LET HIM KNOW THIS,
and let him know that those that flame are in the
very small minority!
-Dave
Im sorry for this flame but i have one question to us all.. Who does own who? He provides a service that was needed when ppl couldnt get the new releases known, but we also provide him with milions of hits, apreciation, and new links and updates.. this is a win / win situation. but doesnt only SCOOP have the power to stop this cooperation? none of us have this power, and i think this results in a prety unbalenced game. It makes us, and most of all, his site, look real bad.
And isnt his statement a way of saying 'i want to be apreciated for my work' (read: DEMAND TO..)
Well for as far as i can see, you have done the oposite, i loved scoop, and his site, but have to reconsider my opinion now to how much i still respect him.
Just a user who feels used and betrayd.
Lets hope someone made a backup.
I am sitting here writing this with tears in my eyes, because I cannot even begin to comprehend how the world has become so decadent that people would belittle a person, who out of the kind graciousness of his heart, uses his own money and time, and effort, to provide the so called community with THE best resource ever known in the world of computers! So what if he changed the interface? Do you own the site? Do you *PAY* him to write the site for you?!?! Grow up and practice you free will, if you didn't like the new site, then just leave quietly, now you have ruined this great kind person, and his website. Hopefully it will not be a permanant loss of Freshmeat. I personally would not mind paying a small subscription fee for access to Freshmeat, just to support scoops efforts. But the man did it out of the kindness of his own heart! He is a far bette person than any of you flamers ever will be, and I completly support whatever decision he makes, I just hope it is to keep the site up. ;) btw, I am not an anonymous coward! My email address is jasonrbell@hotmail.com if anyone would like to reply directly to me.
Im sorry for ya scoop, you did one hell of a job, but you just made, what we profesionals call a boo-boo ...
Ive seen stories on this forum about ppl trying to show FM to directors of fortune 500 companies, well gues what, THEY WONT BE USING LINUX!!
Ive seen loyal customers and contributers saying that they lost respect with FM.
Well rightly so! So have i, i dont spend this much time on just any site, and do not wish to be confronted with such lack of respect for the hundreds of thousands of fans!
I think by now its YOU who needs to do some heavy making up and apologising, and not the tons of users trying to blow sunshine down your ass on this forum, there the loyal fans, your the one who went kamikaze.
I dont know if i will ever look @ FM in the same way, but if this page stays up a lot longer, im sure i wont.
Im just hoping my co-workers didnt check FM yet, else this might mean i loose my discusion @ my company if and when we should loose linux. Should this happen, i hope you will feel the burdon on your shoulders.
A disapointed, and disilusuined linux fan.
You get to be kings of the world. You have the most wildly popular sites around. You get lots of attention and respect, and people listen yto you. You get gifts and sponsor money (granted, Scoop doesn't).
Why? Because thousands of people are kind enough to use your sites. With traffic like that, it becomes plain silly to whine about people flaming you. Of course people flame you. There are several thousand different individuals who give hits to your sites. The all have opinions.
So suck up, and don't burn out on imagined martyrdom.
Daniel "Nixon" Mikkelsen, spam@fix.no
In #freshmeat on irc.debian.org: <scoop> it will be back in approx. 1.5 hours
This is a great tragedy for Linux.
Regardless of whether the flames
"hurt scoop's feelings", to protest
so childishly hurts everyone.
If I was a Freshmeat sponsor I would
seriously consider ending my sponsorship.
Microsoft now is armed with a covert
psychological weapon to disempower the
Linux community.
I hope Rob has thick skin, because Slashdot
is next.
Scoop, I check freshmeat more than 6 or 7 times aday. Your website is more than air to breath for me and for many people I know. I sometimes leave it open in the netscape and I click reload every now and then. When you were travelling, I kept looking at it twice aday! Freshmeat is an amazing master-piece that I really don't know if there were something better. The site is amazingly managed. I hope you don't turn it down. Also, it's your decision if you want to stop, but before you go let me tell you: YOU'VE DONE A HELL OF A GOOD JOB! I hope you don't go man...
If freshmeat disappears I'll kill myself.
End of story
I love Freshmeat. (It and Slashdot are the first places I go when I come on.) While I think it's awesome that he put a lot of work into it, I didn't particuarly care for the new scheme. When a friend suggested I take a look at it earlier today, I paused for a sec to check out the way it looked...and the first word to pop into my mind was "hospital". While I can certainly live with it (hey, it's the info, not the colors that make Freshmeat great), if given a choice, I'd revert back to the old style, or go back to the drawing board.
My friend also had the same impression, so I know I'm not alone. Flaming the guy is absolutely wrong...offering suggestions and ideas to make it better -- thats the way to go.
(People are allowed to have an opinion like this, right? Just because I didn't care for the look itself, I'm not automatically a "troll" now, right?)
Nows lets be reasonable and keep things in perspective.
/dev/nul]
1)All people must realize diversity exists, within a [large] group of people, conflicts will occur.
2)We must use _constructive_ criticism. This means not flaming, but simply mailing scoop, and KINDLY [without harsh words] saying 'This is how I feel, but i still think your site rules!'
Okay, I didn't get to see the new layout. Scoop has EVERY right to pull the site down. We have every right to PROPERLY complain... Give what you expect.
I think freshmeat was also a site of the people, you must remember when dealing with the public, you will always be scrutinized, scoop. Hell, bill clinton hasn't commited suicide yet....[Which you just did, scoop, you've lost a lot of hits by this, i guarantee it]
Okay, but remember, keep perspective, I enjoy the site, I will always enjoy the site.. No matter the look, or feel...
I also feel scoop should also remember the rest of us. The ones that provide information to his site, that keep it up and running, it wasn't only his site, yes he may host the equipment and time, but we host the substinence, the livelihood beyond the equipment.....
They hurt his feelings, he hurt US instead of THEY.... I don't understand.... Come on children, Don't be flamers.... You ruin it for all of us...... 'Can't we all get along'
Right here on the spot, I'd buy out freshmeat.net and restore it, I think its worth quite a bit....
Lets keep things in perspective? Lets allow diversity, lets have some tolerance... Come in guys, this makes the Linux community look like dogS#%()*... Its not helping to further GNU, or our kick-butt operating system, get the word out that we are honarable people... Don't flame children.....
Grow up.
--Jets, brc@micron.net
[flames to
[i'm officially done preaching.]
Yes, it's a Microsoft designed attack
to destabilize the Linux community,
knock out one of their most valuable
resources, and use the resulting chaos
as a primary FUD example in the press
against Linux. Expect big stories about
this in PCWeek, CNet, and other publications
on Monday with many quotes from Microsoft
spokespeople.
Absolutely brilliant.
Are you really that self-centered? Freshmeat doesn't *owe* you anthing. Freshmeat is generously given to you. So shut the fsck up weasle boy
is not the issue here. I suspect (as do others) that scoop recieved a great deal of the all too typical 'this sucks' calibre of criticism. This adolescent flaming 'right of passage' that J. Katz references seems to be spot on, especially in this situation.
...
Unfortunately, for scoop, this flaming contains none of the elements of 'constructive criticism', and often, can be interpreted as a personal attack. Whether we agree with it or not, there is a certain level of maturity (or simple respect) that we must extend to one another. I, for one, do not appreciate being greeted with 'RTFM luser!' or other such 'attitudes' found in some seqments of the Linux community. Clues, suggestions, ideas, pointers, etc. are useful and educational tools which can be helpful. Derogatory(sp?) flaming serves no purpose, save identifying the flamer as an individual worthy of an entry in a 'procmail' filter
I sincerely hope that scoop decides to reinstate the site, however, I would understand if he chose to not to do so.
Post the addresses of everyone that flamed you. I'm sure they wonlt mind what several thousand people think about their comments.
Well, looks like a good thing is finally coming to an end.
Not just freshmeat (which I LOVED the new layout, easier on these old eyes), but the linux community itself.
Sure there are those of us who don't resort to flames, who don't complain when people do something we dissaprove of, who don't scream and yell when others excercise their free will, who can even on occasion be open-minded. Unfortunately, that is becoming the minority.
I feel equally responsible for the closing of freshmeat, as I didn't e-mail scoop and tell him what a great job he did. It seems that yet again the squeaky wheel gets the grease, and i'm getting damn tired of the squeaky wheels.
-Ron Coscorrosa
"Who does own who?" Do you get that freshmeat IS scoop's site, and not anyone else's. So, putting a value to your use of site is plane and simply wrong. It would be fine if freshmeat was a commerical site, but it is not. I feel for scoop since I for one don't like getting any flames when I put time and hard work into it, just like anyone else. People who flamed scoop for his changes at his site is doing unjustice to all who enjoy his service and to scoop.
Also, people like scoop doesn't need to "DEMAND" appreciation. They should just get the respect and appreciation for what they are doing, not flames.
Just a user who hopes scoop will continue with freshmeat with any design changes he wants,
-David
The way i see it if scoop does not bring the site back he will make the people mad who do love his site. And someone else will step in and make a new site to do what freshmeat had been doing. .Hell everyone likes the site .
If there is a market someone will step up .
So scoop think about what you are doing !!
You may loose the site all together or it will be a shell of what it once was.
I like the site
For all we know Microsoft paid a few employees OT to send a mass of shity mail.
What not simply have a poll for the new site? Who wants the old one back - who doesn't?
This is the way OSS will end
This is the way OSS will end
This is the way OSS will end
Not with a bang, but with a whimper...
drowned in a sea of immaturity.
- - -
Not that I'm the poster boy for maturity, but all this...?
There's laughter in Redmond tonight.
To be truthful, I liked Freshmeat the way it was,
but the changes werent bad.
In the past, I've been miffed at how sites I visit
often (altavista, dejanews) change from a more functional
interface, to a less functional but more decorative
one. Change-for-change's-sake is often bad.
It wasnt that way with the "New" Freshmeat.
The only major criticism was that he changed the
traditional links for each item (Download, Homepage, AppIndex) into little pictograms.
I could do w/o that. It wasnt hard to discern
their function, but i'd prefer it be more straightforward.
Other than that, it looked okay. I probably
wouldnt have gone with a white background, but
that's not major -- you could get used to it.
If Scoop got a lot of email commenting the revamp of freshmeat before. Guess if his mailbox will be flooded now. But I'm certain that he this time he will feel very appreciated instead.
I wonder how many emails there will drop in per minute? Dozens?
There is a large component of luck involved in getting a site to become as popular as Slashdot or Freshmeat. In addition to the hard work, you need to hit upon a niche that nobody else has thought of or exploited. That these sites are as popular as they are is not just a consequence of the authors' hard work. Many other people work just as hard and come nowhere as far.
So pulling a retaliation-stunt like this becomes only an act of immaturity, a "oh yeah?!" -kind of thing. With that many people hitting their pages, if they can't handle a bit of flame (a neccessary consequence of the amount of users), then they aren't up for the job. Don't get me wrong - the sites are theirs to do with as they please, they have the right to push changes any way the please. But whining about flames will get one nowhere.
I see this kind of stuff often. With that IRC client for KDE or Gnome (can't remember), with Malda who posted that fake report of JWZ's death, etc. These are people who work and work, and thake flames far too much to hart, and end up doing all their work for spite, not love. The end up feeling like martyrs, and sooner or later, they break and burn out. Malda caught his "phase" early, I think, and got by. Let's hope Scoop isn't a lost case.
BTW: If freshmeat doesn't get going again, I'm certain someone else will steal the niche.
Daniel "Nixon" Mikkelsen, spam@fix.no
I say they need a good public flogging but that only. We dont want to start some pubecent mailbomb war here.
The freshmeat issue is only one part of a disturbing trend that has been going on in our community, others being the flamage over repeat articles on /. , the KDE/Gnome issue, and I am sure others I am forgetting at the moment. A growing number of people are coming in acting like this community is just another commercial site out to make a buck, and therefore has some obligation to bend to their every whim. These are the people who read about Linux in some trade press and jumped on the bandwagon without any real concept of the history or community. They treat us like they treated any company they had a complaint about: self-rightous bitching. Well, if you don't like it, leave. Stop reading slashdot if you don't like the repeats, we won't miss you're moronic posting. Stop reading freshmeat if you don't like the design, we will enjoy the extra bandwidth. I invite anyone who bitched at scoop about the redesign to identify yourselves to the community at large. If you're a big enough to drag your fetid little complaints about freshmeat to scoop, please tell the rest of us what you found so offensive. Otherwise walk away with you're tail between your legs knowing that you can feel momentarily importaint by trashing someones hard work, but in the long run nobody gives a shit what you think because we understand what you never will: your opinions are worthless. We don't want you or care about you, let alone need you're support. Go Away. To scoop: I didn't get much of a chance to check out the new freshmeat, but I was an avid follower of the old freshmeat. You are providing and invaluable service to this community, and I cannot thank you enough. I don't blame you for taking the site down, as that probably would have been my reaction also. I do hope that things can be worked out and the site comes back up, in its new and improved form.
