(nb: None of this is directed at the person I'm replying to, or anyone in particular. It's more a general rant, filled with hyperbole and general jaded weariness, that should be ignored.)
On Mon, 13 Jun 2016 00:55:30 +0200 Moritz Bartl moritz@torservers.net wrote:
Like I said dozens of times, it is about _reacting_ to the mails that come in. I do not understand what is so hard about sending people a friendly auto-reply, letting them know that their emails have in fact arrived, that this is a volunteer activity, and that we will eventually get back to them and get them a shirt. That's all that most people demand. It could also be stated on the website. Which by the way still refers to Tor Weather, which is defunct and offline. https://www.torproject.org/getinvolved/tshirt.html
Practically speaking it's yet another thing that is "simple" to do technically, that doesn't have anyone to do it. Where does tshirt@torproject.org go to right now?
It is really tiring to explain this over and over again whenever someone asks: Yes, it's a volunteer thing, yes, someone will eventually answer your mail, it is not going to a black hole, yes, Tor Weather is dead and yes, we know about it but still nobody bothered to update the references.
And, just in case people haven't noticed, most threads on tor-relays and tor-talk do not see replies from Tor core members any more, which is a shame.
FWIW, I try to reply to things on tor-relays@ when I can contribute usefully. Likewise tor-dev@, likewise this list, likewise any other list that I'm subscribed to, or trac. I have no concrete understanding of how t-shirts work, so I don't normally reply to such things.
ISTR something about a more moderated tor-talk@ list, that may draw more people to participate again. I guess with random drama recently[0] that got abandoned. Skimming the archives for this month, it's not something I personally want to be subscribed to[1].
That particular thread that Sebastian refers to has been there with many people wondering for way too long now without being answered.
The initial thread was reasonable and if I had known how the t-shirt process worked, I would have replied. The latter half of said thread just makes me depressed, and want to unsubscribe from the list.
The problem I'm *personally* having with community interaction lately is that, generally speaking I have a finite amount of mental bandwidth available during any given time period. Replying to mailing list threads (a non-trivial fraction of which slowly chip away at whatever minscule faith in humanity I have left) is in direct competition for said mental bandwidth with things like "doing developer stuff".
Regards,