Concerns regarding communication and thoroughness

Community
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In this topic I would like to raise my concerns regarding some of the recent events and overall communication from Autonomi. I would really like to emphasize that this topic is not meant as criticism but merely a way of expressing some different viewpoints from people outside of the Autonomi team.

I think in general there are two main concerns. One being overall communication and the other the thoroughness of some of the latest releases. For everyone to have a good understanding of my concerns, Iā€™ll briefly explain some of my insights over these last months and Iā€™ll wrap this post up with what I think is needed to improve the overall situation.

Starting with how thorough we are with the latest releases (not just development releases)

  • Impossible future: The Impossible Future program has been a key element in Autonomiā€™s marketing strategy over the last few weeks. I donā€™t want to pad myself on the shoulder, but it took my about 2 hours to find 2 critical issues in the voting. These issues brought the entire Impossible Future timeline in danger if not found at an early stage. I genuinely wonder what testing went prior to this release? I noticed that the voting website showed 3 projects with 1 having 1 vote. I hope that more testing has been done, but given the big (mostly minor) amount of issues, I doubt thatā€™s the case.
  • Yesterdayā€™s launchpad release (V0.5.8): Yesterday an update has been released which has caused launchpad users to be unable to launch nodes through launchpad. This is not a single user issues, but to my knowledge something all launchpad users are experiencing. How is the team testing these releases and how is it possible that a critical bug is being introduced to all users at this stage in the project? Maybe a more important question, why are we doing releases on a Friday when most of the team will enter the weekend and support will be limited.
  • I can think of more issues over the last few weeks, but I donā€™t the above two will paint a good enough picture to understand the solution Iā€™m working towards: bear with me.

Then, communication:

  • Impossible Future: The Impossible Future has been (in my opinion) a disaster when it comes to communication. Prior to the launch of the Impossible Future, the voting rules have been published. A lot of community feedback showed that the ideas from the Autonomi team couldā€™ve been finetuned to gain more support from the community & improve overall engagement. The main issue here was that the feedback from the community could not have been taken into consideration anymore as most of the work had already been done. The team committed to the idea, and showcased it too the community too late to take any feedback into consideration. Iā€™ve raised this concern in a reply here, which, shown by the amount of likes, is something a lot of community members could relate to. Unfortunately, no Autonomi team members has replied to this and Iā€™m unsure if we can prevent such situation in the future (hence this topic).
  • The Impossible Future also introduced some last minute rules. These rules resulted in many more questions and introduced several possibilities for ugly discussions towards the end of the voting. I raised these issues here to ask for clarifications to prevent this from ending in another event that would polarize the community even further, but again, not response from the team.
  • Iā€™m pretty confident marketing effort has been stopped or at the very least been dropped to a minimum when the uploads turned out to be not fully functional. A logical step, but not one that was being communicated. I remember when the announcement that Bux was joining the team we kind of joked about how fast the Discord could grow, and Bux mentioned that she would be disappointed if we would not make 1000 Discord members that same day. Iā€™m not saying this to slap it in anyoneā€™s face that the amount of new members entering our community is lacking, but I think itā€™s important to paint the picture: Weā€™re all aware that the marketing effort so far have not met expectations. What I really appreciated about Maidsafe and now Autonomi is that weā€™ve always had this transparent back and forward between the team and the community, which now seems to be (almost fully) gone.

Now, I hope everyone knows me as the member that doesnā€™t raise concerns or issues without making a few suggestions to make it better. So here we go:

  • As a community, we fully understand that we do not have all the knowledge and that the team simply cannot share everything. However, I do think it would create so much mutual understanding if the team would start communicating more about high levels judgement calls that are being made.
  • Letā€™s involve the community earlier in some of the important plans. Pitch the idea, gather some community feedback and take the feedback into consideration before fully committing (starting development etc.). This doesnā€™t have to be an endless debate and should not slow anything down significantly, in fact, in may even speed things up.
  • When it comes to actual releases, I get the feeling that the team has an extreme sense of urgency to push things out. However, weā€™re coming from a situation where things got delayed months if not years. Weā€™re already in a much better situation but most importantly, we now have a live (and functioning) network. Itā€™s time that the team gets to slow down again just a little bit. If a release is not ready on Wednesday, donā€™t release it on a Friday. Take the time to test it thoroughly internally and release it on a Monday or Tuesday. Especially at the current stage, we need to make a good impression on people that are getting introduced to Autonomi. Releasing code thatā€™s introducing launchpad (especially launchpad) issues, should be reduced to the absolute minimum).
  • Letā€™s involve the community in testing. Like the Impossible Future, it took me and other community members only hours to find several issues. Utilize the community a week or two in advance so that we can work towards amazing and engaging releases. Itā€™s really in everyoneā€™s interest to nail these releases, theyā€™re fundamental to broader adoption.

