A plea for less negativity for the sake of negativity

[TechniSol]

DNSB,

While your comments were obviously of the personal attack variety I'm not rising to the bait... I've expressed my opine with sufficient lucidity to anyone not wrapped up in the sacred cult of the Fanboi, or employed by the company in question, and I imagine those experiencing those "In your humble opinion, minor" bugs have a slightly different opinion than your own. Especially, when some of us have spent the better parts of a day restoring firmware, updating, downloading books yet again, etc. just so we can get a device working again. This is unacceptable behavior in anything above Chinese knockoff status.

It's OK to have a few bugs in firmware and expect people to upgrade to get them fixed, it's a bit less acceptable to be forcibly upgraded, find even more egregious bugs and need to downgrade to be able to stand using the device. Repeating this cycle multiple times with new firmwares is more than sloppy and will not "make friends and influence people." Go ahead and defend that sort of BS.

Frankly, I think this forum should be more concerned with truth than issues like negativity and positivity. I'd rather be Diogenes dragging that damned lantern around than find myself wearing a corporately designed and tailored sheep's costume whilst waiting for the fellow in the Wile Coyote outfit to take another pass at fleecing me. At least when being honest you can live with yourself.

[filmo]

Book sellers with Kobo readers are much father than 60 miles.

[moffattm]

Originally Posted by robko

There is a delicate balance required there. If nobody else is having the problem or it's not reproduceable by others it would suggest the problem is with their specific hardware or something is corrupted on their device which may suggest possible immediate solutions (reset/exchange device) rather than waiting for a new firmware update. But I agree that telling someone it's their fault and they shouldn't do whatever they're doing isn't helpful.

Exactly

If someone reports a fault then it's perfectly reasonably for other people to say if they have the same fault or not. Saying that they don't have the same fault is still valid, as this might mean that the fault is specific to one particular device or that certain conditions (settings, specific e-book, etc) might be causing the problem. This should cause the person to go back and try to figure out what's different about their particular device, it's not meant as saying that it's the original persons fault or that they're necessarily doing something wrong.

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by moffattm

Exactly

If someone reports a fault then it's perfectly reasonably for other people to say if they have the same fault or not. Saying that they don't have the same fault is still valid, as this might mean that the fault is specific to one particular device or that certain conditions (settings, specific e-book, etc) might be causing the problem. This should cause the person to go back and try to figure out what's different about their particular device, it's not meant as saying that it's the original persons fault or that they're necessarily doing something wrong.

There are many posts that definitely DO convey that meaning though. Some actually go as far as to suggest using Calibre, or even sideloading, is the problem - for example only. I did not suggest they shouldn't post - I suggested that you shouldn't censure posts with any opinion to express, provided it falls within moderation guidelines. Let the readers of the forum judge for themselves by the type and frequency of the comments, just what the true situation really is. If Kobo gets lots of negative comments - there just might be a reason for that. OTOH if the negatives are frivolous, I am sure most people can see through that, and just attribute it to one user's personal frustration. It's just real life.

[dassie]

This thread seems to have gone awry from the original point.

The original point is not that there should be less negativity, but that there should be less negativy in the wrong threads. (== off-topic and damaging to rest of discussion)

For example there was a topic about how Kobo would maybe start their own forums, that quickly descended in a rant-fest about kobo's bugs.

This kind of ranting is bad for the discussion and will ultimately drive people away from this forum. And that is a shame because there are lots of people here creating great tools and extras for the Touch/Glow or just helping other people with their problems, and they will leave for a different forum or just stop all together. You want to give Kobo a piece of your mind, not these users.

TL;DR Do you have something to complain/vent about? Thats ok, but do it in your own topic, and dont spam other topics with off-topic rants.

Originally Posted by jusmee

Yes, and the exact opposite happens all the time as well.

I was presenting the alternate view point, so please forgive me for neglecting the alternate-alternate viewpoint because both sides exhibit this behaviour.

Again from my perspective, a lot of the animosity is created by the tone of the message. Too much denial, you sound like a fanboi. Too much anger, and it sounds like you have a bone to pick. Stick to the facts, or as close to them as possible, and I don't see why there should be accusations of being negative (or positive).

Well, at least in the support threads. There ain't anything wrong with having a positive chat about the device or ranting about its failures, just do it in the right place (e.g. don't pollute support threads, don't rain on people's threads, and don't fight a thunderstorm with sunshine). Also realise that some people may have different opinions on the matter and we should respect that.