Not really anonymous,
Adam Hupp
ashupp@students.wisc.edu
PS: Wisconsin won the Rose Bowl. WooHoo!
you are getting pretty close to being seriously corrected buy a few of the more militant AC's around here. just because he was an imature individual dosent warrent your lumping all AC's into his level. from now on be more pointed in your responses and dont make blanket statements about AC's. you name has been logged and you future posts will be monitored. have a nice day.
freshmeat's great. but what i think is happening, is the people that enjoy it, just enjoy it. they don't email scoop saying how great it is, because they feel there's no need. but the people that want it to be different email (and flame), about how it should change.
btw, i like the new layout, well what little of it, that i did see.
Thanks for Freshmeat, I visit it 50 times a day. The only thing I don't like about the new one is it's 10 times slower than the old one...
If you hold your mouse over the icons they gave you a little text box to tell you waht they did.
Someone has probably said this already, but I'll add my weight to the issue...
It's his site, if you don't like it...don't use it!
Want one that works differently or looks different...put your money where your mouth(er...fingers) is (are?)...
YOU design a site!
YOU author it!
YOU write the back end
YOU pay for the bandwidth
THEN...
YOU can make it look like whatever you want...
Otherwise, get off the guys back and give him a little credit for doing a great job, on HIS site, the way HE wants it..!!!!!!!!!!!
maybe you parents should stop letting you drink their coffee. all the guy did was miss an e, lighten up.
"I always thought that flamers were gay people for the longest time."
You need to be flamed for associating all 'gay people' with flamers.
GET YOUR ASS OUT OF THE NET. This is to all people
who don't have the guts to stand up to people and keep there site up running(not just freshmeat) after they've been flamed........ Your a weak little baby!! now I didnt see the new colors and shit, but I've lost a lot of respect for YOU!! this is gonna hurt LINUX more than anyone else!!
As the poster of the comment of this thread i just wanted to ask one thing.. Its 5am down in these parts of the world, and i am not a native speaker of the english language, now i could post a lot of dutch comments on ./ but im sure that would realy make u guys sick :P So please before yyou flame a guy for grammer and spelling keep in mind that there's more ppl on this earth then just brits and americana's ... As far as the comment it self goes, its an expression of a feeling of 'My god i hope this isnt the beginning of the end' as far as the 'community' goes .. knowing linux is growing with a stagering 200% a year, we'll get a lot of flames stuffed down our throtes, and if thats a reason to halt 'free contributions' than this whole linux project andthe basar theory has just failed on us ..
-- Chris (a self confesed non native english speaker)
...if we put together the hyper-responsiveness of scoop with the non-responsivenes of CmdrTaco we could have something great...
Scoop, you've disappointed me today.
I saw the new look, and I liked it. Came back later, and it was gone - you'd taken your ball and gone home.
I understand why. I've been there twice before myself. I know what a thankless job it is to maintain a public resource page like Freshmeat, and there's always a crop of bastards who'll jump on anything you do. I know just how much of a pain in the ass it can be, and how hard it can be to stay motivated.
I was tempted to do just what you did - pull down the site, replace it with a spite page, let the world see what it was I had to deal with on a daily basis. But I didn't.
Know why? It's childish. It's immature behaviour. It's wrong.
All you've managed to do is to hurt the vast and silent majority, the people who quietly appreciated all the hard work you did for them. And for what? So that you can get some ego boost, and some revenge.
Scoop, it's about respect. You want respect, then you have to give it in return. Pulling the site in a hissy-fit is disrespectful to your users. You've just committed the same crime that was done to you.
Anyone that wants to maintain a useful and public resource like Freshmeat has to develop a thick skin, and has to be able to recognise and ignore the lunitic fringe. By letting them get to you, you've handed them a victory.
It's your site. You have the right and ability to make it into whatever you want, with whatever look you want, and the flamers be dammed. You also have the right to stop if you so choose. The tree will fork, someone else will pick up the pieces, and the resource formally known as "Freshmeat" will resurface somewhere else, eventually.
It would be a shame if that were to happen, it truely would. You've done great work to date. But don't make the mistake that I did, and start thinking that you're irreplaceable. I wasn't. Neither are you.
DG
IT IS HIS SITE! HE CAN DO WHAT HE DAMN WELL PLEASES! That being said, Scoop did what he did to prove a point. www.freshmeat.net is not a fundamental right, and he has every right to withhold any information he has on his site, because it is his site.
Well, that's the GPL folks...
well he is still wrong and so are you! a large number of nick users flame too, it's just easyer to blame the AC's for it because you only have to remember the one name. do the research and you will see it for your self. i wont even get into the fact that alot of nick users prolly drop their nicks when they flame.
just smarten up, there is never any reason to flame a whole group of people just because a small number of them cause trouble. think about it, how do you feel now that freshmeat is down just because of some flames by what was prolly just a small number of all the people who saw it.
The communication between the flamers and Scoop was done privately, and to post private conversation is a far worse crime than to flame the provider of a valuable public resource.
And no, releasing just the names is just as bad, ans the content of the communication is implied to be a flame.
No thank you, I do not choose to start 1999 with a witch hunt. Shame on you who even suggested it!
And no, I wasn't one of the flamers. I liked the new layout. Perhaps I'm guilty of not telling Scoop I liked the new layout, but then I did not expect him to be so childish as to pull the site in a hissy-fit when a couple of ingrates flamed him. Who'd've thought his ego was so fragile?
There's no sense in compounding an already poor situation by commiting more poor acts.
DG
About 1/3 of the traffic to Windows Sucks Dot Com was from Freshmeat. This is going to suck!!!! ---Fatboy
Next you'll be telling whole countries to get a real connection. Reality check, bandwidth is not free or even cheap in many countries.
IMO, the new freshmeat layout probably was a touch on the tubby side, but as it was almost all the HTML side of the page, it hardly mattered a great deal.
What would suck more is n little images to download. (Anyone who has a clue knows the reason why a single large object downloads faster than n smaller ones.)
... as I read this.
"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"
The scale of immaturity witnessed on these sites of late is absolutely deplorable.
Nothing sets back volunteer efforts like free software as effectively as pointless infighting.
Cheap attacks on somebody's well-intentioned efforts, good or bad, are immature, destructive and completely unforgivable.
The only rewards available for free software and web publishers are personal satisfaction and perhaps some self-education.
Such thoughtless actions strike at the very core of what most readers of Slasdot and Freshmeat are all about.
My words to you pathetic flaming losers is to "move out of town" because YOU ARE NOT WANTED HERE!!!
--------- Thank you Scoop for the tireless hours which save us all collective years of searching for the latest and greatest ------
Be happy.
Can you imagine this?
"Hey, a bunch of you guys flamed the Virtual Memory performance of my kernal after all my hard work.
U suck. I'm taking my kernel and going home.
-Linus"
Thank God Linus doesn't have a fragile ego.
Yes Scoop, it sucks that there are thoughtless, mindless, flaming, weasel-featured bastards. But this childish grandstanding sucks worse.
DG
Let's say we send flame mail criticizing the way you dress. The way you paint your house. The car you drive. Your looks. Your mother.
He's got every right to pull his site down. If we use your logic, then we should in fact ignore your response as well.
Freshmeat has provided Unix users with the most up-to-date software info for years now. This has been invaluable.
I feel the only thing that scoop deserves is a pat on the back. Not stupid Flames, everyone needs to feel good about what they do sometime, if you can't put in something good or give constructive criticism, then keep your peace.
*sigh*
Mabye I need more medication but I can't see how anyone would not like freshmeat's new look. I think it's awesome personally, but then again ppl think I am insane.
OH well.......
GOOD JOB SCOOP!!!!!!!
i8086/Fishhead
jason.salopek@usa.net
of course if i was making a site and felt
like i had to please people it would be depressing.
in fact i would tell them all to fuck off
because its my site and i have a right to
do any goddam thing i want with it.
and people have a right to make an ass of themselves
by flaming me on it, and i have a right to post
their email addresses on the web page with their
flames attached. rights are great!
Here is one reason why Microsoft is laughing right now. Whether you know it or not both the action of the flamers and scoop are childish.If scoop were to pull the web page off permanently, then what? It would mean nothing to most of the public as it would just be a another blip. It would be a huge loss to some of FSF foundation supporters but to some web browsing moron out there he/she moves on to another web site. . . So, give scoop and rob malda (of slashdot in case u don't know) a big thanks for their hard work. If you have to criticize please criticize with some politeness. If you want to criticize in a manner that isn't polite then go keep it to yourself.
i am shocked and amazed that there are alot of ppl posting here that have the "but flames are just a fact of life" atitude. complaicency is never good it time for ppl to start standing up for them selves.
Sure, scoop does the community a great service by putting up freshmeat. (And of course freshmeat is also made possible by the community that supplies probably 99% of its material). But to act like that entitles him to immunity from criticism is crazy. Experience has shown that many if not most (like rms and esr) prominent netizens get attacked all the time. To stomp off in a huff because you can't take the heat is childish. Sticks and stones, pal. That's just life on the net.
If a few flamers off the net are getting at him that bad, maybe scoop should hang up freshmeat. There are sure to be lots of wannabe famous people out there who would be more than happy to start up a new site to do the same thing. You're not indispensible to Linux, dude. Leave your site down for a month and look how fast the net re-routes around your damage.
I think freshmeat is awesome and I wish it could stay. But not if the creator is going to abuse his power, act like a kid and take his ball and run home every time something doesnt go his way.
Heh. And I do like the site redesign. All except the logo.
If you have the source code from FM while it was down, please email it to me, Thanks!!!! fatboy@groovin.net
be sure to have this option: I don't care between the two because they are both good enough since I don't sit and drool at freshmeat.net all day!
You're right, this T3 at work is just too damn slow, it's time to upgrade.
whiney little piss-ant clinton-loving liberal free lunch mentality world owes me something juvenile latch key parents are yuppy ex-hippy clinton loving assholes shithead kid!!!!!!!!!!!!
Beggars shouldn't be whiners! If you don't like the changes he made, tough shit! You candy-ass maggot!
I accept your point about there being something more to it than luck and hard work - insight, perhaps. Ability to sieze the moment. But still, I am very much of hte opinion htat it is the users who are the asset - it's the traffic that make the sites what they are.
As for the face of Open Source Software (or Free Software, as I prefer to call it), it can hardly be said to have gained anything here. To all outsiders this looks like pure and simple whining.
I think I've mentioned it before. But it's very easy for these people to go into a negative feedback cycle. The negative responses grow in subjective importance, every-day-reality dims the gloss of initial success, they feel the don't get enough approval of what they do. And then they can no longer pull strength from the sense of accomplisment in itself - for many the real driving force. All that's left is fame and glory versus hard work and flames. After a short wile, they've used up any surplus energy, and are going on reserves. They work on pure spite.
When they break, we get stuff like this. I've seen it a lot of times, even here at Slashdot. I can only suggest people try to raise awareness of the problem, generalized as burn-out. A good remedy is to activly seek positive feedback - chomp the statistics properly, provide channels of feedback (like the conferencing system here at Slashdot), etc. Perhaps plain awareness of the problem could do it for some, allowing them to sort out their motives.
Guess I'm ranting. But I really feel like these people whine at times.
Daniel "Nixon" Mikkelsen, spam@fix.no
He can do whatever the hell he wants to - it's his goddamn site!
The first million Linux users were nifty, but since then (the next six million or so) are white trash. When did all of the damned idiots get here?
What the hell is the matter with Linux users? What were you flamers thinking? Did any of you ever stop to think that something is always more useful than nothing? Or would you rather have nothing? Holy shit -- you won't use free stuff from Troll Tech, Netscape, Corel, Star Divison, Informix, Oracle, or anyone else because it isn't free enough for you, even though you're not into any of it one red cent. Instead, you feel the need to flame anyone who contributes to Linux without first licking your asses.
As far as I can tell, this is the prevailing attitude in the Linux web community right now: "Give it to us exactly as we want, served on a silver platter, or by god, smash it all to bits and throw it in the ocean -- we'd rather starve to death!"
Why don't you all return to your own bedrooms and pick your butt by yourself all night, if you don't want to live in the real world. Some of us like useful websites and don't care much how they look or what the maintainer's opinions are. A service is a service, and if you don't like it, leave! Don't stand around and bash the receptionist over the head with a baseball bat!
Hell, gratis is gratis -- be appreciative, or you will have jack shit. I wouldn't be surprised if the Linux web community collapses in on itself in 1999 under the weight of its own user-imbeciles. All the developers go and hairy-cairy themselves in disgust.
God almighty.
First off, like a typical /. idiot, you obviously have no idea what you're talking about.
