Banned... No good deed goes unpunished

I'm part of the group of people being banned there. Even if I admit I may have crossed the line with the people in the Foundation it always was as a defense against a treatment I didn't deserve at all.

I stated a problem I had with element14 in my country in a complete absence of information from them. I still had problems to understand what happened and why where some element14 customers asked to pay 3 months before real delivery. I spoke with lots of people in the company and nobody knew/care. So I address it in the RaspberryPi forums (where else should I have asked for help) to realize that the people behind the Foundation where more concerned about bussinnes partners than users (not customers as they treat people when they want to "take control".

The lack of maners of Liz Upton, Eben Upton, Abishur and JamesH lead me to think they may have a strange conception on how to help people. The only good thing they have made banning me it's making me interested enough to learn and make a better device / more open to learn.

José David Gea Esteban wrote:

 

I'm part of the group of people being banned there. Even if I admit I may have crossed the line with the people in the Foundation it always was as a defense against a treatment I didn't deserve at all.

 

I stated a problem I had with element14 in my country in a complete absence of information from them. I still had problems to understand what happened and why where some element14 customers asked to pay 3 months before real delivery. I spoke with lots of people in the company and nobody knew/care. So I address it in the RaspberryPi forums (where else should I have asked for help) to realize that the people behind the Foundation where more concerned about bussinnes partners than users (not customers as they treat people when they want to "take control".

 

The lack of maners of Liz Upton, Eben Upton, Abishur and JamesH lead me to think they may have a strange conception on how to help people. The only good thing they have made banning me it's making me interested enough to learn and make a better device / more open to learn.

Cobblers mate. IIRC you were really rude (yeh, I've been around a while!). You need to learn to accept when you been bad, and take the consequences. Seem odd to me there are about 10 people on here complaining about the moderators over there, and yet they have 35 thousand apparently happy customers. And the 10 complainers here were all banned for something or other. SImple statisitcs should give readers the idea of what's going on. WHich reminds me, I was gonig to email them to ask how many people have been banned from the site, just to get some idea of the percentages. Reckon that would be a fun number.

A simple way to get banned there is "concern trolling"

If you are concerned about something not working on the Pi, and if you believe it's a feature that should basically work (like usb host ports), than you will be banned as you are bad for sales.

If the foundation will be equal honest about the number of complaining customers as they are about the rest of their stuff, the numbers you will get will be as reliable as the number of votes for the president of a dictatorial banana republic.

It's not important as the boards purpose is focussed at a low cost educational tool, and learning how to troubleshoot electronics is educational 2. As most electronics are "throw away" nowadays, troubleshooting is also a dying art like programming.

I didn't think that stating something that's true to be rude. Maybe it got ruder because no answers were given to my concerns and I was been treated like a customer instead of a supporter with a (very serious to me) problem with one of their bussinnes partners. I have very a very personal opinion related to charities doing bussinnes and I just wanted to Foundation to make some movements in the charity direction (There was a valid concern in my "rude" asking). Given the fact that I didn't ewanted to be rude but just trying to express myself (with a not so high level of "english for anger situations" as it seems I needed) in a language it's not my first one... Maybe it was not so good excuse to attack me instead of tell me I was wrong on the attitude and take a look at the problem. But maybe I didn't deserve that. One bussinnes partner can be really rude with me but I can't express my concerns about what that bussinnes partner was doing using the charity...

That's an extrange way to have a relation with people with your same interests in a charity project, as I see it.

P.D.: As it seems you think I was "very rude" also I would appreciate a lot if you tell me where to improve my language skills for future anger iterations (Via personal message).

Well put Jose.

The need for me to have said anything is a sign in itself.

The issue has not been addressed even though I released code to help address the issue.

In my opinion I was not overly rude in my post. I stated simple facts such as most Linux distributions have a simple method to help new users set basic configuration items.

The simple fact of the matter the developer concerned happens to be the cheif honcho and really should know better.