For those who don't know the difference between opinion and fact:

Fact: My Kobo's not responding to touch. How do I fix it?
Opinion: Kobo is a piece of trash because it is buggy.

Just so that I'm not accused of picking favourites:

Fact: I have never had problems with touch. Maybe you have a defective unit.
Opinion: Kobo is the best reader ever because it comes in pink.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by TechniSol

DNSB,

While your comments were obviously of the personal attack variety I'm not rising to the bait... I've expressed my opine with sufficient lucidity to anyone not wrapped up in the sacred cult of the Fanboi, or employed by the company in question, and I imagine those experiencing those "In your humble opinion, minor" bugs have a slightly different opinion than your own. Especially, when some of us have spent the better parts of a day restoring firmware, updating, downloading books yet again, etc. just so we can get a device working again. This is unacceptable behavior in anything above Chinese knockoff status.

It's OK to have a few bugs in firmware and expect people to upgrade to get them fixed, it's a bit less acceptable to be forcibly upgraded, find even more egregious bugs and need to downgrade to be able to stand using the device. Repeating this cycle multiple times with new firmwares is more than sloppy and will not "make friends and influence people." Go ahead and defend that sort of BS.

Frankly, I think this forum should be more concerned with truth than issues like negativity and positivity. I'd rather be Diogenes dragging that damned lantern around than find myself wearing a corporately designed and tailored sheep's costume whilst waiting for the fellow in the Wile Coyote outfit to take another pass at fleecing me. At least when being honest you can live with yourself.

Again, I'm going to disagree with you. You may feel just as free to disagree with me. My opinion is that you are separate from your posting style. If you are taking this as an attack on your personally, that is not my intent. Though comparing yourself to Diogenes? Given the number of Diogenes, it would appear you are comparing yourself to Diogenes of Sinope. Founder of the Cynic philosophy? As a cynic, you seem slightly out of place looking for perfect software. Practice your indifference, grasshopper.

As for your comment about reloading, etc. Been there, done that. Probably more than the average user given the unsupported firmware, plug-ins, etc. that I have installed at one time or another. I am not that surprised when things go wrong while the envelope is being pushed. One reason that I keep my sideloaded books on a SD card is to speed up the reload cycles by not having to re-index until and if I feel some stability has been reached.

Chinese knock-offs? I've had quite a few issues with European, Japanese and North American built crap over the years. Perhaps you are not old enough to remember when "Made in Japan" was another way of saying "a crappy imitation"? Terry Pratchett possibly said it best in his comments about the Wasabi automobile in Good Omens.

I am not defending Kobo's corporate policies or their software quality assurance -- such as it is. What I am somewhat upset at is the personal animus directed at their employees who volunteer their time on MobileRead. Often from people who do not appear to take understand that a bug has to be reproducible to be fixable. Take the time and effort to do this and it makes it a lot easier to fix the bug. But that is not as easy as kvetching.

Compare two posters:

The first posts that his Kobo had issues with a particular book. Which book? Where did he obtain it? Was it from the Kobo store as a .kepub or an Adobe DRMed .epub? A DRMed .epub from another source? An open .epub from Gutenberg or equivalent? If it was an .epub, did he try using an epub validation tool to see if it is a valid epub? Fine example in one book I looked at where 75% of the text was not within valid tags -- made for a very interesting page view in Firefox and Chrome. Another book where it looked as if the "publisher" had exported a file from MS Word as html (not even filtered html) and then wrapped it in a .zip file without adding a valid toc.ncx or content.opf file though they did include the mimetype file.

The second who gave the conditions under which the iOS app glitched so Sharkus was able to reproduce the bug and pass it on to be fixed.

As for my humble opinions, they're my opinions and not something that was handed down on stone tablets on a mountain top. You can feel free not to agree with them. You can feel free not to read any of my future posts. If you feel you must read them, feel free not to comment on them. Yeah, it is hard to get through those narrow doors lugging my ego around.