1. WITH banner ads, it isn't that easy to make a ton of money on the web. Even tens of thousands of hits per day isn't enough to generate any real ad revenue; you need ten times that even to make enough money to quit your day job. You try and get it. You think you're so smart, and that it's so easy to get "all kinds of perks, financial or otherwise", let's see you go and get them. I bet you can't. It's just not that easy to make money with a website.
2. Freshmeat doesn't run banner ads. Duh. No money *at all* is coming in unless people are sending him donations. Obviously you haven't sent one. I'm guessing most of us haven't sent one. So:
This leaves scoop with an income of approximately $0.00 from freshmeat. It's a miracle that he *hasn't* had to resort to running banner ads, just to pay the connectivity bills. You should be grateful, you idiot!
Not everyone has a T1/T3. You do realise that the net exists outside of the US (where bandwith is a hell of a lot cheaper) don't you?
As for alternatives to Freshmeat, try Filewatcher.
Daniel "Nixon" Mikkelsen, spam@fix.no
I think the new look is GREAT! Aside from that, while the previous freshmeat graphic at top that played off of the name "freshmeat" was "cute", I could see how it could have offended some people and felt little embarressed when showing the freshmeat site to some people of the female gender that are interested in Linux. But, in addition to having had a clean look, it has always maintained accessablity via LYNX and has accomplished it's goals of notifying users of Linux applications to the point of surpassing the accomplishments of comp.os.linux.announce. For that reason, I would even welcome the introduction of advertising banners at Freshmeat (as long as they aren't fed from doubleclick.net which has earned itself a fake entry in my /etc/hosts file).
Tough shit if Fresh Meat sucks. People who create sometimes have flops. Hell, even good baseball players strikeout 70% of the time. Face the music; Fresh Meat fucked up.
Freshmeat is hardly an ftp site. It's a collection of links to software and IMHO is INVALUABLE as a service. When I was looking for a home finance app I did a search on gnucash which is still very beta and doesn't even compile for me.. but in the related apps section I found moneydance which DOES do everything I need right now completely in a Java app running under Windows, Linux, or whatever. I wouldn't have found it without Freshmeat.
As for revenue, in case you haven't noticed, he doesn't even have banner ads on Freshmeat! You think revenue just magically appears?
I'm no web designer or anything, but as a normal 'lurker' that peeps the page ocassionally I'm actually impressed with the new design. I think its got a very clean interface to it.
:)
only true loss was the original freshmeat header graphic rocked hard core... oh well
My complaint is always the white background.
This typically means your audience does not know how to set the default colors.
No white backgrounds, please. I don't like staring at floresent lights either.
If you are maintaining a web site and doing the enormous amount of work necesary, It certainly isn't for fan appreciation. Your friend needs
to sift the email and disregard the flames after considering the source....the unwashed ignorant masses...boy I smell...
Funny, that's exactly my problem with it.
It's "phat". It shouts "OSS is just for teenagers!".
Its really annoying to go down a thread, maybe even pressing reload a few times because of net congestion, and what pops up eventually: A FUCKING ME-TOO-POST.
yeah, that bothers me, too.
somebody should do something about it.
It started about a year ago - as each day passed, this site became more and more juvenile.
I can and will get better news elsewhere.
It seems that this site attracts those who give Linux a bad name.
I'll give my hits to another site - one that really gives to the Linux community.
Good riddens to the children.
Excellent job!
i'm a wanker.
i like what i've seen of the site so far.
the white vs. black thing is the only
bicker i have. my eyes are happier with
dark things but other than that its cool.
You must work for M$ you damn FUD bastard!
Keep your opinions to yourself, we are the Linux Gestapo, your personal Big Brother.
We will tell you what your opinions are.
Look Bowie J. P., I've seen the way you acted when your little Propaghanda site didn't get it's name in lights like you wanted. Don't be such a hypocrite.
Sorting through more than 600 flames in my inbox isn't what I call fun. I'd sure as hell flame a bit back, and what would be the best way to do that? Post something on my site. Duh.
This whole thing disgusts me. A webmaster can't make a redesign without getting spammed with hundreds of flames? Freshmeat doesn't have any banner ads, it always loads fast, is rarely down, and provides a great service. All without asking anything back from the community, *except* maybe a little respect. Are we all children here? Can we express our ideas without senseless bashing? I wish.
Grow up. All of you. Don't ruin this for the rest of us.
i think the new look is kind of strange -- it seems so fifties or something. it has so much contrast...but i think it will grow on me. what the hell, i love freshmeat -- it's very helpful.
people flame -- that's why you delete their bs. it's not really that big of a deal.
the interesting thing about all this is the strange phenomenon wherein everything new on the net gets flamed, then people seem to moderate as it gets accepted.
the flamers seem to have a mindset in which they hate everything on first sight, bitch about it, then go away. then the moderates and positives kick in. strange!!
in closing, there can be no denying that scoop, malda, et. al. can do whatever they wish with their pages (including bring them down). really, they do open source a great service and it's great to see so many thank-you's for them in these replies.
you kick ass!
Me too!!!
l4m3r@aol.com
Freshmeat provides a purpose to me, keeping me updated on all the updates. It could be text only for all I cared(and sometimes it is::). Anyone who is such a retard and can work themselves into a rage over a UI needs to get laid more often or start smoking alot of wacky tobaccy to calm the f**k down. ::) Peace to all the worlds. Darnit I forgot my pw ::P this will have to be anonymous.
like the new look of freshmeat.net It kinda irks me when people only want to tear up other people's work instead of offering something substantial like ideas for improvements, etc. Forwarding flames to /dev/null is one option I guess ... trash belongs where it belongs. Taking down the site in retribution did seem a bit harsh ... why punish everyone because of those who write before they think???
...
/usr/src/linux
I for one would willing buy these guys a case of two of their favorite brew for all the great info I get from freshmeat.net
I hate it when I forget my password....brucer@zeuter.com
c:\windows\crash; c:\me\curse; c:\me\fdisk;
OK, you made your point, the above guys made your point, too, now what? Maybe you have some ideas to get rid of these AOLisms creeping up on slashdot.
Man, you gotta understnad weve gotta live with these fucking morons, crying "meept", weve gotta live with those fucking trolls crying "me too!" anytime something understandable to them is said. But they need to learn to write "me too" in the subject, like the meepster writes (you know what), so their posts can be left out, going down the thread.
This is exactly what has happened to Slashdot, on a much larger scale. Mention KDE or Gnome and HUGE flame wars erupt between idiots that don't contribute one scrap of code to ANYTHING.
Sadly, what can one do? Linux is in the mainstream and that means the morons are going to be jumping on board.
By the way, that post was written by some lamer named Tony Bybell. It wasnt written by Bowie.
Looks cool under Lynx. Find is at the top and
apps have the licence on the main page (so I
don't waste time going to sites only to find
the software isn't free). I like it.
I do prefer the old layout but I didn't really mind the new one at first. What I did mind was when I tried to look at it in Lynx. You can't even use a text browser now!!! And his little message to people that use text browsers just plain pissed me off. I don't really feel like starting up X and Netscape all the time, especially when I'm doing resource intensive things like compiling. It's sad that a site that is so dedicated to linux is becoming like a site that you would only expect from Microsoft. No wait, I can actually view Microsoft's site in Lynx.
Matt
I for one agree with the child like flaming that goes on at Slashdot. It really is a shame. The web site was not designed for idiots and children to give Linux and other products a bad reputation by behaving like misbehaved brats. Problem is, it usually is children doing it - definately not contributing adults (what have the flamers contributed to the Linux community??)
The general consensus where I work is that Linux is for immature children who are too cheap to pay for software - all because they have read too many flammings that are posted around the internet instead of seeing people helping people. The more people flame sites like Slashdot, the more they set Linux and the OSS movement back.
To those who would criticize Freshmeat for changing its format in a way that they view to be negative, I have a simple solution: complain to the web administrators, and request that you get every cent of your money back.
Hmm? What's that? You're not paying for it?
You know, the open-source software community is by and large composed of some really great people. Unfortunately, along with those great people, we have a legion of give-this-to-me-the-way-I-want-it-right-now malcontents who think that it's their God-given right to have everything their way, all the time. To those folks, I would only suggest that they start up their own website and assume the ultimate control that they apparently want.
Some of you folks are so selfish that I'm almost embarassed to associate myself with the open source movement. The old adage says "Beggars can't be choosers." We can make suggestions, and we can form opinions, but this "fuck you for providing a free service that I don't like anymore" mentality is completely absurd. Please grow up; you're damaging the integrity of the open source movement.
For what it's worth, I like the new Freshmeat, and extend my kudos to its maintainers. I also would like to give them a message: "Don't let the bastards get you down."
Hardly. His markup doesn't even resemble valid HTML, tries to hide all the links (that's the only styles I see - "text-decoration: none"), and nests pointless tables assuming your font is way too small for your window (of course, Slashdot tries to do this too).
Not that I'd get in a volunteer's face about the quality of his efforts (I did not flame him over it), but the markup itself is far from praiseworthy. Freshmeat is valuable in spite of it, and becomes usable if your proxy filters out all the usual drivel (which is more than I can say about the excrement most professional "designers" publish).
Here comes the PC police! Everybody hide! Take a chill pill already. I'm sure all he meant was that flamers are, uhm, challenged.
I'll take this one step further.
Rob, if you give a shit about the Open Source movement, shut this goddamn site down.
If on the other hand you want to milk your momentum for easy cash, please do continue.
Most sites these days go out of their way to be incompatable with anything other than a 20MB combination of a GUI and an oversized web browser filled with security holes. Worse, most of the time the information is text anyway!
BE THANKFUL THAT FRESHMEAT IS AT LEAST VIEWABLE IN LYNX.
For a look at one of the more pathetic sites which is advertised so damned much in its local area, check out KTSA Radio in San Antonio, Texas. Try it in Lynx. It's actually viewable under Netscrape.
Perhaps a better example are the lameass warez sites. The warez guys decided that they were all going to make money off their web sites and put up banner ads. They BEG people to click on them just for the sake of clicking. If the companies are stupid enough to pay them for that, fine. The problem came when a group of people set up the "Top {100,50,69} Warez Sites" web pages _and_ made some lame CGI script for it. The warez sites have by and large degenerated into a contest of who can trick the most people into clicking the most stuff, thus driving them higher on the lists and making per-click money for the site owners. (No, this isn't surprising given that it's warez sites, but it's an excellent example.)
Or look at the sites which send pages which are about 95% formatting and 5% content, like many of the major news sites these days. ("Major" does not imply quality.)
The point is that, much like the Department of Justice, people are complaining about the wrong thing. To continue the example, the U.S. DoJ should have sued both Microsoft and Netscape for screwing over other platforms with their extensions and their "HTML design kits" which produce HTML which is unreadable in text mode for no good reason. Be grateful that Freshmeat is viewable using Lynx. With so much other lameness, this is the least of our worries.
theres a difference between " i liked it better the other way" and " this fucking sucks ".
you dont know what was e-mailed to scoop yet you
assume it was constructive criticism.
we were told it was flames and until you read it for your self, you must assume it was flames and
NOT constructive criticism. and those who flame over somthing so silly as the look and feel of a website should be publically lamb-basted.
of course this is only my opinion and constructive
criticism of yours. (g)
maybe he wasn't being childish at all but was just
trying to prove a point.
your defending the flamers right to say the stupid shit they said and dog scoop for making a point. geez...i think he had the right too.
what was the point ? the point was...what would life be like without freshmeat. a message to the flamers to shut the fuck up because they wouldn't want to be without it.
and i believe the point was made...and well taken.
Now, the important point here: when Scoop (or whoever) gets wave after wave of flame mail from a bunch of teenagers (as they almost certainly were), he realizes that the community he has decided to serve has changed under his nose. It's transformed into a group of people that he could really give a rat's ass about, the sort of people that not only does he not want to do any favors for, but probably wouldn't mind doing something to piss them off. Everyone seems to be saying that Scoop just couldn't take the heat, but the real problem is that the community has changed into a mindless dung heap of humanity. This community of peers that he perhaps enjoyed serving has changed dramatically since he started it up.
If anything motivates Scoop these days, it is probably a combination of momentum and a sense of responsibility towards his community. If for whatever reason he perceives that his community has devolved into a bunch of immature assholes, and that the folks he actually liked have moved on, then he's not going to feel like keeping it up. Scoop wasn't whining about a few flames, he was probably just reacting from disillusionment.
doing THEM a favor visiting their sights ??????
if you dont like it, then stop doing them favors.
dont ever goto freshmeat or slashdot ever again.
then think about exactly whos doint who a favor.
god your arrogant to even think like that.
As we all know, CmdrTaco is queer.
So is scoop, the new freshmeat layout looks like a
blue pile of fag shit.
I hope you all fucking die and eat shit if linux
websites look like that.
Oh shut up you infantile Ayn Randroid. Think for yourself, will you?