The forum moderator lost the plot, destroyed any further converation and then tossed me.

I have no intention of ever communicating with developers on this level.

All this debate about who said what has little to do with what some see and understand as a cancer effecting development and uptake of the RPi.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

Cobblers mate. IIRC you were really rude (yeh, I've been around a while!). You need to learn to accept when you been bad, and take the consequences. Seem odd to me there are about 10 people on here complaining about the moderators over there, and yet they have 35 thousand apparently happy customers. And the 10 complainers here were all banned for something or other. SImple statisitcs should give readers the idea of what's going on. WHich reminds me, I was gonig to email them to ask how many people have been banned from the site, just to get some idea of the percentages. Reckon that would be a fun number.

Hello Billy, I was banned on the Pi forum, although this was lifted after I asked as they had gone a little mad and not only banned my user name, but also my home static IP and my work static IP. When I asked (politely) why I was banned, I got a vague response about 'Concern Trolling' but no reference to a specific post. However, I firmly believe that the reason I was banned was because I had made a post quoting a mod, which showed that mod had a certain lack of flexibility in their decisions, that was all. I wasn't posting anything controversial, only reposted the mod post from a different thread. If people aren't happy to stand by their comments then they shouldn't make them.

My twitter account has also been blocked by the Foundation's twitter account. I was personally insulted on twitter by Liz, but hey ho, it is only twitter so no problem, I didn't react. However, my block came about when I made a tweet remarking on the use of profane language on the forum, which was then reposted and repeated by a mod. As it should be a child friendly forum, I didn't think the use of such language was appropriate. for that I was blocked, although interestingly, the comment I was talking about by the mod was deleted, which kind of shows guilt by association if you ask me. Again, stand by what you post.

It is interesting you remark on 35,000 happy customers. I have been part of that forum nearly since its inception (I think the Pi is a brilliant device, having bought 5) and there is less interaction now than there was when the Pi was released. I am sure this is down to a few things, but one of those is the attitude that the moderators are allowed to take. There are also a number of fanboi 'normal' posters that also tend to gang up on anyone saying anything less than positive. In one case, one of the mods thought it was amusing to remark on the poor grammar and spelling of a poster, who it turned out had lost a limb. I did say many months ago that unless there was a more liberal attitude towards open discussion on the forum, the mods would be left modding each other. With a rough estimate giving 200,000 Pi's out there, that forum should be heaving, but as I say there seems less going on there now than when 0 pi's were available.

Billy Thornton wrote:

 

Cobblers mate. IIRC you were really rude (yeh, I've been around a while!). You need to learn to accept when you been bad, and take the consequences. Seem odd to me there are about 10 people on here complaining about the moderators over there, and yet they have 35 thousand apparently happy customers. And the 10 complainers here were all banned for something or other. SImple statisitcs should give readers the idea of what's going on. WHich reminds me, I was gonig to email them to ask how many people have been banned from the site, just to get some idea of the percentages. Reckon that would be a fun number.

Hello Billy, I was banned on the Pi forum, although this was lifted after I asked as they had gone a little mad and not only banned my user name, but also my home static IP and my work static IP. When I asked (politely) why I was banned, I got a vague response about 'Concern Trolling' but no reference to a specific post. However, I firmly believe that the reason I was banned was because I had made a post quoting a mod, which showed that mod had a certain lack of flexibility in their decisions, that was all. I wasn't posting anything controversial, only reposted the mod post from a different thread. If people aren't happy to stand by their comments then they shouldn't make them.

My twitter account has also been blocked by the Foundation's twitter account. I was personally insulted on twitter by Liz, but hey ho, it is only twitter so no problem, I didn't react. However, my block came about when I made a tweet remarking on the use of profane language on the forum, which was then reposted and repeated by a mod. As it should be a child friendly forum, I didn't think the use of such language was appropriate. for that I was blocked, although interestingly, the comment I was talking about by the mod was deleted, which kind of shows guilt by association if you ask me. Again, stand by what you post.

