Best way to ask for help on no more "actively supported" workflows.

[politicus]

This morning I needed some help on one of the workflows I use.

Simply said, the developer said "I've published all my workflows on Github, but I will longer support/update them. Bye."

 

While it is developer mere freedom, I am kinda frustrated. Workflow is dead.

 

My question is, in a particular case like this, what is the best thing to do?

Posting a comment on original workflow's thread ( = waiting for a good samaritan )

Starting a new thread with my error log + link to original thread.

 

What do you think?

[vitor]

There isn’t really a rule in these cases, but you could try a combination of things. Start by asking on the original thread (one of the other users might see it and be able to help). After that, you can try opening an issue on the github repo (the effectiveness of this will greatly depend on its popularity). Open a new thread here as a last resort, as that should not get you many results to solve what you exactly want, but might provide a difference acceptable solution.

For example, I'm not sure what your issue with your workflow is, but there are others that perform such tasks. I have both one to act on your downloads and one to label files, so they might suffice or not (again, depending on your exact issue).

[rice.shawn]

Are you referring to phyllisstein's work? I remember talking to him, and he mentioned that his time working on Alfred was taking up too much of his time that he needed for paid work. He's a great guy, and I totally understand his move. He provided some great stuff for Alfred, especially stuff that helped push us along early on (alleyoop, Alp).

 

But, as Vítor mentioned, there is no rule. But, I think that you should treat it just as any other software that is no longer developed, especially within the open source community: (1) find an alternative, (2) fork it and fix it, or (3) bait someone to do it for you. If you do #2, then just credit the original author.

 

Sometimes you'll have luck with #3 in that someone will fix the codebase or rewrite the entire thing. I ended up taking the bait to redo the F.lux workflow that Benzi originally wrote.

[politicus]

@Vitor Thanks for your answer. 

 

@shawn I totally agree with your first paragraph. Users with no programming skills (me  ) have no idea how much time/efforts are required to create a great workflow. 

 

I will follow your wise advices.

Edited August 23, 2014 by politicus

[deanishe]

Users with no programming skills (me  ) have no idea how much time/efforts are required to create a great workflow. 

 

Wrong way to look at it, tbh.

 

What makes a workflow great is implementing a good idea in a very useable way. It needn't be complex to implement. I dare say, what sets the best software apart from the mediocre is the amount of thought that went into it, not the feats of software engineering…

[rice.shawn]

@deanishe Making the ridiculously complex appear simple?

[deanishe]

If by "ridiculously complex" you mean "comprising a ridiculous number of trivial steps", yes.

[rice.shawn]

Well.... maybe.

[deanishe]

Overcoming massive technical hurdles is sometimes necessary, but nobody's going to care if they're on a road to nowhere…

[rice.shawn]

If they're interesting, then I'll care. That's probably the academic in me, always chasing roads to nowhere-ish. (Nowhere or now here?)

[deanishe]

Wanna buy a Title Case Server? I can get you a super deal on one!

Edited August 26, 2014 by deanishe