My first freshmeat surf of the new year crashed my navigator. I don't know why. I downloaded the page to a file using netpipes ( http://web.purplefrog.com/~thoth/netpipes/ ) and while it crashed my browser then, it doesn't crash it right now. Very odd. Same input, different behavior. Must be a function of previous surfing.
Anyway, while freshmeat now takes a while to load, I won't start flaming till it requires cookies or javascript.
Jeez that boy needs to grow up. So what if people criticize his page. It is childish to take down his page due to it.
Maybe we should chip in and buy him a bah bah.
hey, if you don't like freshmeat THEN DON'T GO THERE. You have no right to flame him for all the hard work he put into the site and working on something he thought would be good for everyone (which it is). The new layout rocks...
Rob, I'm in full agreement with you about FM. It is one of the best sites on the net (next to /. of course).
I found the new look to be downright cool.
--Aaron Newsome
Face it, the new layout kick ass! ;)
This site honours the Linux community with it's content and hard work. I agree with most of the comments posted earlier, flamers are just people in need of desperate attention, after all, everyone was on shock (in a positive way) after seeing it.
I saw, I liked.
... automatically link to the bat book @amazon. Working yourself to the bone for nothing gets disheartening, especially when the critics start to attack.
I appreciate sites that render well from lynx which I use a lot when admining non-X Linux boxes. The new site also looked good and loaded fast in Netscape. He made a lot of improvements to the site from the brief look I got. Most of the pages had become static which I think is essential if you intend to allow for growth.
I read the first ~70 comments here and everyone apperently likeed the new site also. It's unfortunate that scoop reacted the way he did, he must have received a lot of extremely insulting emails.
My one comment is this: FM is a very popular site. Perhaps it's time for scoop to start making money with this. I remember reading when linux.org was having problems that the site owner was earning $500-$600/day from the site. I would think that freshmeat must have some good earnings potential also.
I don't like advertising banners and book sales all over sites but if that's what it takes for scoop to make a buck at it, please do it! A new sendmail release
Anyway, FM is a very valuable and well built site. Somehow, we gotta get this guy earning bucks at what he does!!!
Freedom of speech has it's place. But it must be tempered with civility. As the above person stated, if it's rude flaming it can certainly tend to bring one's spirits down after all the work it would have taken to redo all of freshmeat's scripts.
:)
Criticism like, "You should put the search box at the top" is fine (I saw 3-4 or these in the comments on freshmeat, and it's a good point). But if it's something with foul language and words like "krad" it's just plain rude.
Besides, Freshmeat (or Slashdot) isn't a branch of the US government, so they don't have to obey any sort of "freedom" of speech.
So, nice big talk there. Now, what the hell have you done for anyone today?
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
And you are just so full of respect.... which
is brown and smells.... hang on, that's shit,
you're full of shit.
Now, what website do you run so we can flame you; the intangible benefits gained from it will more than make up.
"You know you want me baby!" - Crow T Robot
Okay, totally off-topic, but this has been bugging me for a while. What exactly is a wanker, anyway?
Criticism is definitely a good thing, if it's done in a mature manner. I imagine Scoop got such intelligent mails as "you stupid fucker, i dont no what your thinking changing freshmeat. the old wone was l337 kewl krad and this one sux0rs." That's not exactly what I'd call constructive criticism.
There's a good bit somewhere -- off the EFF pages -- by one of the founders of the WELL, about the lessons learned from anonymous posting. It didn't work then.
What part of "gestalt" don't you understand?
I dont think i would have handled the flames as well as he did. The new look kicked major ass. Everyone I talked to thought it was a great look, and worked even better. Most likely, if I was in the same situation as him, there would have been a ton of flamers getting signed up for every mailing list I could get my hands on, and getting their names/email address posted to every newsgroup possible.
.
Freshmeat has no banners. Hits we provide don't pay bills. Scoop provides this service for us and
gets back nothing. I think he deserves at least some respect. Yes, I liked black background better. But I think Scoop has a right to change it to any color that please him including hot pink.
I hope he would still provide the great service and not listen to a few morons who make more noise than have brains or decency.
come back scoop :(
Honestly, I agree that it's childish to flame someone for all their hard work.
...
But on the same subject, it's just as childish to pull the site down in retaliation. I mean, honestly, if that's all it takes to get rid of such an awesome productive resource for the Linux community, Microsoft has got it made
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
Yup - end of story.
... when I saw it. I had logged on earlier, seen the new format, and I, personally, loved the change! I was unable to peruse the site fully, so I decided to wait until tonight to give it a further look. I even e-mailed a friend about the new layout, in essence saying, "Hey, this is cool, come check it out!"
Then I come back on tonight, and found... it. After taking a few seconds to fully comprehend what happened. I loaded up Pine and sent a e-mail to Scoop, to tell him at least one person appreciated what he did. From reading the rest of the comments here on Slashdot, it seems that I wasn't the only one.
What about some of the people who didn't like it? Where are y'all? Would you like to give your reasons for disliking the new style, as well as what exactly you said to drive Scoop to this? Please, I'm sure a lot of us here would love to hear what you had to say...
The OSS movement is a family when one of is hurt the rest are as well.
I think maybe anyone who flames an OSS website, the original email and full email address should be posted. Dont greave alone Scoop. Give us his email address and we can bring the PAIN. If he wants to assault one of the greatest OSS web sites, then at least let the OSS community express there FEELINGS about the matter to him.
I agree that flaming somebody for their hard work is uncalled for, but at the same time, you can't stifle criticism. If somebody really didn't like the new layout, they have a right to criticize it, even if scoop spent a long time working on it. If the criticism is constructive, then it can lead to a change in the layout which makes more people happy. Either that, or scoop can choose to ignore it and do whatever he wants -- it's his site after all, and chances are that people won't stop reading it, even if they do hate the layout. Most people will probably get used to it after a week or so anyway, so the best option would probably be to change the things that really annoy a lot of people, and ignore the rest until people get used to it and stop complaining.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
More of my thoughts are available on woot.net.
This is not the first time this has happened. It wasn't too long ago that Bruce Perens was ranting about some of the same things Scoop is complaining about. I just got done reading all the shit ESR is taking here in a piece he wrote for our enjoyment. It makes me ill.
If this continues on like this as our community grows larger, the core people will slowly fade away and we'll be left with nothing. There are so many people that put so much of their blood, sweat and tears into all of this without any thought of getting anything back. More and more there are a bunch of leaches that only know that Linux is some kind of warez thats legal!
Please read A usenet Rant for some of the best writing i've ever seen on something similar to this. Usenet is dying a slow and painful death and I can't remember the last time i read alt.*. Its all so full of spam its worthless.
If we aren't careful the so called Open Source movement will end up the same way. Maybe its time to go back to the Cathedral, because the masses out in the bazaar are rioting without any control, running amok in the stalls stealing and breaking all the samples.
If any of you are out there listening. Thank you from the bottom of my heart. ESR, RMS, Linus, Alan, CmdrTaco, Scoop, JWZ, Bruce and all the others... You have made something truly great and I hope you are never discouraged. Someday I hope I can repay all of you for your hard work and give back to the community you started.
Thanks,
Matthew I. Michie
The more you know, the less you understand.
It's not a *constructive* part of web life, but it is a part of it. No matter what you do, someone is almost bound not to like it. Furthermore, there are a lot of people on the Internet who are just plain rude. These two things interact badly, and you either let it get to you, or you ignore it like the stupidity it is.
The Web can be a mean and nasty place, and it is full of malcontents and anonymous fools. We just have to live with it and move on.
There's more than enough room for both Freshmeat and Xshare. Yeeesh! Good-bye FreshMeat, Hello XShare? Where's the sympathy? Where's the appreciation for scoop's hard work?
Man, you are cold!
Posted by hrearden:
Many people that post on this site believe that THEY own other people's work. Some think that "those who can should provide those who need". No wonder.
Posted by Surfer971:
Well all you idiots that complained, YOU HAPPY!? Thanks you little shitbags for ruining it! That was the best damned site to turn for linux software and these whiners blew it! Thanks a friggin lot
yours truly
- Surfer971
Posted by Anhydrous Cowboy:
So, what did the site look like before he took his crayons and went home?
I mean, I've never had MY best effort publically criticized by do-nothing, know-nothing idiots before... I wonder what THAT must feel like....
Posted by VegaC:
Now, I think something must be up, because there are 51 posts as I'm writing this, all in favor of freshmeat's new design (which I must say looks rather cool.) Could it be that the flamers don't want to post, because Rob may post their addie's and they'll be flamed? Nahh, I'm sure they're not afraid, they're just umm, gone, ya that's it, right?
Now, I didn't know scoop, but from what I hear, it would've taken a LOT of flames to piss him off, and he is rightfully so. In a way, I hope he doesn't put freshmeat back up. It would show people that you can't complain about what you don't pay for. Something the people in the OSS world must learn.
Anyways, I applaud those of you who stick up for scoop, and to scoop, if you're reading this...
well done
-Vega
Posted by _da5id_:
Hey all...
To the flamer of freasmeat I can say only one thing: "Do not speak, unless you have something to say!"
Btw. I think the new Freshmeat look is very stylish...
What would they flame? I'm as picky about HTML as anyone alive, and I love the it's look, especially about how Lynx-friendly it is. Good usage of StyleSheets, the site scales wonderfully to different resolutions, it's screamingly fast with few gratituious graphics...if only more "designers" would emulate scoop's method of design. This isn't brown-nosing, as I don't even have a Linux box set up yet, so I've never needed to use FreshMeat.
Posted by hrearden:
I was wondering if anyone would get the paraphrase
Posted by neuralfraud:
You've got to be insane to actually consider flaming the new design on freshmeat.net
its light, and clean, and it looks neat. thats how all pages should be, all these elite heavy graphics that if you dont have a t-1, take 8 minutes to load sites, are annoying.
I say good work.
Posted by hrearden:
I dont recall Ayn ever making any statements like that. What I know is that her writing predict the outcomes of most "new-deal" type social contract. My original point was that the additudes on the site promote the idea that some people have the right to other peoples property, and can therefor "Flame" a website owner if they dont like what that persons property has become.
And please sned me any information on Rand's dismissal of Relativity. I have disagreed with her before.
Posted by Deus_X:
:)
This is my first post to Slashdot... the Jon Katz article on lurkers, along with this, just tweaked my thresholds, so I had to respond...
Something I've noticed in a lot of the messages complaining about Scoop & his "childish" response to flames is this sort of indignance... "You owe us. We made you who you are. It was easy. We can break you, and make someone else. Expect the flames, they're your dues. You should apologize to us for our inconvenience."
"You owe us..." So you visit a site, even contribute now and again. Where does that give you even the slightest justification to think you own the place, or even come to think that the site's owner is privledged to be seen by you?
"We made you who you are..." Ahh, here I think is the perceived slight: "We" provide the content-- and the service of organizing, hosting, collecting, and presenting the content is irrelevant, no? "We" even provide the eyeballs-- without us, there'd be no reason to have a site, right?
What a great act of charity you've done, expending the vast reserves of your armchair energy to grace his URL with a click. Now, say you're more than just a lurking visitor-- say you've actually contributed. Never mind how small a percentage of the site's visitors that is (or the likelyhood that you're not one of them)... So you contributed. Is there a debt to you from the site's owner now? I see that as highly unlikely, seeing as it's the least you could do, after all your time reaping the benefits of his service. Granted, a thank you from the site's owner would be nice, but that's just courtesy-- if you've been using his service, and you've never given anything back, you owe him one.
"It was easy..." What?! Anyone with an FTP server can do this? Then go right ahead and do it better. Don't bitch until you have. Then, maybe, just maybe, you'll know exactly what it takes. Maybe you'll see just how much goes into that "insignificant" work of facilitating an organized flow of information for a community. You go ahead and take the time to read & write volumes of email, site updates, pour through submissions from contributors, keep up to date. You see how long your site lasts if it's "just an FTP server."
"We can break you, and make someone else..." I see a lot of "we"'s being bandied about... Who's this we? YOU. You are the only one you can talk about. You don't like the site, stop using the service. It's that simple. You think the site owner's a whiny bastard-- stop benefitting from his efforts. Enough people think that, then maybe you get your show of "we" power to "break" him. And you want to make someone else? Visit their site. Come on, exercise that armchair power of choice.
"Expect the flames, they're your dues..." I'm willing to bet that 90% of the people taking this position have no clue what they're talking about. If you believe this, can you honestly say you've ever done something major for any group of people? If you can say this, can you then honestly say that you expected to have it thrown back in your face, be spat upon, and like it? Even if it wasn't the entire group of people, even if it was only a few-- do you think that'd make you feel all warm and fuzzy? And then, on top of it, to be told later that you should expect such behavior as your just dues?
