[tor-project] State of tshirts for volunteers running Tor relays

[Yawning Angel]

(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 at 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 at 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,

-- 
Yawning Angel

[0]: ... That I'm explicitly trying to avoid.

[1]: I'd even still help moderate that, since at least my suffering
would be making the world a better place, rather than just slowing
driving me more insane with no net benefit.
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: not available
Type: application/pgp-signature
Size: 819 bytes
Desc: OpenPGP digital signature
URL: <http://lists.torproject.org/pipermail/tor-project/attachments/20160613/d40ba021/attachment.sig>