Oh, yeah. *That*'s scientific!
No. It's the voice of the community. =)
Henrique "LonelySpooky" Junior "The best diplomat that I know is a fully-loaded phaser bank." Lt. Cdr. Montgomery Scott ("A Taste of Armageddon")
----- Mensagem original ---- De: Matthew Saltzman mjs@clemson.edu Para: Development discussions related to Fedora fedora-devel-list@redhat.com Enviadas: Quinta-feira, 27 de Março de 2008 14:41:20 Assunto: Re: Suggestion Next Release
On Thu, 2008-03-27 at 10:45 -0400, Dimi Paun wrote:
If you think people like, let's run a poll on Slashdot...
On Fri, 2008-03-28 at 02:01 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Nah. Community!= selective number of people who decide to vote on slashdot.
You must be kidding if you imagine Community = "a small vocal community that _tells_ you what you should like".
Of course, I'm not claiming the Slashdot is scientific, but for the sake of the argument, it represents the Community a heck of a lot better than some in-group of developers.
We can do a poll in any sufficiently large population of users (not only GNOME developers), and I'm willing to bet a dollar in small change you'll get the same result: people don't generally like spatial.
If you agree with that, let's change the default. If enough people think otherwise, let's run a poll.
Dimi Paun wrote:
On Fri, 2008-03-28 at 02:01 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Nah. Community!= selective number of people who decide to vote on slashdot.
You must be kidding if you imagine Community = "a small vocal community that _tells_ you what you should like".
In Fedora, maintainers on the whole decide how their package defaults should be. If you can't convince the maintainers, tough luck. Polls aren't how we do things. Community != Democracy either.
Rahul
On Fri, 2008-03-28 at 02:33 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
In Fedora, maintainers on the whole decide how their package defaults should be. If you can't convince the maintainers, tough luck.
And by maintainers you mean upstream Gnome? I understand being close to upstream, but not being able to flip a flag is a bit extreme... And patently false too, as we have little tweaks all over the place.
If by maintainers you mean packagers, then yeah, you have a point. But the point of the discussion was to convince them. Did we hear from them, BTW?
Polls aren't how we do things. Community != Democracy either.
Fair enough. But it was argued for it on the basis that people use it, and to disprove that one point, a poll would be good.
However, if it comes down to convincing one person, who would that be? What would it take?
Dimi Paun wrote:
If by maintainers you mean packagers, then yeah, you have a point. But the point of the discussion was to convince them. Did we hear from them, BTW?
No. Which is why all of this back and forth is wasted effort and makes no difference whatsoever. The effective way to reach the maintainers (can be more than one person) is to check bugzilla and file a bug report. For any package I would maintain, I would take good arguments over any number of polls. In fact a poll on slashdot would reduce your chances considering the amount of fabricated nonsense that gets passed on there as news.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Dimi Paun wrote:
On Fri, 2008-03-28 at 02:01 +0530, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
Nah. Community!= selective number of people who decide to vote on slashdot.
You must be kidding if you imagine Community = "a small vocal community that _tells_ you what you should like".
In Fedora, maintainers on the whole decide how their package defaults should be. If you can't convince the maintainers, tough luck. Polls aren't how we do things. Community != Democracy either.
But at the same time... I'm sure a good quality run poll, with a sufficiently large statistical pool of voters, would be welcomed as an argument *for change* in the default. In the thread and in all arguments made against spatial browsing all I see are people saying "I don't like it and I am sure most people don't either". I have yet to see anyone even post a link to a good discussion against it (blog/computing press/forum/mailing lists).. not one.
I like spatial browsing, and I've stated why. The gnome developers like and they have stated why (see mailing lists, one of which I've already posted here).
If 'the people' want change, there should be sufficient evidence out there, and I don't see any chance the upstream defaults are going to change without someone bringing that to them.
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Andrew Farris lordmorgul@gmail.com wrote:
But at the same time... I'm sure a good quality run poll, with a sufficiently large statistical pool of voters, would be welcomed as an argument *for change* in the default.
I think you are wrong about that being a perceived as valuable. I certainly wouldn't assume it. Because popularity doesn't speak to technical aspects of usability... not one bit. But please, if you feel strongly about that, suggest it upstream and see how they react.
-jef
Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 1:22 PM, Andrew Farris lordmorgul@gmail.com wrote:
But at the same time... I'm sure a good quality run poll, with a sufficiently large statistical pool of voters, would be welcomed as an argument *for change* in the default.
I think you are wrong about that being a perceived as valuable. I certainly wouldn't assume it. Because popularity doesn't speak to technical aspects of usability... not one bit. But please, if you feel strongly about that, suggest it upstream and see how they react.
Don't misunderstand me... I don't want the default changed, neither do I think the poll would be valuable simply as a poll. What I suggested was that those who want the default changed need to make an argument, not just continue to say everyone hates spatial browsing; as part of that argument a properly conducted poll may be useful, but only as a part of an argument for change. I'm not suggesting that a poll by itself would make up a good reason to change anything.
On Thu, Mar 27, 2008 at 12:57 PM, Dimi Paun dimi@lattica.com wrote:
Of course, I'm not claiming the Slashdot is scientific, but for the sake of the argument, it represents the Community a heck of a lot better than some in-group of developers.
Nope.. I absolutely and positively fundamentally disagree. Decision making is not going to be held hostage by the likes of the slashdot 'community'
We can do a poll in any sufficiently large population of users (not only GNOME developers), and I'm willing to bet a dollar in small change you'll get the same result: people don't generally like spatial.
What is popular is not always right. And what is right is not always popular. Merit based decision-making is not the science of popularity, even in interaction design. Merit based decision making is grounded in rational, informed discussion. Popularity contests are neither. If they were, I would have been prom king! All changes require a learning curve... the metrics that matter are honest to god efforts to measure differences in things like "productivity" and "learnability".. measurable factors which make up "usability" generally. In a meritocracy popularity is simply NOT important.
You've sullied the discussion by invoking the morass of opinion mongering that is slashdot. You want to talk about usability issues and want to be taken seriously.. than take a stab at making arguments grounded in interaction design concepts.
-jef"One user - One vote is NOT how decision making is going to work in open development as implemented in this project or any other open source project. You must bring rational, well argued positions to the table if you want to influence the work that others are doing, something that is true beyond just open software development...or you will be summarily ignored. This I have learned through hard-earned personal experience and you aren't going to change how it actually works by stomping around making a big fuss about it it being unfair. To influence the work others are doing you have to speak their priorities not your own."spaleta