"You should apologize to us for our inconvenience..." This I can really relate to-- you don't know how many times I nearly sprained my mouse finger today with extra clicks searching for files I used to find all in one spot on Freshmeat. And God(dess) forbid if it's rumoured the man's making money from his endeavors... (whether he really is or not) that makes him evil, evil, evil. And thus we can treat him anyway we want because he's "getting" something for all this. Bullshit. What makes any of us so important or so "owed" that we can consider the owner of a web site we frequent to basically be enslaved to us? How does it make sense that this person owes something to us and the community for the mere fact of our eyeballs or that we are the source of information for the site?
Maybe it's jealousy-- you're not getting the attention, and maybe you're not getting any money, so you think you're owed something... why not from him? You helped get him there, didn't you? Granted, you didn't get up off your butt and design, program, launch, and maintain a useful site like that, but still... you clicked.
Anyway, I've rambled for far too long. Kudos to Freshmeat for coming back, and on the new design-- it sounds like it was a lot of work. And kudos to everyone who came to his support. Now, I'll sit back and see if I'm noisy enough to get flamed.
This is why commercial Linux/packages distributions are necessary. When a product is released for money rather than positive publicity, the motivation to complete it is much greater.
Valid points in the post above--pretty much nobody is indispensible in the net world nowadays. Someone leaving may cause a temporary hit, but like you say, you'll get "routed around" soon enough. Even someone as hardworking as an Alan Cox (to use an example).
Anybody besides me remember the "war demos" on the Amiga where the crack groups were really slagging each other? Some were vicious. The one I remember the best was Skid row v. Angels where there was an animation of a large grinning devil having anal sex with a childlike angel. Granted, it was quite nasty, but it was an expression of criticism that someone felt necessary.
What it boils down to is the fact that you can do a good job and somebody will be critical. Considering the reach of the net, it's bound to happen. It should happen. But at the sign of criticism (most likely from armchair CGI authors), it is childish to "take your ball and go home": A site is a "public place" so it's subject to public criticism. How would you act if this were for a magazine article instead? Scoop does do a lot of work. But just because he supports something we really like doesn't mean he's above criticism. And in that vein, there's nothing to stop him from coming up with a cynical "fan mail" and "!fan mail" portions of Freshmeat much like Howard Stern does on his radio show.
Slashdot is filled with hypocrites. A lot of ACs screaming for a witchhunt are probably the same ones who write sophomoric "complaint" letters to pro-MS peoples and post them here saying "Look how clever I am." Grow up already and quit raising your pitchforks and shovels from behind an AC facade.
And on top of it all, one could argue "Where's the Grassy Knoll?" Who's to say that Scoop isn't doing this as just some orchestrated Slashdot/Freshmeat psychological experiment? Don't believe everything you see on the net. I was sort of reminded of this last night when I listened to Orson Welles' Presentation of "War of the Worlds."
Freshmeat's a great site, Scoop, but learn to grin and bear any abuse hurled your way. Being hated is part of being popular, you know. All being said, keep up the good work.
...before I posted. I, too was beginning to think that Scoop was acting childishly, but after having
read your well written and informative post I realize I have no right. I've never visited FM much to be honest, but I realize it's valuable to those who do. I'm sure the more I go there, the more I'll want to go back. Anyways, I'm very sorry to hear that all of this happened to you and your fiance, and Scoop. I don't think anyone should let this kind of thing continue to happen to them. Not
having dealt with it myself, I don't have the insight that you do. I'm glad you provided me with some before I stuck my foot in my mouth.
Best of everything to ya...
Posted by VIiMprovedlon.crosswin:
Apperently you are defending flamers, maybe because you ARE a flamer? Flamers are gay retards if they flame hard work done by other people.
Here is the email that I sent to Scoop. And to add to what I said in it, I hope all those that flamed him are forced to apologise for beeing so terribly rude.
--quote--
Scoop,
I wanted to let you know that I thought the new site kicked major ass. Not all of us out there are as rude as those who would flame someone who contributes his time, unpaid, to provide a service to the community. Freshemat was (is?) a resource that I found very useful, and appreciated very much, however, if you feel that removing the site is the right course of action, I support you 100 percent. I probably would have done the same thing. Maybe it'll be a kick in the pants that makes the linux community as a whole grow up a little.
Thanks for all your hard work,
chap
-- end quote---
uhm, I briefly saw the new design, but weren't there three little buttons on the bar which had the software name which linked to those things you mention?
Merit
I'm sorry to hear you received some unfavorable feedback after
introducing changes to your site. I'm afraid that I did not have the
opportunity to see these changes myself; New Years actually managed to
keep me away from my machines for a bit, and I missed its debut.
This whole deal; Open Source, Linux, *BSD, multitudes of open source
projects and commercial vendors playing catch-up, etc., is all about
merit. The meritocracy is composed of those who put forth the effort to
contribute results. You are one of those people. I am certain that
those from whom the flames were received are not. I know this because
contributing members of the meritocracy appreciate the talent and effort
required to build such systems enough to withhold unbridled criticism
when something, which is the result of hard work, is not precisely to
their liking. The rest are useless trolls.
I have always appreciated Freshmeat and admired the work being done. I
can't tell you how many times I've come to Freshmeat looking for a
solution to a problem that works in FreeBSD or Linux. Freshmeat is my
first choice, every time. I have also noted that Freshmeat is
significantly more reliable than some of it's contemporaries; I greatly
appreciate that as I check your site regularly throughout my day.
What has happened here is success. You are experiencing some of the
downside to being successful in your endeavors. You have amassed such a
large following of readers that a certain percentage are inevitably
going to be loud-mouthed simpletons with too much time on their hands.
Because of this success, I can guarantee you that every significant
change you attempt from this point forward will always be accompanied by
lousy feedback from these same boneheads. If you watch carefully each
time, you will notice it remains confined to the same little group of
knuckheads. I recommend that you ignore them. If you feel compelled to
respond to this sort of feedback, the best response is 'Do better or
shut-up'. If they do then perhaps they have a point (i.e. merit). They
won't.
As for myself, I miss Freshmeat. I look forward to seeing the results
of your hard work and I have no doubt that I will be impressed.
Lurking at the bottom of the gravity well, getting old
You should be ashamed of yourselves!
- Jesper Juhl
Black gets old quick. Lookin' Good!
Could anyone who has seen the site sift through
his/her browser cache and please put up a mirror.
I would like to see how it looked.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
The domain "freshmeat.nu" is still available, if someone
wants to start a new site. Just my 2 cents.
"We mustn't be caught by surprise by our own advancing technology" -- Aldous Huxley
This is yet another demonstration that flamewars and political infighting are the linux community's greatest weakness. We'll never achieve world domination if we keep killing each other. Kudos to Scoop for all his efforts so far, and Scoop, PLEASE DON'T LET THE TROLLS WIN
With freshmeat going down (for the time being), I put up a webpage w/ a searchable appindex script on it. It's no replacement for freshmeat (and isn't intended to be), though. It's at http://appindex.cjb.net.
While I'm at it, I'd like to thank scoop for his work and dedication to freshmeat. I'd really like to see it come back up; it's one of the best sites out there.
Thanks. It's pointless now, however, since the Real Thing is back up (woo hoo! and thank (insert religious entity here) and scoop).
Ok, I looked at the new Freshmeat this morning, and very much liked it. I noticed there were comments below, and I read over a fair number of them. Most people, much like myself, were complimenting him on the look. Other were raising some objections about what he'd done (renders slow, etc.), others like the old look better.
I think I missed the flames, but I'd like to say that the criticisms that I did see were fair. Sure scoop puts in a lot of work for no reward, but that doesn't make him above criticism. If someone thinks the site could be better, let them send their advice in to scoop. If scoop wants to, he can listen to it, and maybe improve the site, or he can ignore it (I mean, he is doing it for nothing, so there's nothing stopping him from doing absoluting nothing).
Maybe the flaming was bad and out of control. I don't know, because I don't think I saw it. Still, you have to know that people who do flame that bad don't deserve scoop's attention. This actually is a sad example of what Katz was talking about, with a few screaming flamers pushing everyone around, while the lurkers lose their freshmeat. Scoop needs to take a page from Katz, and learn to recognize the flamers for what they are: adolecent idiots who are desperately seeking attention.
The irony of all this is that I didn't think Katz's argument was right. Talk about fate proving me wrong.
sigs are a waste of space
Agreed. Whats best is to make the letter seem like it was just filled out from a form and not personal at all. Then they think you didn't spend any time on it.:)
A program is a device used to convert data into error messages.
Those who can SHOULD provide those who need. I dont really see how you can relate that kind of mentality to some ungratefull flaming morons.
Exactly.
Freshmeat has been down for only few minutes on New Year's Day and you can say with a straight face
"Ive (sic) seen (sic) loyal customers and contributers (sic) saying that they (sic) lost respect with (sic) FM"?
While freshmeat's new look doesn't appeal to me as much as the old one (that's totally subjective, of course, and I know that many others like it better), it still gets my points for showing how much work has been spent on it. So it's not fair to flame scoop for it. What should be said to all those disrespectful flamers is "take it or leave it". For me, fresmeat should stay as it is now; along with Slashdot, it is one of the better pro-OSS sites anywhere.
In Soviet Russia, Jesus asks: "What Would You Do?"
I personally JUST went to the FM page to see what all the fuss is about-- I saw the new page and the first thought I had was, "This kinda reminds me of a Macintosh, but what hey, it looks pretty cool with the little icons on the bottom of the section for posting."
I can admit that I at first didn't like the new order of the site, but further reading on and noticing that scoop added in a better search engine the only thought I has was "cool."
I wish to personally apologise to scoop, but I have no e-mail address at the moment, so Scoop- if you just happen to read this,
You do good work, and personally I wish you the best. I read freshmeat every day, because freshmeat is such a help to those of us who use Linux at home (and in the work force when our superiors don't make us infect Poor Erwin with NT. and please, please, please bring freshmeat back.
da w00t. mtfnpy?
I feel that flamers have become a REAL PROBLEM. Constructive criticism is fine, but reading emotional rant after rant after rant is enough to get anyone depressed.
The whole nature of the Free Software enterprise is collaborative, and volunteer based. Many participate because discussions with others broadens your horizons, teaches you something. Flaming is fundementally devisive and unconstructive.
Those who say Scoop is behaving like a child should try out what it feels like to have your creation that you put your free-time into lambasted. If your hobby is not fun anymore you'll go and do something else, which will be a loss for the community.
The new breed of "I deserve everything", "I don't want to understand how it works or learn anything -- you support me", "I don't agree with you moron" Free Software Users appears to me to be the biggest threat to the Free Software Movement. Statistically a country becomes xenophobic when 10% of newcommers do not integrate. What if your growth rate is exponential, your population is doubling each year, and the newcommers don't have the central credo (learn to fix it myself)?
Let me start out by saying I rarely use Freshmeat - my Linux box needs a new HD desperately, I'm almost out of room. But from my limited experience, it seems to be a good site, and a valuable resource, one I appreciate when I can make use of it (thanks, Scoop!). That said....
/.), and I hate to admit I lost my temper. There were people who had the *nerve* to tell the host he had no right to skip one movie and save his money for other movies due out in a week or two! Excuse me? Last I checked, the site was hosted by a US citizen and the server was on US soil. We have this tiny thing called the Bill of Rights. I'd suggest y'all go read it.
IT'S HIS SITE!
He could use red on purple, and not a one of us could stop him. If I used it a lot I'd write, probably privately, and suggest a different color scheme, but I would *not* be in my rights to *demand* a change. I haven't put the hours of work into it that he does.
I've recently been in the middle of a flame war on the site I visit 2nd (after
Les the Book
I haven't seen the new layout, but I'm sure that it's better than no layout at all.
This reminds me of a flame from a few years ago that you can read about on Eric Bina's webpage re: Motif vs Athena widget support in Mosaic.
Same argument: people who get Internet stuff for free have no right to complain about it.
I agree, however if you are in this business (hobby, whatever) and you change a popular product people are going to bitch.
If you are expecting them to send you monetary donations in the mail and free pizza to your door, you likely aren't going to get it.
There are way more people out there who love Freshmeat then those that are bitching and understand the work that is put into all free software/websites.
For that sake, please bring Freshmeat back.
So I found out about all this crap when I pulled freshmeat a little while ago and got scoop's rant.
I hope he'll put the site back up, and I hope he'll use the new interface. After all, if he spent such time on it, I can't imagine it being anything other than leaps and bounds beyond the previous interface (which didn't exactly suck, either). Besides, I haven't even seen the new one.
That said, insert same content as Rob's rant here.
One: The links were still there, in the form of those little icons at the bottom of each blurb. Scoop should have put up a small box explaining these icons, granted, but they weren't too hard to figure out.