Thatā€™s it for now, love to hear what you all think! Iā€™m asking everyone to keep this topic constructive and polite. Also, we all have the projectā€™s best interest at heart so letā€™s keep that in mind.

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We need a GUI, an app marketplace and SafeBox ASAP. Until we have something tangible that can be marketed to the masses, weā€™re dead in the water. This eternal R&D hell is absolutely unacceptable. Everything about using the network is just way too complicated. When grandma can just click on a button on her browser, weā€™ll be making progress.

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This is why it baffles me the way the community has been neglected/ignored at a time itā€™s needed most. When you think about the knowledge/skills in this community (not me) itā€™s a shame they are not being utilised more. I think we have to just accept the change and do what we can to help the network succeed.

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To be fair to the team, theyā€™ve been heads-down delivering a working network, live and at scale. They have delivered that.

This is an amazing achievement, and it in my view ends the ā€˜R&D hellā€™ā€¦ though of course that was required to get to where we are today.

Now, the team has also delivered working APIs, and have encouraged a bunch of developers to get cracking on a range of apps.

The team couldnā€™t really focus on much else until the network was functioning, and now it is, thereā€™s the push with Impossible Futures, and Bux mentioned an ā€˜app storeā€™ is in the plans now.

So I get the impatience for tangiblity - I am eager for that as well, but it really does only seem like a matter of time now the building blocks look like theyā€™re in place.

From my perspective this seems to really make sense, even if itā€™s just gathering feedback from a group of known-trustworthy & well-meaning community members.

While I can see how the team has been pushing hard & is ultra-focused with amazing results, it seems like using the community as a sounding board / test partners would avoid some of the recent issues & add significant value to Autonomi.

Maybe this will be more feasible now the team can get out if battle-mode given uploads & downloads are working well?

So, I feel the team have done amazingly well, but utilising the community may help them do better in some areas. I hope team-community relations improve to the benefit of the project.

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If the network starts working well enough we can have those right now, with dweb and other projects. This isnā€™t something Autonomi need to, or IMO should, do.

However, so long as we are chained to blockchain this is a niche project with no chance of getting out of the blockchain echo chamber. So your focus is on the wrong thing IMO. Despite this, there has been nothing encouraging from Autonomi. They have not shared a plan, given any information on mitigations etc. Nothing new since the September jump to blockchain which has castrated the project and turned away from the most important of the fundamentals: ā€œfor everyoneā€.

Even if blockchain was not in the way, on the live network Pointers still donā€™t work and Iā€™ve yet to try Scratchpads live. There are encouraging reports but until I try them out I wonā€™t know, which Iā€™ll be doing shortly and others can join in with.

I have a demo app working locally with Scratchpads and the dweb REST API. It will be a lot of fun if it works on the live network, so will try uploading and testing it next week.

Guinea pig alert: get ready!

On the main topic @Mightyfool, I donā€™t expect change so I will carry on building and supporting.

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I agree with this bit.

Us community devs can work on apps, promote them, work together, and help to improve the user experience.

What we need from the team is a brilliant network and great libs to work with.

It is hard for community devs to contribute substantially to the core. The team have their own goals, communication lines, deep knowledge of its state and how to improve it, etc.

However, the libraries provide an interface, which is the primary thing we need to understand to write apps. So, us community/external devs can concentrate on things this side of the interface, as long as the team can continue to improve things on the other.

It was mentioned in this weekā€™s stages that there was a feeling that the team should do just this, btw. Adding libraries for more languages, improving core network, etc. I think the team is in tune with this, but the communication could be clearer on this.

Ofc, this means that the community/external devs need to find time and resources to help. Whether this is through initiatives like Impossible Futures, forming partnerships, etc, these sort of things need to support app dev.

With the right engagement with the community, we can really act as a supporting group for the team. There is plenty of enthusiasm and experience here to help. Investing in that may be a lot cheaper and easier than trying to do it all themselves or through big partnerships that come with barbs attached.

Iā€™m relatively at peace with the current situation though. I donā€™t think there is a need to be too negative at this time. Things are moving in the right direction, but we can all improve. Many projects would die for a passionate community like this one, even if it does make it an irregular challenge to grapple with.

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From my point of view nothing Iā€™ve said is negative. Everything Iā€™ve said is I believe factually true and not opinion.

If Iā€™ve got anything incorrect Iā€™d welcome that being corrected.

