I can't help but notice that allot of time in the discussions on DIY Drones is spent arguing. Clearly this saps the energy of this community. It is best never to get involved. That being said I think everyone who is active in any open source community (not just owners) should watch this video.
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On Diy Drones you are dealing with the sharpest minds on the planet! They vary from the Genius to the Insane ! (and some a little of both !) If some thing does not look right to them. They do not stop and ponder moments of discretion, they jump right on it ! and when the community brings them down a notch, they can always delete their comment and most of the time they are right!
Excellent video. Some of it might not fully apply since this is more a user forum then a developer forum (the APM developer groups are almost to civilized at times) but still great insight.
Excellent post Jethro, lots of positive insight.
This group really has a lot of excellent synergy, and even tolerates the odd and sometimes self labled troll quite reasonably.
Occasionally, some of the members get involved in an extended "off topic" discourse or diatribe, but it really doesn't seem to have much effect or more importantly slow things down.
Overall in this group mutual respect is high and the goals are mutual and pursued enthusiastically and appropriately.
Our involvement with paid corporations (3DR and Jdrones) is a periodic source of concern to some of the members, but overall, it seems a very positive association with them providing both assistance and the hardware we need to keep moving ahead at the pace we are.
An Open Source community is always somewhat of an enigma with its primary modus operandi seemingly at complete odds with the overwhelming Capitalist success mantra that has enveloped the World and the US in particular.
Yet, somehow it works.
(sidenote: I really liked subversion, and Tortoise was one of the best documented source control programs ever. compare that to git with it's fast-forwards and man page-esq documentation, shame that in a distributed world, it's architecture is outdated :( )
I think this is a great video for discussing how to handle, just that, discussions. Points I took from the video if it's <tl:dw>
1. start @35mins Asses the Damage. See what damage is really being done in delaying developers from making the product.
2. @35m27s Don't "Feed the energy creature"! Keep the responses calm, raise issues and fix them.
3. @39m41 Do's Know when to give up and ignore.
4. @42m Repel Trolls with niceness.
5. @43m20s Summary
I can't find the part about the Do's but welcome newcomers, they may seem like Trolls but don't have the same language and words, so will frustrated, but that comes with learning anything new.
I agree with Darrell, this is one of the most inclusive communities that I have participated in, and members are thoughtful about comments that are posted. And I agree with Jethro, let's not get involved with the negative aspects and turn this into a "poisonous person" hunt ;-)
Great post. I think problem here is that I don't feel like people that are complaining are actually working to fix the problems. I feel like they're bitching for the sake of bitching. The thing is, they're really sharp people, I don't know why they don't care to try and address the problems.
Thank you for sharing this!!! Bravo!!! I wish I could of found this video months ago :)