Re: Awesome new Mozilla roadmap!

[Andrew Sobala <aes gnome org>]

On Sun, 2003-04-06 at 19:29, Ali Akcaagac wrote:
> > As far the 70%, that would be a good topic for a poll on gnomedesktop.org.
> 
> Maybe on a neutral place and unbiassed. But you should spent more time reading 
> comments of people on various places then you understand that this 'poll' is 
> not really necessary. But to start with:
> 
> http://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_id=1176218&forum_id=6200

3 people plus you took a stand in that discussion. That's not
representative of anything.

> http://gnomesupport.org/forums/viewtopic.php?p=7703#7703

People were in support of GNOME 2 until the thread went off topic.

> 
> You are heavily ignoring these kind of comments as everyone else here is 
> ignoring them.

Of course we are :-)

The problem with online discussion theads are these.

1. Lurkers. Most of the community on a forum is silent so the apparent
"consensus" is actually reached by a vocal minority, which may or may
not be indicative of the real consensus.

2. Bias. GNOME 2 is not aimed at a geek community; most of the people on
/., sourceforge, gnomedesktop.org and other geek sites are _not_ our
target audience. Although geeks may enjoy using GNOME - I hope they do,
because we need a hacker base to develop it :-) - our target user base
is Joe Average.

This is why some people feel offended by "A user won't know what a
window manager is." Geeks feel offended that such statements seem to
apply to them; they apply to our target user base, and computer geeks
aren't it. Although for many geeks, GNOME is really usable as a result
of this targetting anyway so it doesn't matter.

Nevertheless, the ultra-configurable desktop is KDE, not GNOME.
Different audience, different code.

(Note that I do not consider the word "geek" derogatory and it is not
intended to be so here.)

> 
> > > You may not belive this but I got quite "A LOT" private emails the last
> > > days from people exactly from this list or the places you mentioned who
> > > told me to be right with what I wrote.
> >
> > Feel free to forward these mails on or make them public somewhere (hiding
> > the email addresses of course).  I'm sure I can tell the difference
> > between real ones and faked ones on content.
> 
> Did you read the *private* in my previous writing. I don't want to lose 
> confidence of the people who wrote to me so sorry. But now while we are at 
> it, let me offer you something.
> 
> Let's open a new mailinglist named however you like and have it used as 
> serious place for such kind of feedback where your own people (not 
> necessarily the people outside) finally come up with their concerns and write 
> what they like and what they don't like. Not the normal 'yes' saying way as 
> it happens here for the past couple of years. Strangely is that whenever I 
> exchange lines with people they wholeheartly agree with me or I agree with 
> them. Read the 2 examples (Links) above but I'm quite sure you find excuses 
> for them too.
> 

Sure I did.

Usability gnome org is where usability related concerns could go. There
is not and will never be a list for changing the whole philosophy behind
GNOME.

> > Seriously, to get your posts taken seriously, drop some of the common
> > slandering themes you keep recurring back to.  There *are* useful comments
> > in your posts, but your signal-to-noise-ratio is pretty low because of the
> > silly stuff you keep coming back to, like
> > - gconf is evil
> > - gnome is hijacking X
> > - gnome is overtaking all other projects known to mankind (I'm sure Bill
> >   is sleeping very badly since 2.2 got out)
> > - I'm calling you a dictator but don't take it personal because I said
> >   sorry at the end of my rant
> >
> > Stick to facts and personal opinion here and there without name-calling
> > and you'll get a much more receptive audience.
> 
> But these are my points. Why do you want me to change the objective of my main 
> concerns within GNOME ?
> 
> Know what and again a fair public reply to you, and my apologizes to those who 
> may find it insulting.

Make it non-insulting.

<snip>

> c) thinking to dominate the world with a poorly written 
> desktop 

<snip>

> 
> I respect the work of everyone here and I have nothing personal against anyone 
> here

Then don't troll. Read those last 2 sentences? That was either trolling
or lying.

-- 
Andrew Sobala <aes gnome org>

All statements in this e-mail are my own and should not be taken as official statements of the GNOME project or GNOME Foundation