As for "minor bugs"? For the most part, I consider bugs to be minor if they do not interfere with my ability to read a book. The cover display bug? Annoying but not a show stopper -- I often read books in one sitting. Avenir font displaying italics as bold? Annoying but hardly a show stopper. The inability of Kobo's ereaders to connect to 5GHz wireless access points? Again, annoying but hardly a show stopper. The inability of my Glo to connect to a deskstop using a USB connection? Well, a show stopper for that machine but connected happily on my laptop and other computers. That one was traced to an issue with an AMD motherboard with a non-AMD usb filter driver installed. The inability to read a book with an apostrophe in the name? A showstopper until I tracked the problem down. Being told that I needed a 18,000+ character password to log into a network? That was a showstopper

Regards,
David

[Mrs_Often]

Originally Posted by dassie

This thread seems to have gone awry from the original point.

The original point is not that there should be less negativity, but that there should be less negativy in the wrong threads. (== off-topic and damaging to rest of discussion)

For example there was a topic about how Kobo would maybe start their own forums, that quickly descended in a rant-fest about kobo's bugs.

This kind of ranting is bad for the discussion and will ultimately drive people away from this forum. And that is a shame because there are lots of people here creating great tools and extras for the Touch/Glow or just helping other people with their problems, and they will leave for a different forum or just stop all together. You want to give Kobo a piece of your mind, not these users.

TL;DR Do you have something to complain/vent about? Thats ok, but do it in your own topic, and dont spam other topics with off-topic rants.

THIS!!!!!

(And I don't care if five exclamation marks means I have an insane mind or wear my underpants on my head!*)

Originally Posted by BWinmill

Just so that I'm not accused of picking favourites:

Fact: I have never had problems with touch. Maybe you have a defective unit.
Opinion: Kobo is the best reader ever because it comes in pink.

Hahahhahaa!


*Terry Pratchett

[guma]

Originally Posted by DNSB

What I am somewhat upset at is the personal animus directed at their employees who volunteer their time on MobileRead. Often from people who do not appear to take understand that a bug has to be reproducible to be fixable. Take the time and effort to do this and it makes it a lot easier to fix the bug. But that is not as easy as kvetching.

Sorry to disagree, but it is not the responsibility of the customer to perform systematic testing and provide comprehensive bug reports in order to make it easier for KOBO to fix bugs that should not be there in the first place. It's the responsibility of KOBO to test all common use cases. And from my experience most bugs reported here apply to common use cases.

Originally Posted by DNSB

As for "minor bugs"? For the most part, I consider bugs to be minor if they do not interfere with my ability to read a book. The cover display bug? Annoying but not a show stopper -- I often read books in one sitting. Avenir font displaying italics as bold? Annoying but hardly a show stopper. The inability of Kobo's ereaders to connect to 5GHz wireless access points? Again, annoying but hardly a show stopper. The inability of my Glo to connect to a deskstop using a USB connection? Well, a show stopper for that machine but connected happily on my laptop and other computers. That one was traced to an issue with an AMD motherboard with a non-AMD usb filter driver installed. The inability to read a book with an apostrophe in the name? A showstopper until I tracked the problem down.

I applaud your high level of tolerance regarding these bugs. However, it puzzles me that, at the same time, you obviously do not tolerate the negative opinions of other KOBO owners who choose to not ignore/accept/tolerate such bugs in a commercial product.

[nogle]

Originally Posted by guma

Sorry to disagree, but it is not the responsibility of the customer to perform systematic testing and provide comprehensive bug reports in order to make it easier for KOBO to fix bugs that should not be there in the first place. It's the responsibility of KOBO to test all common use cases. And from my experience most bugs reported here apply to common use cases.

It is not the user's responsibility to perform systematic testing, however, the user should not expect a fix if they fail to report the detail of how to reproduce the bug, else how can the developer find the bug to track its source...

There is a big difference between being the petulent child screaming "it's broken; fix it" and being a reasonable and responsible owner that reports when I do X action, the result is Y. I have tried with and without condition Z and it occurs only when Z=true.

[jusmee]

Originally Posted by nogle

It is not the user's responsibility to perform systematic testing, however, the user should not expect a fix if they fail to report the detail of how to reproduce the bug, else how can the developer find the bug to track its source...

Having been around the average user complaining about problems for a long time, I can tell you that you cannot, as a service person, nor as a developer, expect any sort of accuracy or detail when a bug is reported. It is a wonderful thing when you get it, but by far, the usual case is indeed - it's broken - fix it. This is normal, and not the user's fault. They do not have any expertise in how computer software works, and what seems obvious and easy to report (to you), is a confused blur to them. You won't even be told the error message/number even if there was one. They usually won't even recall how they triggered the event. No it's not easy, and the main protection you have is extensive testing before and after release.