Two: You don't get it. Form (interface would be a better word) is the most important aspect of a program, Web page, etc. The best program in the world is worthless if no one can use it; to well over ninety-five percent of the world's population pico is more powerful than vi or emacs because of this fact; they have never used any of these three programs but would be immediately be able to get to work in pico while at least ten minutes of poring over books/manpages/etc would be required just to figure out how to quit either of the other two, to say nothing of saving, searching, or any other function. Scoop tried to make his site more powerful by enhancing the interface, and he did a damn good job of it too (granted, I don't like the new logo but the old one would have been even worse in the new layout so it was good that he changed it). And you belittle him over a change that benifited you as much as it did everyone else. I find that disgusting.
This said, I have two small suggestions for Scoop:
1) Have a small box or bar at the top which explains the three little icons. They confused me for a minute or two, they evidently confused this guy even more, and they probably confused more than a few others.
2) Change the logo. Not back to the old one; it was right for its layout but not this one. I'm afraid, however, I cannot help you in designing The Perfect Logo(tm) for the new layout. Perhaps a contest would be the wise way to go?
These two criticisms voiced, I'm throwing my support wholeheartedly behind Scoop. Don't stay away too long, pal.
well he is still wrong and so are you! a large number of nick users flame too, it's just easyer to blame the AC's for it because you only have to remember the one name. do the research and you will see it for your self.
I did. Most flames are posted by people going under the AC alias.
i wont even get into the fact that alot of nick users prolly drop their nicks when they flame.
You're probably right, but they're AC's when they do that nonetheless. With one exception: those people, who have their own nicks but not the guts to put them behind their arguments, are the real cowards.
Come to think of it, why are you flaming me? I never meant to offend anybody. I was just stating that most people who flame are AC's, not that all AC's flame. And I do count nick users who drop the nicks to flame as AC's; those people certainly have the "coward" part of it right.
ok. how can anyone complain about the new freshmeat? did the flamers see it? it was the best thing since sliced bread. if any of you explored the site a bit, and looked around it, you would have found tons and tons of new and awesome stuff. i almost fell over in my chair when i saw it and looked around. could someone please please tell me what they thought was wrong with it? the only thing i saw people suggest was that the search box be near the top more. thats it, just a suggestion, which im sure scoop was going to implement soon.
:(
please guys, please. what is going on here? have people lost their minds because it is 1999? each and every one of you spammers or whoever, take a good look at yourself, and just think about whats going on.
--
Which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
--Michael Esveldt
I didn't prefer the new look of freshmeat at first. But the second time I looked at it it looked nice. I really think it was stupid of all the people who flamed scoop. It's not your site, so if you don't like it just SHUT UP and go away.
Mike.
Tigger's like to read
Any idiots who think they are clever enough to attack the webmaster of one of the greatest sites on the Internet should be killed immediately.
:-(
I like new FreshMeat interface, very nice and clean. Great job!!
Unfortunately there are idiots in every place of Earth....
Scoop, you do a great job, we all owe to you!
Happy new year!
--
Starting reality daemon: realityd
"Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies."
Pay no attention to whiners, we all love freshmeat. The time has come to take out the garbage. Garbage being the whining, loud MINORity.
Its truly a shame that nit-picking jerks with a complaint don't hesitate to hurl insults, whereas(bold tags) people who appreciate someone's toil keep their mouths shut.
Admittedly, I read freshmeat every day, yet I've never sent off an e-mail saying "Great Job" or "Couldn't make it through the day without it". I suspect that I'm not alone.
I see four options...
void rbowles(int sig)
/* MAGIC THEATRE
ENTRANCE NOT FOR EVERYBODY
MADMEN ONLY */
This would work if the people who were flaming him would be hurt by this. But those people won't be hurt as much as the majority of users who use freshmeat as an excellent source of information.
The new interface looked really nice. The old one was getting...well old...It's scoop's site...let him do what he wants with it...and as far as I'm concerned he's been doing a great job. I would hate to loose freshmeat. Great Job Scoop...Keep up the GREAT work. I hope you put the site back up soon... BTW: This in no way means that I don't think /. is also great :-)
Palin...
I usually only hit Freshmeat once a day after I get home from work.. I didn't even get to see the new layout -- instead I just see this grey rant page. Doh!
Unfortunately I've never had time to see the new layout as he has taken the site down for the moment due to the flames. I must admit I don't visit freshmeat as much as I should and often just use the summary links on slashdot to see if there's any new releases I'm interested in and I also use freshmeat to search for any software I want to download.
Whatever form it takes it provides an extremely useful service and I'm sure this new look never removed any of the features the previous site had and perhaps added more functionality.
Often once you're used to one layout it takes a while to adapt to the change but it's best to give it time before complaining and never be abusive just becasue *you* don't like it. There'll be many others who do like it so OK comment but don't be unreasonable.
I think taking down freshmeat was a bad idea though because there is a possibility that is what the flamers really wanted and in effect giving into them although the volume of email being generated may have meant having to bring down the site just to curb the flow of email.
--
When I first saw your message on the Freshmeat home page, I thought perhaps someone had perpetrated a sad hack, but then I saw the notes in LinuxToday and SlashDot...
I hope you'll reconsider what appears to be the end of FreshMeat. You have done as much for the OpenSource community as Eric Raymond, Richard Stallman and Linus -- you have given everyone a place to see what's happening on a hourly/daily basis and to give measure to the speed and diligence of the OpenSource community in making constant improvements in what, like Freshmeat, is done usually as a labor of love, and a dedication to craft and excellence of workmanship.
What you've done is wonderful, please don't let a collection of jackasses wear you down!
If, in the end, you do feel that it's time to pack it in, and take a break from giving all the time, please know that there are a LOT of people, like me, who appreciate the time and effort you put into Freshmeat; you will be sorely missed...
I hope to see Freshmeat on the air again, but whichever path you choose....
Thank you (!!!) for all of your good work, and have a healthy and happy new year!
When you get a life and can tell us who you really are, then maybe someone will be interested in what you have to say. Better yet, why don't you put your money where your mouth is and contribute to the community instead of just taking...
Until then, go back to your room and get back to the dirty books you keep hidden under your bed.
Oh, and don't let your mommy know you were up this late or she'll spank you.
speaking of fscked up web pages...is linuxhq hacked or it just me?
I used to think I had a thick skin, but you need a really thick skin with this crowd.
Bruce
Bruce Perens.
All that happend was a site that you liked was taken down by the person who ran it for personal reasons. Freshmeat says nothing about OSS, it is just a service provided to us by someone who believes in our cause..
Sites go down everyday for all types of reasons.. Same with commerical sites.
-- You can be a geeklord too
Well, the old site did look cooler, imho. This one's really, different. I like the logo, but the colors are so springtime! And it's still winter here. Just my two cents.
I agree that Freshmeat is a good site and scoop has put a lot of work into it. I like the new layout too.
BUT...
I wish he could tone down the large number of tables. Makes it fairly slow to reload.
Otherwise, it's great, and I appreciate the help his site has given me.
If people dont like the look of a site, let them go else where. If they have such great ideas, let them use them on there own site. Only people that would have any rite to complain are the ones that paid for the site. I dont think anyone paid for Freshmeat.
Elwood
Elwood
I've found freshmeat to be an invaluable resource, and until today it never occurred to me to thank you for it. So please let me take this opportunity to do so.
I did see your changes this morning. My initial reaction was that I didn't think it was as visually appealing. However, I DIDN'T immediately send you flames, because I recognized that you had done a bunch of work on it, probably including features that I haven't even noticed yet. Besides, by comparison to either the old or the new look, my own web site is completely plain and ugly. Any sensible person realizes that the content is the important part, and IMHO you've always done a great job with both the content and the presentation.
Please bear in mind that for every jerk that sends you flames and hate mail, there are probably thousands of people like me who have been and continue to be grateful for all your hard work. We just haven't been vocal about it, and we probably should have been.
So please don't let the losers get you down.
Best wishes for the new year!
Eric
[PS. Thanks to Rob, also, for all his efforts on Slashdot!]
I looked at the new layout and, frankly, I prefer the old one. However, I would never think of flaming Scoop. He put a lot of work in freshmeat and I'm happy he maintains it. I guess people who flamed him don't realize that he doesn't owe anybody to continue maintaining it, nor does he get any money from doing so. Flames (see the poll) are not acceptable. Constructive critisism + suggesstions are. So why don't we get the names of the flamers and point them out their mistakes, shall we?... :-)
___
If you think big enough, you'll never have to do it.
Don't waste time reading flame e-mails.
Get my e-mail after a captcha test in: http://tinymailt
Lots of assertions, but as yet not a clue in sight. Go ahead and provide the same service as Freshmeat. You won't because you don't have the time. Freshmeat is not one man's FTP space, it's more sophisticated than that.
You assume that money pours into places like that, which is clearly barking mad. Notice how people like CT have other things to do like college? Maybe it is cos they DON'T make enough money to support themselves on the back of their web site and they need to get a job, hence a college degree, in order to live? You'll notice that there are no adverts on Freshmeat too.
You'll notice Scoop never mentioned anyone other than flamers in his litle message, nor did he starve us of Freshmeat for more than a few minutes. If you're sensitive enough to feel so insulted by his actions then there is something severely wrong with you.
Or did you actually do something worth insulting, like flame the new design?
Either way you do aren't making yourself look very clever.
Notice the advertising? Of course you do. Show me the advertising on Freshmeat.
I certainly didn't cite only Slashdot (despite my example-making) so my point still stands I reckon.
of course there are plenty of others who run sites for free that aren't necessarily to do with this sort of thing and they spend lot of time on them too.
but the point is the people who actually enjoy it don't say thank you all to much. we take some things for granted. some guy at a comercial site get's paid money for this I could care less. scoop and rob both make a go at this for something a bit loftier and deserve something like a thank you once and awhile. just because the lurkers don't speak don't mean we're not here.
"We want to take over the world, but we don't want to do it tomorrow, it's OK if it's next week"-- Linus Torvalds
I think it sucks that scoop got so much flame mail, but at the same time, there are a few things on the side to be thought about...
:)
I think scoop is completely within his rights to do whatever he wants with his web site up to and including tanking it, putting up just one simple grey rant page, but something's sticking in the back of my head...
As we read in so many jon katz editorials, people just have to have thick skin. Flaming people for putting in shit loads of FREE work is really weak, but at the same time, if I were scoop, I would have put that rant at the top of the new page, and with it a little note that says if you don't like it go ahead and TRY to find a site that kicks 1/5 as much ass as freshmeat.
I don't really agree with the decision to yank the whole damn thing in favor of just one grey rant page, but it's his man, and you have to respect his choice.
I REALLY HOPE THAT FLAMERS DON'T MESS UP FRESHMEAT.NET FOR THE REST OF US.
To scoop: please understand by reading jon katz's articles that of the people that email you telling you that they hate the new UI, you're only getting 2% of all responses to the page. Trolls suck, but they're a part of the experience I guess you could say.
Freshmeat.net kicks ass and if you don't like it, don't flame the guy who did it, but rather, shoot yourself.
-- Truth goes out the door when rumor comes innuendo. -- Groucho Marx
try
this from my cache
i only pulled out the front page
Back when the word "gay" was still a new way to say "homosexual" in polite company (and another previously useful word, as was "queer", to be co-opted for sexual politics), "flaming" was slang for being "outrageously" "homosexual acting" but it didn't imply the "verbal roasting" that it currently does in e-mail, newsgroups, et cetera.
Although I suspect there are a much greater number of homosexuals involved in the computer biz than many others would believe(or want to) I'm more inclined to believe that the current meaning of "flaming" did not evolve from the old one.
_After the opinion, a question_
Now that "gay" has been in use for so many years that its original meaning is probably lost forever("don we now our gay apparel" had nothing to do with cross dressing)has it become the new way of saying "queer"? Instead of being a "no implication of positive or negative" way of saying homosexual, has it become the new pejorative? And is it progressing from meaning "homosexual, and that's a bad thing" to just meaning "something bad and despicable" without sexual preference or orientation necessarily having anything to do with it?
(once the word "lame" only meant "one or more of your legs don't work right." The trouble with coding English for homo sapien compatible brains is that all your constants are variables.)
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.
Social disconnectivity is a plague of internet communication and a plague to the linux comunity as it widely depends on the internet. That is what I feel is the cause of these idiots behaving irrationally. It's all to common and it's about time a major statement be made...RELEASE THE NAMES!!!
hope everything can be resolved soon. i enjoyed the freshmeat redesign for a few hours before the entire site was yanked.
--sean
about sean dreilinger
Those Sons of *****es deserve a swift kick in the teeth. I am angry. I thoroughly enjoy Scoop and his site. It is one of the bright spots in an otherwise dull existance and of course /..
How much you bet those flames cannot even read
an html tag let alone write simple html. They don't deserve Linux. Maybe this is part of a well-planned FUD attack on Microsoft's behalf??
Do you think I am Paranoid??
-- Ted tsikora@powerusersbbs.com
Who exactly had the balls to complain about this free service? Do any of these monkeys have the balls to 'fess up here and perhaps explain themselves?