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Letā€™s face it - we are a tough audience
Some may argue that over the years, we have earned the right to be a tough audience.

Many other projects would dearly like to have a loyal, informed and supportive , yet critical when required community like ours. We got that way by many trials and tribulations but always with mutual respect between devs and community - which included honest unvarnished reporting from David and the rest of the team.

Seems like some of that has been lost now though.

The situation is not beyond saving though - IF management get back to listening, consulting and communicating as before.

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Factual things can be described in both a positive or negative way. A glass can be half full or half empty. Factually, they are the same.

Fwiw, it wasnā€™t only in reponse to your post though. It was a general statement.

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I think the vague refrain about negativity is unhelpful. Not just from you.

I replied because you were not specific and quoted my post without being clear what it was you were commenting on wrt negativity.

Iā€™m frankly fed up with that here - not attacking you, maybe thatā€™s just your way and Iā€™m letting you know my response.

I spent months holding back, from not wanting to seem ā€œnegativeā€ or to be anything but supportive of Autonomi. Despite a lot of appalling behaviour on their part IMO.

Iā€™ve given up expecting any different and no longer bother feeding back to them. Iā€™ll reconsider if things change - letā€™s see what response the OP gets.

If someone implies things about things I do post, Iā€™ll seek clarification. I respect you technically and your support for the things we both value. And Iā€™d rather you were specific where you disagree with me. I wonā€™t be offended to hear your views on specific points or anything else but it is frustrating to have so little clarity when comment appears directed at me, but maybe not.

It creates bad feeling because nothing can be resolved without honest dialogue, which is what I try to have by being clear and frank.

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I didnā€™t mean to offend and I donā€™t really want to rake over the coals of this.

Personally, I prefer positive, constructive, criticism. Good job on X, but maybe we can do better on Y, etc. It certainly helps with my morale. It often encourages me to talk it over, help them see my perspective too.

But thatā€™s me. You do you.

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I wasnā€™t offended.

Thereā€™s a place for both positive feedback and pointing out reality. When the latter is obscured by relentless avoidance and rejection of questions, accepting only positive takes etc, I believe itā€™s important to reveal whatā€™s not being said and try to avoid people being mislead.

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Is it sad this the situation between (some at) Maidsafe and this community reminds me of a couple that split up and 1 of the 2 wants to make it work again?

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Iā€™m going to provide a reply on some things here. I probably wonā€™t follow this up. Itā€™s not because I donā€™t want my views challenged, rather I just donā€™t really have time to get into a back and forth with lots of people.

The main development work for this was done by Mick and Lajos, so I canā€™t speak to it directly, but both of them are very capable developers and would have tested it as much possible, given the time they had (more on the time issue below). You shouldnā€™t necessarily jump to conclusions because you spotted an issue someone else didnā€™t. As a developer myself, I can tell you that nothing hits harder than someone else finding an issue that seems blindingly obvious in retrospect. I know youā€™ve already prefaced your points by saying you donā€™t intend to be harsh, but please just try to cut the guys a bit of slack here.

As a general point, itā€™s possible for a bug of any severity to occur at any point in time; no development process is perfect.

As another general point, for our code to be released, we actually do have pretty rigorous testing in place. As a first step, every PR goes through a CI suite that is quite comprehensive. For release, everything is then brought together in a release candidate, and that goes through a set of four standard tests. All of those test results are evaluated before we decide to release. I could go into a lot of detail about what we do here, but Iā€™m not going to. The reason is because there will be a million different opinions about what we should or could do here. I donā€™t have time to incorporate them all, and if I donā€™t respond, people will get upset they are not being listened to.

Specifically about the launchpad, Iā€™m going to be honest. Itā€™s a component that is not well integrated into the QA process. That is going to change from now. So in this specific case, I will hold my hands up and say it was a clumsy mistake we made here. It really isnā€™t indicative of severe gaps in our development process though. You may not believe me, but thatā€™s all I can really say.

Regarding releasing on a Friday, I mentioned this in the release thread, but we already have a general policy to not do that. This release was scheduled originally for Wednesday, and we really wanted to get it out because there were improvements to the client and a lot of Python stuff was added that IF developers were waiting on. So we took a gamble here and lost. Itā€™s that simple really. It was just a bad decision, and I donā€™t think weā€™ll ever take the chance on this again.

