<story><title>Taking a month off from OSS volunteering</title><url>https://snarky.ca/why-i-took-october-off-from-oss-volunteering/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Klathmon</author><text>I have a question for any OSS maintainers:&lt;p&gt;How should I ask for help&amp;#x2F;bugfixes&amp;#x2F;solutions? How can I get across that an issue is a &amp;quot;showstopper&amp;quot; for us without demanding anything? How can I offer solutions or fixes or changes up without contributing to the &amp;quot;burnout&amp;quot; that i&amp;#x27;ve seen many many times from many people that I respect and enjoy the work of.&lt;p&gt;Recently I was inadvertently one of those nameless-faceless demanders, and I had no idea that I was coming across like that until it was pointed out to me.&lt;p&gt;I want to voice my opinions, my needs, my use cases without coming across as demanding or winy. And making a PR out of left field generally causes more issues than it solves since it was made without direction or input from the maintainer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>antirez</author><text>IMHO:&lt;p&gt;1) Just ask &lt;i&gt;whatever you want&lt;/i&gt;, no limits, but without expecting it to be done. There is just the possibility that it will be done.&lt;p&gt;2) Provide as many details as possible so that the maintainer does not have to context-switch to understand what&amp;#x27;s going on.&lt;p&gt;Point &amp;quot;2&amp;quot; is very important. Example: pull request subject is &amp;quot;fix hash table crash&amp;quot;. Only change is a one liner like:&lt;p&gt;&lt;pre&gt;&lt;code&gt;    - if (next) {
    + if (next &amp;amp;&amp;amp; ht-&amp;gt;used != 0) {
&lt;/code&gt;&lt;/pre&gt;
No mention about what are the states causing the crash. Now, as a maintainer you HAVE to understand what&amp;#x27;s going on, you can&amp;#x27;t blindly merge a commit otherwise you&amp;#x27;ll likely merge many things that are harmful instead of fixes.&lt;p&gt;So now good luck with stopping with what you were doing and understanding what happens if ht-&amp;gt;used is not 0 in that case, and the corner case that triggered it.&lt;p&gt;Instead in the original PR description, the contributor shold have written: &lt;i&gt;when the hash table is reset, if there is a running iterator, next will be NULL because bla bla bla. Testing for empty hash table instead bla bla bla&lt;/i&gt;.&lt;p&gt;Now your effort is 30 seconds... Understad, merge, say thank you.</text></comment>
<story><title>Taking a month off from OSS volunteering</title><url>https://snarky.ca/why-i-took-october-off-from-oss-volunteering/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>Klathmon</author><text>I have a question for any OSS maintainers:&lt;p&gt;How should I ask for help&amp;#x2F;bugfixes&amp;#x2F;solutions? How can I get across that an issue is a &amp;quot;showstopper&amp;quot; for us without demanding anything? How can I offer solutions or fixes or changes up without contributing to the &amp;quot;burnout&amp;quot; that i&amp;#x27;ve seen many many times from many people that I respect and enjoy the work of.&lt;p&gt;Recently I was inadvertently one of those nameless-faceless demanders, and I had no idea that I was coming across like that until it was pointed out to me.&lt;p&gt;I want to voice my opinions, my needs, my use cases without coming across as demanding or winy. And making a PR out of left field generally causes more issues than it solves since it was made without direction or input from the maintainer.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>sbov</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m not a maintainer.&lt;p&gt;That said, I&amp;#x27;ve never had a problem with non demanding, humble, zero pressure questions.&lt;p&gt;Why do you need to mention that something is a showstopper?  This may sound harsh, but: at the end of the day, you have to be responsible for what you produce.  That means if there is a showstopper in their project blocking you from getting something done, you, and not them, are responsible for dealing with it.  They volunteer to maintain the project for everyone, not fix your problems on your timeline.</text></comment>