This crap really pisses me off. My apologies for the language. I just hate people that do this kind of thing. Long live Freshmeat!!! Bring it back, Scoop! Not all of us hate it! :P
Read my stuff.
Guys, chill out!
It could be our good old friend M$, flaming Scoop; just to break the integrity of the community..got to be careful not falling for flames.
SCOOP:
Come on man, please please bring the sight back...I love the new look.
What I don't understand is the concept that some people have that the website is no longer owned by someone if it becomes popular. It was scoop's website, granted he took the chance that people might dislike his work, but it is NOT the communities web site, it is HIS. To all of the people that work their asses off on a site, and then go unapreciated, I apologise.
Subject says it all...
NULL
I want the names of all the flamers, so I can hire some goons and go get Them. Anyone who wants to donate torches and pitchforks, let me know... All /.ers are invited to join in.
yeah >-D
Whahahaha >-)
*(Another peace of cloth removed from this man
What about one big textfile in which all us
:-(
freshmeaters can show the appreciation
about freshmeat which we have never spoken
out?
Let's try to be a community for once again
*(Another peace of cloth removed from this man
I love the new look! Looks more professional to me (just my opinion)...
Cybie! aka Ralph Bonnell
hmmm... read Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand -- see what happens to the incompetent and those who succor them!
Hey, I'd like to voice my support for Freshmeat. I don't care what it looks like, as long as it continues to provide the exemplary service has for so long. I have no doubt that this will be the case. Freshmeat and Slashdot are my main sources for Linux software and info, and I think those who can't be positive about any changes to Freshmeat should seriously think about the time and effort the site has saved them. Positive criticism is fine, but flaming just lets the whole community and open source ethic down. I remember being similarly ashamed during the KDE/Gnome wars. Common people, we are only helping the FUD mongers!
Espressoman.
You need to be flammed for assuming he was associating all gay people with flamers. He didn't say all, did he?
I thought Linux users, and especially Linux users that find the content on Freshmeat interesting, were the 'upper-class' of the 'Net, thus having some kind of knowledge of the most basic rules of behaviour on the net, namely the netiquette.
I'm sad to see I was wrong.
//Henrik Gustafsson
When a webmaster checks his e-mail, he does not get an accurate representation of the opinions of those reading his site. People who DO like the site don't do a good job of complementing the
webmaster, but people who don't like the site tend to overstate their opinions. This causes the
webmaster to get a lot of negative feedback, which is not deserved. I for one am going to try to
complement people more often when I like the work they've done.
Somehow, online culture absorded a pseudo-Darwinian blame-the-victim attitude which insists that you have to develop a thick skin and endure any flames and abuse that get hurled at you, or you should just "get out of the kitchen." Too many Internet for Dummies books have communicated the myth that "anything goes" and that you shouldn't expect courtesy or consideration online.
That myth is one of the most insidious pervasive pieces of hokum that has ever infected human discourse. It has to be challenged. People ALWAYS deserve courtesy, verbal abuse is wrong, and one shouldn't need a skin of asbestos to provide services to the people around them. That's true in the private sector (I don't think that a Gap retail clerk deserves or should be expected to endure irrational rage, although increasingly our society says s/he should endure customer hysteria), it should be especially true for people providing a free service.
Now let's stop worrying about who changed what site. It looks fine and at least they don't need MS_Front_Page_(fill-in-ridiculas-bloatware-version ) to make their web site. It is their site, it looks fine and they can do whatever they want to it.
Slashdot is not representative of the Linux comminity as a whole, but it is watched by many so please act maturely. I told you guys, read the 7 ways M$ will try to bring down Open Source:
To Recap:
M$'s strategies are going to be close to the following. (from a source inside of M$)
1.The closer to the Win2000 release the more FUD we should spread about open source.
2.Spread FUD about how it is unstable, hard to use and is not in use in large numbers in corporate America.
3.Spread the perception of ease-of use of Windows
4.Infiltrate the newsgroups (SlashDot et. al) with inflammatory comments making more rift in the Linux camps and then spread more FUD on fragmented the so-called "Linux-Community" is.
5.More than embrace & extend, we go after the companies that are known to use or embrace Linux and offer them large incentives to switch to Windows.
6.Use the news sources and media outlets at our disposal to conduct mock tests against Linux and other competing operating systems, first by making windows lose to the competing OSs then after the debut of Windows-2000 conduct tests by "Independent Media Outlets" to let the world know how much our product has improved and outdone the competition. This "Impartial Validation" methods wins consumers over.
7.Increase marketing pressures on current media partners and increase our financial stake in those companies.
Take a little bit of advice from a guy who is both a part of the Linux community as a developer and who runs a company. We can have a great year and kick but in making Linux dominant but don't fall prey to the traps set by the little arrogant egos at Microsoft. We must keep the pressure on being the guerrilla warriors that attack when least expected and garner the popular public opinion.
The ZD-Nets of the world are for the consumer who knows nothing. Many of my collegues could be in that catagory as well. They know how to run a company but are clueless about technology.
M$ spreads FUD because they ARE scared!. As the 35th Soshi (Grandmaster) of a Japanese martial art called Ninpo-Taijutsu wrote..."If you were not scared, there would be no need of such defensive reaction." He elaborates on this by saying "Reaction is when your environment is in control of you...dictating your actions.." "Response is when You are in control of you...forcing the adversary to react.."
-- Shoto Tanemura (Tanemura Shoto [jp])
Something to think about in the New Year...
Cheers,
Nicholas Donovan
Linux Systems Group
Interesting that a majority of the people here who posted inflammatory comments were AC's.
How much do you guys want to bet many are M$ people who post them just to raise ire.
My advice, don't be so easily manipulated.
Keep above the fray and keep positive.
If you need to, refer to my previous post on
how M$ plans to take on Open Source[r] this year.
Stay Positive, we have them on the run. Keep responsive not reactionary etc. etc.
Cheers,
Nick
First off, the TWO web sites I visit every day are Slashdot and Freshmeat. For those of you that bashed 'n trashed scoop for the new layout of the web site..., you suck. (in a nutshell) He provides us all with a cool place to grab the latest and greatest software for Linux..., and it's FREE! What else could you ask for? Personally, I think the new look is refreshing. Poof!
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
Your reply is totally out of line, in a nutshell you are the asshole. This should be a adult conversation (or there about's) about freshmeat, not some type of total flame on another person's view of the subject at hand. They had a opinion and stated it, you just flamed 'um big time! Sniff another can of paint and get back to me. ;)
Life was hell, then I discovered Linux...
As long as it still works with lynx, and i can still get to all thoes links :), i didnt even see the new page :(. i think jelesy is the reason he got flamed, cuase they coulnt even dream of making a better site! i know i cant, so i dont even try, and im thankful for a site linke freshmeat, just dont make it go away, im allready going into withdraw.
-magister-
This is what i did, and i hope all the others that are religus about freshmeat do the same!
P.S. my withdraw symptoms are getting worse, i need freshmeat!
-magister-
Scoop,
Not everyone had a problem with it. I liked it. Only problem I had was the search at the bottom. The colors were cool. I read the posts on it for the message you had and they were for the most part constructive. Don't allow some Gates spawned users to mess with your head. Put the new one back up please. You have a unique position in that you can single handedly handicap a movement using your web site. We know your power and alot of us like you site.
Please put the new one back up.
Thanks,
CatNTHat
Of course it's company policy never to, imply ownership in the event of a dildo... always use the indefinite article a d
If he can't hack the flames, he should quit... you won't see him doing it.. cuz he knows he's got a nice meal ticket right there...
I have no pity for people like you guys who run these sites.. drown in your own success if you want, but don't bug everybody about it...
You have some serious crocodile tears.
It's not about being rich.. it's about success. Who cares if you don't have money if you have your work being seen my thousands of people every day...
The simple solution is for Freshmeat to detect the client used and format the page to suit.
Simon
Computers are useless: they can only give you answers. -- Pablo Picasso
To Scoop--you've been doing a dern fine job and I hope you won't let a small collection of idiots ruin your day. Thanks for all your work!
Rob L.
Here's a good poll...who liked the site, and who thought it sucked? We'll show scoob what most poeple thought about it, not just those stupid flamers.
I only saw it in lynx, and didn't really notice much change...but it seemed okay.
If corporations are people, aren't stockholders guilty of slavery?
I hope we all appreciate what has happened here. It's not up to us to decide what another's site should look like. Scoop your doing a great job, keep up the good work.
To the people who say Scoop is acting immaturely: Do we want Scoop to have a nervous breakdown after being flamed so many times? He reacted much better than I would have. If he is constantly flamed and he does nothing, there will be no motivation for him to try anything new and the site will stagnate (design-wise, not content-wise). If he kept the site up, we would have lashed out at everyone another way, and that would have been in the form of less updates.
To Scoop: Go all the way. Keep the site down until a week after the release of the 2.2 kernel. (But not indefinitely please) Maybe a few people will learn a lesson.
To Rob: Redesign Slashdot.
I hated it for about 10 seconds, and the thought of flaming him over it would never have occured to me.
If I'd still hated it after those 10 seconds, I'd have just removed my bookmark and not gone back.
Everybody who flamed Scoop needs to get a fucking life.
Scoop, I suggest you filter the IPs of anybody who flamed you. If they don't like it, they can start their own goddamn site.
I'm not gonna read any replies to this.
The way you post, it seems that you think that Scoop has an obligation to us. Well, he doesn't. Not one iota. I think that a little gratitude is in order. I think that he could shut his site down for good and would be well within th rules of this "pretty unbalanced game". There is no game, man. Scoop does all the work, and we are obliged to him. That's the deal. We don't have any power or say in how his site is run because we don't do jack shit. If you want to make the rules, start your own site.
Being unappreciated is one of the crappiest feelings in the world. Do you even know how difficult, or expensive it is to maintain a personal site? I'm not talking about a geocities POS site, I'm talking about a commercial site with no transfer limits and lots of room. It's an investment. And he's doing this for free. He owes us nothing. We owe him everthing. I think that deserves respect. If you feel betrayed, don't use his site and you are absolved of all responsibility to respect Scoop. Fair enough?
by Mike Buddha -- Someday the mountain might get him, but the law never will.
You now have to follow a link in order to get to the point where you can link to the homepage, changelog, etc. It's like putting a little glass case over your car stereo so you have to unlock it every time you want to change the station. He's added an extra step where no extra step was needed.
That being said, I realize he doesn't get paid, and i appriciate the fact that there's such a page online. I like the new look, but I don't like having to click on "details" before I can get to a useful link.
I don't think this is a flame, but constructive critisism. I could apply the same critisism to Netscape 4.5, and most of the KDE "enhancements".
So you've got a good product. Fine. So you want to make it prettier. Good. But if the prettier version is less useful, bag it.
This is just like television, only you can see much further.
---Posting Rules---------------------------------
1. Stay on topic.
2. Don't flame people.
3. Don't be a potty mouth.
None of these are concrete black & white issues, but we reserve the right to delete comments that violate them. We're not willing to get sued over what you post. And frankly, we don't want slashdot to degenerate to what usenet usually is like. So don't do stupid things like 'first comment' crap.
--- FAQs-----------------------------------------
1. Why did you delete my comment?
A. See the rules above.
--Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda
malda@slashdot.org
Be careful.
"Your heart is free. Have the courage to follow 'er."
-- Grow up and use mutt.
If one builds a web site that gains a substantial following, any changes should *really* be considered carefully before their implementation. In a way, it's not that different from upgrading software - once people get used to the way it works, they're going to be upset if an "upgrade" means a whole new learning curve. Good design (especially with respect to an existing product) involves integrating enhancements with what's already there, not a complete remake.
Anyone managing a website like Freshmeat or Slashdot needs to decide if they're truly out to serve the web community, or if their motive is to build a testament to their own ego. It's an easy trap to fall into. If the emphasis is serving the web community, perhaps a more productive way to introduce changes of this magnitude is to have a small group of users test it first. If it gets good reviews, try it with a different group. If it gets good reviews a second time, the user community in general will probably be receptive. If it gets bad reviews, find out what's wrong, fix it, and then try again. This process may take longer, but the results will usually be much better.
yes, you boiled your blood... HA-HA..
Man, this really gets my goat (or cat). As another provider of a free service, I know just how it is to get the flames. I don't blame scoop one bit, I would and have done the same - yank the service from the ingrateful little pricks.
We (providers of free services) spend our time, money, and love making something for other people to use, and we decide to change it, upgrade it, fix it up, and the whiners come out of the woodwork. Ungrateful, undeserving people like that should be dragged out into the street, stripped naked, anally violated by a bear, then slowly burned to death.
To hell with them. Right on, scoop! And to hell with those who think scoop went to far - YOU run a free service for a while, then do something to make it better, and get flamed by hundreds of ingrateful little pricks.