It is interesting you remark on 35,000 happy customers. I have been part of that forum nearly since its inception (I think the Pi is a brilliant device, having bought 5) and there is less interaction now than there was when the Pi was released. I am sure this is down to a few things, but one of those is the attitude that the moderators are allowed to take. There are also a number of fanboi 'normal' posters that also tend to gang up on anyone saying anything less than positive. In one case, one of the mods thought it was amusing to remark on the poor grammar and spelling of a poster, who it turned out had lost a limb. I did say many months ago that unless there was a more liberal attitude towards open discussion on the forum, the mods would be left modding each other. With a rough estimate giving 200,000 Pi's out there, that forum should be heaving, but as I say there seems less going on there now than when 0 pi's were available.

Maybe it's because the hype is slowly fading away, and people start to realise that the Pi is not the perfect media center they expected it to be.

It's not a perfect desktop replacement either, and as long as it corrupts it's sd cards upon a power failure, I wouldn't use it embedded.

It has a powerfull gpu, but besides for video playback in omxplayer and xbmc, and for rendering graphics in quake 3, it's hardly used.

The scary thing is that all reported problems from launch time keep on coming back in the troubleshooting section.

In 6 months time, they didn't really fix a thing.

People claim the usb works 500% better now, but besides my prolific serial adapter that maybe works now (no idea for how long...), I can't find any other usb device or

combination of devices that works stable now with all the implemented patches.

Even more scary is the fact that it's impossible to get a list of things that are suposed to work. Maybe that's on purpose, or maybe the foundation has no idea either?

It would have been a great device if it worked as expected. Now I have the impression we can compare it with cheap chinese electronic devices.

I don't think that situation will change soon.

As they are a charity organisation; I don't understand why they are so afraid of posts on their forum that might be bad for sales...

It looks like they are simply afraid of the truth..

Steve Read wrote:

 

When I asked (politely) why I was banned, I got a vague response about 'Concern Trolling' but no reference to a specific post.

That's perhaps the biggest single problem over there, RPF and admins pinning the label of troll on people who describe their very real concerns about very real problems.  Those problems exist, and they will never go away when the people who comment on the problems politely are tarred and banned for their efforts to improve the situation.

Luc Cool wrote:

 

Maybe it's because the hype is slowly fading away, and people start to realise that the Pi is not the perfect media center they expected it to be.

It's not a perfect desktop replacement either, and as long as it corrupts it's sd cards upon a power failure, I wouldn't use it embedded.

It has a powerfull gpu, but besides for video playback in omxplayer and xbmc, and for rendering graphics in quake 3, it's hardly used.

The scary thing is that all reported problems from launch time keep on coming back in the troubleshooting section.

In 6 months time, they didn't really fix a thing.

People claim the usb works 500% better now, but besides my prolific serial adapter that maybe works now (no idea for how long...), I can't find any other usb device or

combination of devices that works stable now with all the implemented patches.

Even more scary is the fact that it's impossible to get a list of things that are suposed to work. Maybe that's on purpose, or maybe the foundation has no idea either?

It would have been a great device if it worked as expected. Now I have the impression we can compare it with cheap chinese electronic devices.

I don't think that situation will change soon.

As they are a charity organisation; I don't understand why they are so afraid of posts on their forum that might be bad for sales...

It looks like they are simply afraid of the truth..

Dude, just read this. Do you know anything about business?  Do you know that Charities ARE businesses? THAT's why you can't allow stuff that's bad for sales on the website - it woudl be stupidity of the highest order. That said, your'e over egging the problems, just like everyone else here in order to try and make their case. From what I see and personal experience, this peice of kit works really good for education, and really good for lots of other stuff. It's not perfect, but it definltey been getting better. ANd how the hell are the Raspberry Pi people supposed to test every single USB thing out there for your 'list'. That plain bonkers - I don't have a list that tells me all the USB devices that work on my Linux box (and it ain't all of them for sure), and that running a state of art distro.