Since around the last quarter of 2024, in terms of releases, weā€™ve worked towards hitting particular dates. I donā€™t think anyone would disagree that this is not the best way of developing software. Itā€™s also a very tough and exhausting way of working, but the thing is, there were more than just technical considerations. If we hadnā€™t had these dates to work toward, we wouldnā€™t have pushed ourselves the way we did to get to launch. I donā€™t regret it. I think itā€™s good we are launched, despite the fact that we arrived there with the network in a position that was far from ideal. Having said all that though, I do agree that we should change this way of working now and we should not hold ourselves so much to particular dates. We all know that this network has to be a really solid piece of infrastructure, and we should move toward releasing things on cycles, of something like two to six weeks. Internally weā€™ve spoken of doing this after we get to the point where uploads and downloads are really solid. Hopefully we are not too far away from that.

As a general point about consultation and making use of the community, itā€™s something thatā€™s easier said than done. Itā€™s quite tough to coordinate on a day-to-day basis when you have things to deliver, and we would hurt our productivity if there were loads of things that had to be vetted and/or coordinated with the community first. However, weā€™ve taken advantage of it where and when we can. We got a lot of great help recently testing the alpha network. We always talk about it internally, but like Iā€™ve said, it can be difficult to coordinate it. There is never any intention to just ignore everyone. We value and appreciate the input and expertise.

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Iā€™m just anxious to have something we can show to the masses. Not in any way criticizing the team. I know weā€™re making outrageously good progress, itā€™s just been such a long ride.

I can only imagine what they must be feeling after all these years of grinding away.

Years of people calling us cranks and accusing the project of being vaporware, guys like Faketoshi claiming MaidSafe would never be able to pull off routing, etc.

And yes, community is critical. That has been another source of my frustration. IT SHOULD BE ABSOLUTELY POPPING HERE.

I had been hardcore into bitcoin for almost half a decade prior to learning of this project and only did so because the bitcoin community actively asked for feedback from the community, engaged in networking, produced daily consumable content and promoted other forms of emerging tech.

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Sounds to me like Autonomi needs to hire somebody to facilitate this. Until not long ago, I think most of us looked to Jim for that, but things have changed. If he didnā€™t have a shit ton on his plate, I think we would hear from him more regularly here. If I were going to recruit anybody for that role, I would start by interviewing a guy like Brian Sovryn. Weā€™re at the point where we need a dedicated podcast/communications outlet hosted by somebody with brains and it would serve multiple purposes/create a feedback loop.

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@fergish is probably the one to consult here. Safe Crossroads was the closest we have seen yet.

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Thanks for listening and responding so fully @chriso. No things here need a response BTW. I know everyone appreciates you for engaging here and particularly since the communityā€™s concerns have been going unaddressed on some important issues.

I can say the concerns are not about one issue, but several and hardly ever if at all about technical ā€˜errorsā€™ or capability. We see and regularly acknowledge the exceptional technical team that Autonomi have which of course includes yourself, and your continued engagement here.

Iā€™ll be very relieved if the time pressure is taken away as you say you would now like to see. We can disagree on whether this was the right approach in the past, but no team can be effective or sustain with being driven hard indefinitely. A few weeks before a deadline fine, but for months on end certainly not.

Good luck going forward and thanks again for talking to us, especially on your weekend, but it isnā€™t you who should be left to that responsibility IMO.

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I couldnā€™t agree more! And thank you for your reply Chriso. I think that most of the people here, myself included, do not doubt the qualities of any of these developers. Being a Product Manager myself (with a developer background) I often see deadline pressure result in bugs or unfinished products hitting the production environment. That has nothing to do with the quality of the developer, so none of this is questioning their capabilities. Most of these concerns are regarding the timeline (weā€™re releasing too early now? who wouldā€™ve thought, right?) and communication / involving the community in some of the directions. Itā€™s arguably more marketing / PR related than development.

Iā€™m really glad to hear that the Friday release is a one off and will probably not happen again. Obviously itā€™s up to you guys to make the call on what day you want to release, but I would like to allow you guys the feeling that pushing it over the weekend because of whatever reason is not going to upset anyone in this community.

So yeah, thank you for the reply. I think it gives a great insight in the though process in most cases and weā€™re aligned on most of the them which is great to see.

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In my mind we are just getting close to ā€œfinal netā€ launch so in that sense I feel it may be okay to take more risk and rush things. And last thing we want is burnt-out developers due to additional pressures from the community.

Once launched (a network thatā€™s proven to be working and permanent) however, I hope that the node release process will formally include release candidates on public testnet with plenty of time reserved for community testing and feedback. Also, there needs to be a formal process for improvement proposals, to support application dev community.

As for feedback on marketing projects, policies, PR, this shouldnā€™t involve developers at all. Feedback, both positive and ā€œnegativeā€ should be taken up and addressed by the leadership. It would increase trust and respect if leadership would respond to forum posts.

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