I worked 15 years at my previous job as a developer on a construction machine control system. Many people opt for regularly switching jobs in order to stay up to date and challenge yourself, but my motto was always that if your are having fun there is no reason to stop. Right now Gridcoin is not fun. Because of this I have decided to take a couple of weeks off to do something else once 3.6.2.0 is out and working smoothly.
Why?
Don't get me wrong. The actual Gridcoin development is a blast and we have so many good ideas in the pipeline, like researcher reward improvements, NeuralNet in Linux and beacon removal proposals. The dev team has grown into a very tight and friendly group which chats on Slack 24/7, and the mood, banter and joking in that team is phenomenal. The client has been taken pretty damn far the last couple of months and I am so grateful to have been a part of that team. However, what hasn't been taken pretty damn far is the state of the community. When I joined the coin this community was exceptional. Everyone was, and still is, super helpful and the term "negativity" didn't exist. A couple of months ago something changed into a downward spiral of overall hostility and negative feedback. One dangerous thing about negativity is that it is extremely contagious.
It doesn't matter that you post some great news when there is a bombardment of negative posts on just about every social media out there. Posts about upcoming changes are twisted into a condensed bullet point about the problems that aren't fixed until the upcoming version. Fix clients getting stuck and get 100 posts about superblock issues. Fix superblock issues and get 100 posts about instabilities. Fix instabilities and get 100 posts about... well, we'll see what the focus is after 3.6.2.0 is released.
Sure, we have a lot of issues. Every software project, except maybe Propellerheads', have issues but we don't need to be told about them everywhere, all the time. I am fine with disgruntled users who are upset because of issues, they have all the right to be and that is actually a part of the challenge. But what's going on now is on a whole other level. This is about members deliberately focusing on the negative aspects as far as humanly possible. It gets very, very, very tiresome when one tiny minority keeps at it without any sign of stopping. It's like losing an MMA fight with no referee interfering. It's stressful, it's demoralizing and it takes the fun out of what you're doing. Thank God for the rest of the community who actually appreciate the work we do and bring fun back in.
Onwards
I've been told to just shrug it off and ignore it, and that's what I have tried to do for quite a while. Eventually being shot from inside the community every single day, all day long gets to you. I'll clear my head and check from time to time back to see if the situation has changed. I will try to keep Github administration going until someone else can pick up the torch, but it will slow down a bit. I am not out for good and I will definitely come back soon, just not under these circumstances. See it as a vacation from the barrage of negativity.