[Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?

[Hanlie Pretorius]

I found this article very thought provoking - thank you for compiling
it. I wrote down some of my thoughts here, perhaps not much new for
people on this list.

Often people assert that the 1980s marked a turning point in the
economy with regard to spending priorities, implying that before then
maintenance was more of a priority. Does this mean that economic
reasons are the major ones for lack of maintenance? I suspect so.

Was anything else different in the past or was maintenance a problem
throughout human history?

What about the boredom factor? I sometimes find it difficult to
motivate myself to brush my teeth because it's such a repetitive and
boring activity.

I believe people start appreciating maintenance when they have to do
it themselves or if they have to pay directly to have it done
(provided it's done properly). Perhaps payment for maintenance should
not be part of general taxes, it should be a specific levy that can be
traced back to actual maintenance performed.

The more complex our society gets, the more extensive and intensive
the maintenance requirements get. Under the guise of  simplifying our
lives, technology has pushed maintenance to the back stage where other
people have to think for us. In my industry (Geographic Information
Systems), the move away from desktop software to the web has
simplified (the quality of the simplification is debatable) GIS for
users not trained in GIS. But behind the scenes, my work has become
far more complex.

Perhaps we humans just can't help ourselves when it comes to
maintenance, just like we can't help repeating the cycles of
civilisation rise, complication and collapse.

I live in South Africa where the visible evidence of no maintenance or
incompetent maintenance is just downright scary.

Regards
Hanlie


> Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2019 10:09:55 -0400
> From: lee vinsel <lee at themaintainers.org>
> To: Themaintainers at lists.stevens.edu
> Subject: [Themaintainers] Why Do People Neglect Maintenance?
> Message-ID:
> 	<CAFfY7rEZbMyYg1jr2dWYtubzU5-j1JniB1PAZj+MP2==GmfSwA at mail.gmail.com>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset="utf-8"
>
> Hey, everybody.
>
> The three Maintainers co-directors - Andy Russell, Jess Meyerson, and
> I - pulled
> together a blog post laying out the factors/explanations we often hear
> about why maintenance is neglected.
> <http://themaintainers.org/blog/2019/7/30/why-do-people-neglect-maintenance>
> As is often the case these days, this post attempts to echo back what we've
> been hearing from others - including all the folks on this list!
>
> And as always, we are especially keen to hear feedback from you all. We're
> hoping this post kickstarts discussion about how to think and theorize
> about and empirically study these issues. Please give us feedback in anyway
> you see fit - in the blog comments, on Twitter, via private/direct
> messages, such as email, and ESPECIALLY on this list!!! :-)
>
> Hope everyone is doing well.
>
> Lee
>
> --
> Co-Director
> The Maintainers