Am i reading your response correctly? You disapprove of the software author's response out of a concern over how they got back to a rude inconsiderate individual?
The email from the user is more a rant than feedback. Granted some could define literally any response as feedback but to me it doesn't qualify, certainly not as constructive feedback.
You read this right. There's no benefit to publicly chastising a user - even a rude one.
If I'm a user who reads this I'm extremely unlikely to ever offer feedback in even the nicest possible tone.
I think the right move is to extract any possible useful feedback from the email and hit delete. Even if you send this email, publicly posting it seems an even less useful move.
When you have users you will have unsatisfied users. When you have unsatisfied users you will have rude users. If you're rude to your users you will eventually have no users.
It is often a thankless job to maintain a product or service like this but we do get pleasure and enjoyment from it. It's hard to get bad or rude feedback but it comes with the territory.
That we gain some personal joy in maintaining our open source projects does not in any way mean that we need care about inconsiderate jerks throwing rocks at the man years of work we give them for free.
The personal joy is ours to treasure, not something we have to pay users for. Rather, if users want to have commercial grade "smile even though we're being told to go die in a fire for our shitty product" support, then they should pay actual money first. The trips to the psychologist required from that isn't free after all.
> That we gain some personal joy in maintaining our open source projects does not in any way mean that we need care about inconsiderate jerks throwing rocks at the man years of work we give them for free.
Oh I agree. Nobody has to care about this. Trash the email on sight.
This is more about the message being sent to other users. To me this feels very much like one's opinions carry as much weight as they pay for it and if the author doesn't like your feedback you might end up on that next release page.
>If I'm a user who reads this I'm extremely unlikely to ever offer feedback in even the nicest possible tone.
N=1
In human communication escalating to rude language especially when someone else initiated the rude tone is perfectly normal and I would find the opposite to be wierd. People like that guy in the email are entitled pricks and they should be called out for it.
Since the user's email address was hidden, it isn't like their reputation will be harmed or anything. They are just being used as an anonymous example. If they have some embarrassment -- good, being used as an anonymous example is the least damaging way for somebody to learn to be more thoughtful about the types of messages they send out.
Notepad++ is a popular project, I bet he already gets plenty of feedback. Most people probably won't hear about this. Of those who do... some will decide to not send anything. Some will be more careful to produce a useful message and avoid this reaction. Reduce signal slightly while slightly improving SNR? It seems like a wash.
To me this says nothing about how the author would respond to feedback given in a constructive tone.
After reading this I’d still offer constructive feedback in a kind manner in a heartbeat. If, hypothetically, the author still sent me a rude response then I’d simply never contact them again for anything.
The email from the user is more a rant than feedback. Granted some could define literally any response as feedback but to me it doesn't qualify, certainly not as constructive feedback.