- One pissed off Cat, MaineCoon
Hunt your preferred prey at Aliens vs Predator MUD. Join the war at avpmud.com port 4000
I cant believe that you received so much flak about your site overhaul I think its pretty dam good.
I am glad to see that important Linux sites like Freshmeat and Slashdot are run by real people with real feelings. As soon as we cannot show our feelings anymore because companies expect us to act "professional" we really have something to be disapointed about.
Grow up Anonymous Coward!
You don't HAVE to like the colors. Sign up as a member, and you can set your own! Personally, I think the new layout whoops ass, and the layout is the only thing you can't change yourself.
Perhaps we all forget from time to time to complement people on how good their work is. A site like freshmeat is important to our community, and it must be a round the clock job to keep it updated.
We just assume that people like scoop realise how much we appreciate their work, and don't even take the time to tell them (Maybe this is like not thanking your parents every once in a while). It's in our nature to be this ingrateful, and that is a shame.
Personally, I was a little apprehensive about the new layout, but by the time I got to the bottom of todays releases I thought: "Well, it actually looks better".
Scoop, you've done a wonderful job so far, and you've got an entire community of ingrates on their knees begging you to come back. Keep up the good work.
I love the new layout. I can't believe that people would flame some one who provides us with such a wonterful free service. Without freshmeat.net(scoop) and Slashdot.org(Rob) running these wonderful services, I don't think that I would be able to run a 100% linux household right now.
Today is my first day without a microsoft product installed on any of my personal machines and I am so proud of that fact.
Thank you Rob and Patrick
I love the new freshmeat layout, and it's a shame that people have to flame this fellow for all of his hard work. On another note, I E-Mailed Tucows the other day, asking if they planned on adding a linux section. Well, much to my suprise, this was their reply:
www.linuxberg.com will be open for business on January 4th
I went and checked it out, and it looks pretty neat. Not nearly as much software as freshmeat, but a great start.
I like cheese, cheese is good, cheeeeeeese is gooood.
Yes, it was different (ooooh... different... must complain). Yeah, it was a little shocking it was so different...
Fucking so what. If you don't like change, get the fuck off the net, because this ain't the place to be if you don't like change.
Get off now and quit ruining it for the rest of us.
<$0.02> Maybe we should flame you and see how much you appreciate it. If Scoop wants to make his site black text with a black backround it isnt anybodys business. ITS FREE! He has every right to take it down and as soon as I saw what he had done I emailed him in support. I thought it took alot of guts to do that. Maybe all those flamers (lamers) out there realize how important it was to them now. </$0.02>
Really, how dare anyone complain about a service they get for FREE!! God people, get with it. The poor fella works his butt of to help provide on of the best online resources for finding the latest *nix software as well as seeing what's new and people scream because he changes it on you? Personally I never got to see the new layout before it was removed, but I plead on the jerks behalf for scoop to put the site back up, some of us appreciate the hard work that must go into keeping the site running and would hate to see it go :/
PS. To you pathetic "I got the first comment" fewls, grow up. Like my mom use to say, if you have nothin to say, shut up. Your just wasting the precious resouces of our beloved slashdot.
Look guys, Freshmeat and Slashdot are the two most useful sites on the net and their webmasters work damm hard to keep them that way. Lets not trash what was clearly hard work to do. Please keep up the good work.
I actually liked the new site alot more than the old one.
Easier to read, and all the information i wanted was more accessable.
for anyone who hasn't seen it yet, it's at
http://www.new.ox.ac.uk/~adam/fm/fm.htm
its not my site, i just found it on irc.
eet sum dIP!
Well, here is my 2 cents on this subject:
I have used Freshmeat for about a year now and have found it a valuable source of information.
One that has not been duplicated. I found the web page to be not only professional but also
extremely imaginative. I did not get a chance to see the new web page design, but I am sure
that it was either the standards I have come to expect from this web page or had far excelled
them.
Although, when I loaded the web page today I saw something I could not believe. There
wasn't professionalism. There was only the 'rant' of a desperate person. This is something I
never thought I would see.
My point? Freshmeat, no longer holds that same status in my eyes. I no longer see it as a
professional web page. If the webmaster is going to act like a child, then expect to be thought
of the same. He has plenty of reason to object to the emails he received and had plenty of other
ways of making his point. He has forced the thousands of supportive users of the web site to
make them pay for the (maybe) hundred unappreciative users. Not a good thing in my eyes! I
did not even see anything in his 'rant' about those that supported him during this.
If you are going to take down the web page, then do so. If not, just put the thing back up.
Don't play games. Games are for kids!
DavonZ
P.s. As I said before, I loved Freshmeat and will continue to do so. But this is absurd.
The Open Source system yields something that other systems don't have: Direct access to developers. When was the last time you knew the e-mail address of the guy who designed your television set or your car? OSS has set a precedent of not just supported software, but author-supported software. You can send e-mail directly to the person who wrote the actual code that you love (or hate, as the case may be) so much. And they might actually even read it and reply!
If you could talk to the person who decided where all the switches on your dashboard would go, you might have some (ahem) constructive criticism for him/her. I know I would. But we don't, so we deal with it. In the OSS world, however, we do have that kind of access, so we feel like we have a license to speak our minds without consideration for a few key facts.
One, the vast majority of OSS developers don't get paid for their work. They are donating their time and talent to help make the lives of the rest of us easier and more tolerable. Two, most of these programmers have "regular" jobs that pay the bills and that require their attention. Their lives do not revolve around their OSS development. Three, and most important, these developers are PEOPLE. They are not simply e-mail addresses on the other side of the world. They are human beings, with egos, feelings, moods, and all the other things that make us all human. They care about the work they've done and the people whose lives are affected by that work, and to have those people turn on them can be quite unpleasant.
As users, I make this request. Let us all remember that we want OSS to succeed, and therefore we should support it, and the people who make it work, as best we can. If you have criticisms for a given program, web site, or whatever, fine. You have every right to express those opinions. But you must do it respectfully and politely. Remember, the person who is going to be reading this is a person! Treat them as you would want to be treated. Make sure to compliment the things you like, and thank them for their efforts.
As developers, we must also recognize that e-mail is a very poor forum for conveying voice inflections and other non-verbal communications that tell us how someone intends their words to be interpreted. The same phrase can come across a hundred different ways, depending on how it's said. So we must try to take critically-worded e-mails in stride, and be extra-tolerent of flames. We must acknowledge the phenomena I mentioned above as a fact of life in the world of open software and try our best not to take it personally.
In the same way that you should think before you open your mouth, you should also think before you send an e-mail. The same old rule, slightly paraphrased, applies: "Read twice, send once."
MichaelMichael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
i've always assumed that the reply would be "you've got the source. fix it."
This comment brings up two interesting points. One, not all e-mail users send to authors is bug reports. Some are requests for features, some are requests for assistance, etc. Two, I (and many other OSS authors) don't mind getting bug reports that don't have patches. Of course, we prefer patches since they save us work, but we also realize that not everyone is a programmer. I do sometimes tell people "I'll fix it when you send me the patch," but I try to only do that to people I know and/or with bugs I can't reproduce myself.
now, the thought of actually flaming somebody who gave me a free program, with source code that i could fix myself . . . jesus, that's just beyond comprehension.
Rude, yes. Uncalled-for, yes. Beyond comprehension, perhaps. But it happens all the time.
MichaelMichael Jennings | HPC Systems Engineer, Lawrence Berkeley National Lab | Author, Eterm (eterm.org)
AAHH... The best page on the net is down because of flaming bastards. Please ... get it up again. Im beggin you. The new layout was a winner. Like a painting.
I saw the new site earlier and thought it was great.
:), since
Falmers are a bad breed and need to (re)learn
the netiquite from the late 80s and early 90s.
In 92 when I started online at school Netscape was new,
Mosaic was HOT and Gopher still popular.
I remember archie and ftp instead of search engines.
The newsgroups didn't allow filthy language or flames.
I remember young (16 years old) newbies from AOL
and how they destroyed newsgroups and IRC.
I don't go near them anymore.
Remember though, most people who like something
stay quiet. It's the dessenters that complain
and flame.
I've learned to ignore them, and hope others will too (well after a few mail bombs to them
I know they aren't going away any time soon.
-Thomas
If you guys can do better make your own site,
and leave those guys from FM alone.
please..
Coz i just CAN'T stand it if those guys need to
shutdown there site because ppl mail them
too death of a stupid think like a look !?.
Geez.. i find it rather pathetic, let them make
the site how THEY want it too be.. they know
what there doing, just let those guy's do there
job. it has been a great site and it allway's be a
great site.
So don't start on the looking thing, if ya can do
it better then them, DO IT, otherwise shut up.
and ofcourse to the guy's of FM. keep up the good
work!
its LBJM
that onther post was my first one and since I didn't get my password right away
its LBJM
Dammit, Freshmeat was probably the only site I have ever found whose layout I thought was really awesome. Most sites have various little issues that make them ugly or a pain to navigate, but Freshmeat had a beautifully clean and elegant interface, and most importantly, looked great in Lynx! I didn't get a chance to see the new site, but I can hardly imagine that Scoop would have made it worse.
By the way, a bit of advice to those who flamed Scoop: Even if you are sending constructive advice, such as suggesting ways something could be improved, write a draft of your email and save it, then go off to do something else... read your own email, browse Freshmeat, debug your kernel, whatever. When an hour has passed, proofread the mail you were going to send. Correct the grammar, punctuation, and spelling. Then send it.
(And you thought I was going to tell you to delete it, didn't you? Well, I guess you can if you want to.. If it's not actually constructive, it's probably a good idea)
Learn to love hate-mail...it makes life much easier and more enjoyable. Imagine, if you will, the frothing idiot sitting at his machine pounding out his grumble-mail; this is an appropriate time to feel superior. Furthermore, you can snicker at the sender for thinking they are irritating you.
As for freshmeat, it rocks, and I'm very sorry to see it offline. Bring it back, and don't let the ungrateful wretches get you down.
Finally, it seems you might have forgotten the very useful expression, "If you don't like it, you can kiss my ass!"
I think that it is quite easy to take for granted something as good as freshmeat.net It is a pity that I am guilty though, as I didn't post a comment expressing how cool I thought it was, and that only the people who didn't like it got together and expressed their distaste. As for the person stating 'IF you can't take the heat...', obviously you are the worst type of hypocrite, for I certainly don't see your email address or any type of contact information for you to take responsibility for such a message.
OK. This guy does not deserve this s**t. I think what he did with the page is nicer and faster from my end. Im sure anyone that works to create something for free for the community does not deserve to get knocked for it. If people work hard to give you something for free and you dont like, simple answer, dont use it. But it is compleatly wrong for anyone to give s**t for it. I think others will agree as well.
i cant seem to come up with a sig.
Who are the people that use OS software, go to sites like Scoop's and pull this kind of shit? Frankly I wouldn't put up with shit like that and I believe that Scoop deserves an apology...
...that's just my opinion (I admit that's a generalization).
I'm guessing its the kind of people that post as Anon Cow's here... but
If you ain't got the balls to put your name on a post you shouldn't be in a public forum like this.
It's ok to criticize... but fuck the flamers!
Phenym
Ban the bastards from your website until they apologize for their rude behavior.
-- Tony Lawrence
He does not have to physically ban them; only pronounce them banned. If they wish to sneak back, let them.
This is only a moral argument, nothing more, but it should suffice.
ASL
-- Tony Lawrence
I've been using the internet for quite sometime,
and I've had a bit of experience myself about
being butt stupid about things... I once flamed
an individual... And I was the straw that broke
the camels back. Apparently this guy did a lot
of work for the particular project.... And I
was the guy who finally posted the last flame.
I felt horrible about my actions, after seeing the
truth, that I acted in a horrible and extremely rude fashion. I apologized and things were eventually smoothed out. I just hope that scoop
gets the same kind of response.
Remember people, that a lot of the work in OSS is done in spare time, and people put a lot of effort in to helping you, for free, out of the kindness of their hearts.
So, I guess the golden rule applies. Do unto others has you would have them do unto yourself.
cfury@bev.net
After reading some hints of gloom and doom over
open source software I've seen posted about this
thing with freshmeat, I'd like to throw in my
two cents....
I think OSS has a GREAT potential, and I think
we're going to experience more struggles with this
in the future. All I ask of you people is to
pay attention... And be nice. Snap decisions
and quick judgments are so much more simple to make when we're covered by this anonymous dredge of email... Email is SO much more impersonal, and
because of that, we're so ready to flame.... So much more ready to make fast judgments. So (I'm
using that word a lot, no?) we need to maintain and contain ourselves.... Be careful of what you say and how you say it.
The old saying, "sticks and stones may break my bones, but words will never hurt me" is nice, but
to tell you the truth, in this hidden world of geekdom, words can hurt far more than anything else. Remember what you say, and say only what you mean, but please, please, TRY to present yourself in an honrable and respectable way.
It's the only way we, this movement, can survive.