Providing constructive criticism

Community
1

In the thing from Maidsafe that you quote, it says:
“The issue of some nodes not filling up is a bug”.

Therefore I’m not understanding your point @Vort? Maidsafe says data distribution is pretty uniform, but there is a bug where some nodes are not filling up. You say: here’s a node that didn’t fill up, that’s not how uniformity works!? Confused, I am.

More generally, were you the kind of fellow in school who was at his happiest when he got something right that the teacher had gotten wrong? It seems to be the only way you can frame things. Anyway, school is not a place where creativity flourishes, and it’s in the past now anyway, eh? :wink:

More importantly, great testnet, great progress, absolutely thrilled to see it, and hoping (eternally) for the stars to align to be able to get involved one of these days! Well done Maidsafe, and especially all the wonderful testers, fair play to you all

16 Likes
2

There are two description of situation:

  1. Distribution is uniform, except for some nodes, which are not filling (what Maidsafe says).
  2. Distribution is not uniform (what I say).

For me, “non-filling nodes” and “half-filling nodes” are completely different situations. “non-filling” can be described as exception from uniformity (maybe), but “half-filling” - can’t. “half-filling” is clear sign of non-uniformity.

I like to highlight problems, yeah.
Teacher not understanding what (s)he is talking about is a problem, no?
Not every impovement needs to be “creative”.
Fixing nasty bug may be boring, but it’s important thing to do nevertheless.

I can make creative things too, but they require inspiration and motivation :wink:

2 Likes
3

Half filling may well be consistent with MaidSafe’s characterisation. That you choose not to understand why is your problem not theirs.

Your comments would be fine if they weren’t stating your opinions as if they are facts, that anyone with half a brain cell would understand.

But they aren’t facts, they are your conclusions based on limited information and no attempt to understand why MaidSafe’s opinion is different from yours.

I think you may be trying to help but you can’t see beyond your own self belief and end up coming across as arrogant or trolling.

7 Likes
4

2 + 2 may be equal to 5 as well according to someone’s characterisation.
If someone wants to have practice with such logic, it’s their will, but I will not participate in such activity.

It’s a problem only when enough information is provided.
If there will be proofs, I will analyze them, but no guesses please.

If someone have another version of such facts, he can post it here.
For example, definition for non-uniformity will come in handy.

Beliefs are not what I respect. Facts please.

2 Likes
5

Are these glasses filled uniformly or not?

snodes
snodes4196×585 125 KB

How many people will say “it’s a hard question”?

1 Like
6

Nice. I used kitesurf back in the day. Need to have a look at getting back on the horse.

3 Likes
7

You make a false comparison there because you don’t understand how to analyse and draw reasonable conclusions, let alone establish factual truths. There is enough of that online and in the media, we don’t need it here.

The glasses are evidently not uniformly full. But are those all the glasses? If not, what conclusion can you reach?

Unless you take ‘uniform’ to be every glass, which is obviously not what MaidSafe are doing, you cannot know the true distribution.

Have you considered that you have less data than MaidSafe, or less insight into the causes to explain the difference between your rock solid “facts” and their statement?

I can think of at least one more explanation for the difference but I’m not here to debate pointless speculations, or to engage with you going around the houses.

I may block you. I don’t like doing that but I’ve found that has improved my experience here in several other cases. Just letting you know.

5 Likes
8

That assumes all the elements are the same. So it is both not uniform and not equally filled

The safe network chunks are not the same element, but are of differing IDs.

So uniform means the IDs are spread across the network in a uniform manner. But not filling all the nodes to the same amount is a bug where some nodes storing chunks within a range are not getting an equal share of that range.

Conflating uniform with equally is the problem here

9 Likes
9

I was an instructor back in the day, now that I live in Florida the wind is so naff I only get on the horse when I can plan a trip to a place that has decent wind. Heading to Cabarete, super excited but also a little nervous about the first send and landing.

6 Likes
10

I must admit that I have always given your motive for criticism the benefit of doubt.

Just acknowledge good work, good progress along with criticism.
You focus only on criticism.

6 Likes
11

This is what called representative sample.
It is often used in statistics to make conclutions about all items.
If you think that this sample do not represent network as whole, it would be interesting to know why.

I said: no guesses.