I recall many times being told - the internet is broken - fix it Could be ANYTHING - email, browser, etc, to total connection loss. Worst thing you can to when dealing with a frustrated angry user/customer (remember the problem may have been making their experience miserable for a lengthy period) - is tell them they shouldn't complain - or tell them they need to provide a lengthy report (which they can't understand the details of) before you'll deign to fix it. That's how it is seen, in their eyes - they do not appreciate your workload and other pressures - nor should they have to.

To relate this to what happens here, I see users getting frustrated about lack of action on long standing bugs, and users finding new versions giving them more problems than they originally had. I think more tolerance is required until the situation improves for them.

Sorry for rambling...

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by guma

Sorry to disagree, but it is not the responsibility of the customer to perform systematic testing and provide comprehensive bug reports in order to make it easier for KOBO to fix bugs that should not be there in the first place. It's the responsibility of KOBO to test all common use cases. And from my experience most bugs reported here apply to common use cases.

Over the years, I've been involved in quite a few beta programs on both ends. An end user who gives a report that allows reproducing the bug is a treasure. At one time, we had tester's computer shipped to us so we could analyze exactly why it had the problem. At the other extreme, an end user submitted a report of "I was attempting to reprogram the upper boiler temperature limits on 5 sites at the same time and my music player and web browser crashed." was not appreciated -- the control program had nothing to do with his web browser or music player, he could not reproduce the issue and, yes, he called almost everyone in the corporate directory to complain. It is difficult for the average user to be able to give the information needed but given the most users are unable to recall exactly what they were doing when the problem happened, I did treasure those who could give a semi-coherent account of when they were doing before the issue occurred.

As for believing that any software program more complex than a "Hello World" is going to be bug free? Ranks with the tooth fairy, the Easter bunny and Fulham winning a a championship in my opinion.

Originally Posted by guma

I applaud your high level of tolerance regarding these bugs. However, it puzzles me that, at the same time, you obviously do not tolerate the negative opinions of other KOBO owners who choose to not ignore/accept/tolerate such bugs in a commercial product.

I don't mind people who post once that they are having a problem. Often they've received pretty good advice on how to workaround the problem if is not fixable. What I find annoying is the person who kvetches about the same bug at every chance often while claiming that another ereader has never had a bug.

"Your Kobo gives small characters at the start of a chapter? My Kobo won't reflow PDFs which makes it a piece of bovine excreta."

"You are having trouble adding fonts to your Kobo? My Kobo won't reflow PDFs which makes it a piece of bovine excreta."

"Your Kobo screen goes non-responsive and you need to power it off to get the touch screen working again? My Kobo won't reflow PDFs which makes it a piece of bovine excreta."

"Your Kobo froze when you installed the firmware for the Glo on the older Touch model? My Kobo won't reflow PDFs which makes it a piece of bovine excreta."

"You work for Kobo? You are a sack of well aged bovine excreta who is personally responsible for every issue I've ever had with a Kobo including it's inabilty to reflow a PDF."

Ignoring or accepting the bugs? Not around here. Tolerating them? That I will do until a better product comes along. And no need to feel sorry for disagreeing with me -- it would be a very boring world if everyone agreed with me all the time.

Regards,
David

[pdurrant]

Originally Posted by DNSB

An end user who gives a report that allows reproducing the bug is a treasure.

Oh, this is so true.

The users who can remember what they were doing, and then repeat it, and then try variations, and ONLY THEN report the bug, with detailed steps to reproduce the bug — such users are better than refined gold and more precious than rubies and diamonds.

[NightGeometry]

Originally Posted by pdurrant

Oh, this is so true.

The users who can remember what they were doing, and then repeat it, and then try variations, and ONLY THEN report the bug, with detailed steps to reproduce the bug — such users are better than refined gold and more precious than rubies and diamonds.

Except when the steps they have are completely irrelevant, and do not help (confirmation bias is a lovely thing...) In my perhaps limited experience of running software development, this is a more common thing.

[PeterT]

Many years ago I heard a story of some users in a plant being trained on how to use a system that they accessed via a dumb terminal (DEC LA120 I think).

When the instructor logged on, he made a mistake in entering his user-id, so backspaced to fix the mistake and then continued on.

When he came back some weeks later to see how the users were doing, he was dumbfounded to see them all backspace as they entered their user-ids!