2022: The year when Trisquel lost its feedback
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Tonight, 2022 will come to an end. And it will mark a milestone: it will be the year when Trisquel lost its feedback.
Between February and April, Trisquel migrated its management of incidents to a new website: https://gitlab.trisquel.org/ . From that moment on, the old issues page could still be accessed, but no new issues could be added. The new website requires an account to create issues that is a different account from trisquel.info website. And it is an account you can apply for, but it is not automatically created. You have to wait for administrators to graciously grant you an account, which they might not. And they do not: I applied for an account six months ago, and I received no response so far.
I am a Trisquel user for 13 years. Not a developer, but I contribute by making reports when I find issues. Feedback is not critical, but it is essential. Without feedback, any project will fail on the long run.
Now Trisquel appears to be running well otherwise: the release rhythm has improved, and that means the gap with upstream Ubuntu versions is being reduced, and that means that Trisquel long-term support is longer, which matters a lot. That is good. But any project will ultimately fail if deprived of feedback. This is a mistake.
ADDITION:
I tried to send this message to the Forum through the mail list, as I did several times in the past, but then I got this automatical answer:
----- Begin quote -----
Your mail to 'Trisquel-users' with the subject
2022: The year when Trisquel lost its feedback
Is being held until the list moderator can review it for approval.
The reason it is being held:
Post by non-member to a members-only list
Either the message will get posted to the list, or you will receive
notification of the moderator's decision. If you would like to cancel
this posting, please visit the following URL: (...)
-----End quote -----
Ironic, isn't it? My message about issue feedback being blocked gets itself blocked.
So, I suddenly found my e-mail address to be suppressed from the e-mail list. I can no longer send messages to the Forum through e-mail. Well then, I thought, I'll use that link to cancel the message and send the message by logging in to trisquel.info. But then, when I clicked on the cancel link I got this:
----- Begin quote -----
Bad confirmation string
The held message you were referred to has already been handled by the list administrator.
-----End quote -----
Oh, did an administrator already handle my message? In just a minute? So quick! Surely the message is already published now, isn't it? But then I look at the Forum... and look again... and wait for an hour... and the message isn't there. If an administrator handled my mesage, it was to delete it. Now this is beyond ironic: My message about issue feedback being blocked gets itself _deliberately_ blocked.
I hope that all of this is an error. I would report the error, but then again, I am disallowed from doing so.
My best wishes for the new year.
Ignacio Agulló.
> I would report the error, but then again, I am disallowed from doing so.
I believe you have just done so. You have now officially been labeled a troublemaker and your account may be suspended any time soon, in order to protect the Forum from any further endless rant. But worry not, I am preparing your eulogy: "2023: The year when Ignacio Agulló lost his Trisquel accounts". This will also tell how you eventually resorted to smoke signals sent in the Cow language.
In other news, have you tried talking to people in the libera.chat #trisquel-dev channel?
I didn't know that you can be "officially" labeled a troublemaker in this community. Which criteria are relevant and who decides upon this?
prospero is kidding. Yet, this community has guidelines: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/trisquel-community-guidelines
Hello Ignacio and Happy GNU Year 2023!,
I believe the title has a great dramatic sound by itself, perfect for drawing attention, but I guess it might be a bit misleading.
SPAM is a PITA, and it is on any platform, that's the main reason there is no automatic sign up on Trisquel's GitLab, if you look the wiki, you'll see that by the time Nabia got released, and GitLab got established as the development system, it's already the recommended way to either ask for an account on #trisquel-dev or the devel mailing list.
So far, no request done on those channels has been put on hold, they are answered as early as possible, I got involved into helping requests flow in this transition.
Hopefully any other user willing to report bugs, propose some fix, can give that extra effort to join on the gitlab and create such record.
Now, if you (or anybody else) want to avoid Gitlab there are other ways, there is a devel mailing list, the IRC channel, where on Wednesdays you can join and bring issues to the devel team.
I agree the gitlab workflow is not perfect but I don't think it is that bad so that trisquel feedback is doom to die.
About trisquel.info/mailing list blocking messages, I'll mention it on the next development meeting when Ruben is back from the holidays, but I would argue it's just bad luck with the SPAM controls being too strict some times, nothing personal on you trying to make this point.
Best regards.
My preferences are with the old issues tracker, the new one (gitlab) don't work without running massive javascript in my computer.
Hello everybody,
After checking on everything I have to clarify a couple of things but insist on my point.
1. About feedback:
-On one hand, the trisquel.info website displays a 'Create new account' link at nearly every page, allowing people to apply for an account that can be used to post at the forum and could be used for reporting issues at the old issues page, https://trisquel.info/en/project/issues (English version), which is disabled by now.
-On the other hand, the new Issues GitLab website, https://gitlab.trisquel.org/groups/trisquel/-/issues , never indicates how to apply for an account, not even in the help. When trying to create a new issue, the user is led to a login page that displays the warning 'You need to sign in or sign up before continuing.', with no link to sign up whatsoever.
Is there a page in the Trisquel website indicating how to apply for a GitLab account? Yes, in fact there is - but I only know of it because of coming across a couple of Forum threads that mentioned it. To find these indications you need to go to the Trisquel wiki, https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/documentation , and then click on the Development link, https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/development-0 . Developers may happen to know that, users not. It amuses me to no end to be told that I should have put a request on some chat channel as if that was widespread knowledge. Oh, what a failure on my part.
Anyway: At present, only developers know how to apply for an account enabling them to report issues to the new Issues GitLab website. So, for the last nine months Trisquel has been receiving feedback from developers only. If you are closed to user feedback then you can't claim you have feedback. My point stands.
2. About myself requesting a GitLab account: I requested a GitLab account on June, 2022, through the Trisquel contact form. No answer so far.
3. About my previous message failing to be delivered through e-mail: I am subscribed to some Trisquel mail lists for quite a number of years. Last time I posted to the Trisquel Users Forum by e-mail was 27 months ago. At some time in these 27 months I became unsubscribed to the Trisquel Users Forum in particular. I don't recall unsubscribing, but because of being such a long time I am not sure of what happened. In any case, it wasn't recently and it shouldn't have taken me by surprise. I could have done better on this one.
4. About the disappearance of the message I sent by e-mail: Trying, wrongly, to sent my message through e-mail was useful on a way: uncovering the wrong handling of e-mail messages. The outcome makes it likely that e-mail messages sent to a mail list from non-members are just /dev/null'd. But if that is the case, senders shouldn't get an e-mail message telling them that an administrator will handle the message, and also that they have the choice to cancel the message - it is not a choice if the message is already deleted.
I expect Trisquel to set up a publicly advertised way to request a GitLab account, be it through e-mail or a web form, and without needing to set up an IRC program or to subscribe yourself to a mail list. When that happens I will be glad to request it again.
Kind regards,
Ignacio Agulló.
Well, it seems that in 2023 Trisquel got its feedback back :-)
Trisquel's Issues page ( https://gitlab.trisquel.org/groups/trisquel/-/issues ) was online since March, 2022, with no obvious way of getting access to it. The ways to get access to it were only mentioned at the Development page of the Trisquel Wiki, and all of them required a previous sign up to a Developers' mail list or a Developers' IRC channel.
Yesterday I checked again, and noticed that the "Sign In" button for the GitLab issues page is now "Sign In / Register", and that by clicking on it, at the sign in form there is in fact a link to a "Register" form that users could use in order to register. I did so and have now an account for the GitLab Issues page. So in case I happen to come across an issue, I will be able to report it.
I can only think that this thread helped to make this access available.
Kind regards,
Ignacio Agulló.
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