For discussion to be not pointless, first of all, term (“uniformity”) should be defined as precisely as possible.
Can’t make one? That’s the reason why discussion is pointless.
(You may say that requirement of term definition is incorrect. And I may listen to reasons why)

To be fair, this discussion looks much more constructive than previous. Maybe it is possible to improve discussion quality even more. (I’m trying to be positive)

12

Criticism is as important as compliments.
But I see no lack of compliments on this forum.
So I’m trying to make discussion more balanced by criticism.

4 Likes
13

This is true, balance is important. But if you acknowledge accomplishment too, your criticism will be better received.

6 Likes
14

There is tons to cheer about in this weekly update:

  • Largest testnet to date
  • Tons of progress on multiple fronts by Maidsafe’s developers
    • Both in Bug Identication, Fixes, and Future ERs
  • Excellent write-up overall by Maidsafe team
  • Increased rate of Testnets by Maidsafe team

So lets not get stuck focusing on a single bullet point and completely de-rail this weekly summary, and the overall vibe, outlook, and future progress / sentiment / morale for the team and the community.

If the issue of being uniform and equal on node storage continues to be a noticeable concern repeatedly after many testnets, then it should warrant a further side discussion (separate topic or on the testnet topic itself), but for now, it seems MaidSafe is going to take some steps to address some of the concerns there.

Not to mention, a very high activity on this past testnet in overall Replies, Likes, and Views in terms of interactions with Maidsafe, the community, and the product itself since at least over a year+ (Fleming days)!!!

image
image2258×1146 224 KB

13 Likes
15

Safe Network is now configured to have nodes of the same capacity.
Internet connection is usually configured so every process have the same share of traffic for physical network.
Same is true for RAM and CPU - OS tries to split resources evenly between processes.
Software for nodes is the same.
So yeah, nodes should be the same.

I was talking about nodes, not about chunks.
Exactly like described in 1st post:

You may explain why uniform distribution of IDs may result in non-uniform filling of nodes, but this is not exactly what’s discussed.

Glasses (nodes) are both filled non-equally and non-uniformly. Even if last node is excluded from analysis.

I suspect that I may not understood your ideas completely, but I tried.

1 Like
16

So was I. Read it again. The chunks were the things filling the nodes LOL

1 Like
17

@neo, looks like I understood what you mean:
Network assigned non-uniform weights to equal nodes because of the bug and filled them uniformly according to such incorrect “decision”.
But it still makes no difference, because nodes are in fact equal (like glasses), and result is “non-uniformly filled nodes” no matter why it happened.

1 Like
18

Well, in reality, sometimes yes, sometimes no. If the teacher says: “Look, I’m throwing out ideas here, I’ve no certainties in this area, feel free to jump in and contradict me or enlighten me at any stage, I’ll spitball first, then you go, let’s get crazy here”, then that wouldn’t be a “problem” whatsoever.

[full disclosure: speaking as a teacher who does this regularly]

It’s only possible to view it always and everywhere as a problem within the framework of “teaching” as it is currently commonly practiced, where the “expert” dictates the laws of reality to the silent, motionless, bored pupils.

This framework is completely silly though, for many reasons, including but not limited to the fact that it produces a certain number of people who think that talking about “facts”, or “ideas”, or “concepts”, means entering into a petty tit-for-tat little game of some kind, and that there’ll be gold stars at the end, and black marks for the bad kids.

Which is exactly what you at least sometimes sound like in your comments. We’re not in school; when someone is polite and positive in a comment, that doesn’t mean necessarily that they’re “sucking up” to “teacher” and you have to rebalance the scale, it often just means they’re being polite.

When someone is impolite and negative in a comment, presuming things in bad faith, etc, it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re being a cool rebel, either, it often just means they’re being impolite.

Put otherwise: pointing out worries, criticisms, mistakes, errors, bugs, etc, is a great thing to do, but it can all be done in a way that is totally different to this weird “I’m right, you’re wrong” framing. There’s just no need for it. I’m not sure if you specifically as a person can learn it at this stage, I’m just saying, it can be done.

Anyway, I agree with @Shu that we’re derailing a wonderful update, regret not having the strength to resist responding, would happily accept mods moving these posts to their own thread, and hereby reiterate my belief that the mods don’t get half the thanks they deserve.

9 Likes
19

Off topic but I wish my teachers were more like @JayBird when I was in school. Must be hard with this approach in today’s environment.

3 Likes
20

Seconded :slight_smile:

3 Likes