On Sat, 2011-02-05 at 11:43 -0600, Paul Cutler wrote: > You're asking to change the way things have been done for years - > which isn't an argument to not do things that way, but just pointing > it ou. > > However, the GNOME Design team has regular office hours in IRC where > everyone is welcome to come and ask questions - I'm not a designer, > but I don't know what more you can ask for if IRC is going to be used. I believe that the ask/question is not a problem. The problem is that you cannot easily follow the process. I'm not sure about office hours but: - They probably aren't in best timezone for all. Unfortunatly we have around 26 timezones and there is a chance that a) hours are too long and the relevant designer is not present b) they happen to be between 3 am and 5 am (or 10am and 12am) so not everybody can be there to observe the process. It is possible to stay awake one night to ask specific question but it is harder to do it constantly. - They are not widely know. I tried to googled them without success. They aren't in topic. etc. > Development is not a democracy I have never argue to democratise the process. While in politics openness and democracy are considered near synonymous I don't think they necessary are in software development. While it might be a stretch analogy but some people argue in various companies (not every company and it may be argued how good the policy is) to open the discussion/design process to community (I think I heard about Dell, Starbucks and others). Of course it is company who plays the role of beneficial dictator in this model nonetheless the consumers may be proven to be valuable source of feedback and ideas (even if the need to be filtered out). > - and for those who are going to do > get things done, While it is my opinion I detest IRC even for my own projects for the same reasons that are stated - I prefer working in batch mode instead of online mode as I concentrate on one task. Of course I'm not arguing every developer detest (and apparently GNOME design team likes IRC). > discussion via IRC and its immediacy is a powerful > tool. I personally think asking IRC not to be used for "important" > (which is relative) decisions is not realistic. > > Paul While it may be unrealistic it seems that at least some people are surprised that recent UI changes were surprise. Heatedness of debate were not helping but the discussion I've observed (one in blogosphere) was: A: The change ****. It breaks workflow XYZ. You ***. B: The issue was discussed extensively on IRC. We feel that Average Joe would benefit and workflow XYZ is broken and ***. The unanswered questions: - What exactly was discussed? What were the arguments? - Why workflow XYZ is broken? What should be the workflow be in designers mind?[1] Not using the IRC (or not only IRC) would help as: - Subscription to mailing list is much less consuming then joining IRC channel (low barier to entry -> more real live usage and more informations about users workflows and more possibilities to correct them) - There is something persisting to point at. If anyone asks why decision was made you can point them at specific topic/e-mail in archive. Regards [1] Say the change was that there cannot be double enters in text processor and user complains (s)he cannot finish a page to start another the response may be that (s)he should use break page feature.
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