Since you like numbers, this thread has some 2

http://www.element14.com/community/thread/19018?tstart=30

Stop using that Lame excuse they couldn't possibly have tested every usb device.

They admit themself the usb has problems and they promise to fix it. So why should I move on?

Besides that, usb is a standard and has a number of well defined protocols on the bus.

If they would have tested every protocol with no matter what device, they would have seen right away there were problems.

I know enough about business to see that the foundation PR machine works fine. I wished I could say the same about the Pi itself.

But I can see you all have your led flashing. Maybe you are getting bored looking at it? There isn't much I can do to fix that.

At least 20 people had the guts to express their feelings. Probably many more that moved on after they got banned.

It are the whining people here that discovered the 1.8V power rail error with the usb hub chip.

It took them a while to convince the foundation...

Makes sense, since the foundation got it all right. The sales numbers prove this.

Another color of led maybe?

Do you know that Charities ARE businesses? THAT's why you can't allow stuff that's bad for sales on the website - it woudl be stupidity of the highest order.

If their charity is a business, they should first and foremost sell working product and provide support to their PAYING CUSTOMERS, otherwise they are a con knowingly selling faulty product. But of course elsewhere they contradict your statement and refer to their charity status in order to explain the lack of support.

Or is a business supposed to sell faulty products while releasing praising PR statements about how fantastic their product is and in case someone notices the reality, pursue them in any possible way, perhaps even employ expensive lawyers to gag those lowly customers?

From what I see and personal experience, this peice of kit works really good for education, and really good for lots of other stuff.

If it's to be served as example of how to NOT do business the whole exercise surely serves as a good example.

ANd how the hell are the Raspberry Pi people supposed to test every single USB thing out there for your 'list'. That plain bonkers - I don't have a list that tells me all the USB devices that work on my Linux box (and it ain't all of them for sure), and that running a state of art distro.

RP does work, but one has to be really lucky in your choices of accessories. RPF can say whatever they want about USB not being universal, but ultimately their CUSTOMERS expect their devices just to work as they do on other machines running linux provided linux supports the device. The problem with RP is that even though linux supports it, the board can't handle it.

I have been running two RPi for several months now. Around the 8th month kernel bugs killed motion.

#1 RPi runs constantly with out a problem as it is running on a kernel from the 7th month.

#2 RPi crashes randomly due to kernel errors on default up to date kernel or a home brew kernel.

The kernel developers seem to be in panic mode and I have seen several patches being released without proper testing.

Comments in the history show they do not know whether a fix actually does fix the problem. Roll back is a very bad word to developers.

Currently I am the owner of two out of date bricks but at least I can over clock my RPi brick.

Maybe the leds will blink faster.

The RPi is only as good as the people developing the base resources.

If these people were competent the code I wrote would already be incorporated into Raspbian.

This is how open source development works. Somebody adds features.

Others see improvements that could be made and contribute.

Anything else sees a package stagnate, die and replaced.

Good developers know how to sort out the rubbish from the good and do not address the rubbish.

In other words, ignore rudeness and address the real issue. A few words last for seconds in my mind.

100 lines of code can live forever.

The arguments of fanboi's carry no weight at all. Fanboi's are not the people making real contributions as they see no real issues.

They deserve no response at all other than an acknowledgement that they more often than not tar and feather themselves with little need to encourage them.

For me IRC floats my boat. On IRC I find people like Hexxeh, Gordon (wiringPi) and many others who are very clued up. The help is often real time.

There are even several Ham radio ops in the channel and quiet times when other things are discussed.

Thankfully moderation is mostly a matter of politely asking people to behave keeping with the fact children/youth who use the channel.

Other than that there is no such thing as a concern troll and the word is frown on by at least one irc cannel op.

I do not miss the RPF at all or the miss-information it contains. Most of the real information is actually located on peoples web pages in write ups of their R&D.