Re: IRC channels in gnome development

[Maciej Piechotka <uzytkownik2 gmail com>]

On 06/02/2011 14:27, Allan Day wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> Maciej Piechotka wrote:
>> <FLAME>Then show <del>your<del><ins>design team</ins> work! All I'm
>> hearing is that research have been done and the issue have been taken
>> into consideration during disussion but I DON'T have any references. I
>> cannot see logs of IRC (at least google is not showing them), blogs does
>> not disclose why the decision was made in such way exactly and why the
>> broken workflows are bad. All I'm hearing is that I'm uninformed.
>>
>> The decision presented on blog is presented as final final - not as a
>> strong proposal (even if technically it is the same there are slight
>> differences in PR). I'm not specialist in UI design - but I cannot even
>> get response to information why my workflow is bad and how did you
>> invision it (say - large backups during night).</FLAME>
> 
> Even if you had records of every discussion, you wouldn't get the information you're looking for. Design decisions don't get made committee meeting style, and design involves a lot of specialist background knowledge which doesn't get explicitly referenced. Fact is, we'll probably never be able to give 100% of the rationale behind design decisions.
> 

I'm sorry.  I had impression that you (as 'defenders') are referring to
some specific studies.

>> Basically - it seems that many people have feeling that their needs are
>> being ignored in name of Average Joe and they are asked to leave.
> 
> And I've repeatedly stated that that isn't the case (and it really
> isn't).

As I said - that is the feeling. I'm not saying that designers don't
care but the designers feel you don't care.

> There are a whole bunch of things in the GNOME 3 designs which
> are specifically intended for 'advanced' users:
> 
>  * Keyboard-only application launching and switching

Technically present in GNOME 2 I believe (at least launching).

>  * Fancy workspaces stuff

While present state is suboptimal I agree that the direction seems more
then promising. I'm looking forward to it.

>  * Shell extensions
>  * We designed a GNOME tweak utility [2] nearly a year ago
> 

Which I cannot find outside mockup in the link. There is Ubuntu tweak
but I guess it won't work on non-Ubuntu.

>> PS. To sum up - I think that community thin.ks that decision are made
>> with practically closed doors (not everybody can even observe the
>> discussion due to time constraints) and 
> 
> The only reason it appears that it's happened in the dark is because
> nobody's been looking. This design could have be seen on the wiki or
> design repository months ago.
> 

Yes. I've started thread to seek the ways to have easier ways to look. I
think that posting minutes proposal would be a good way as users could
spent 5 minutes a week to follow relevant for them changes) and I don't
think that developers would be overwhelmed by it.

SIDE NOTE: The log/minutes would have an additional benefit - it
happened to me that some person stated that I've agree to do something
but I couldn't recall the event and I am sure I haven't agree to do
this. From logs I had in my empathy I couldn't find such event.
Logging/minutes may have additional benefits for developers (as I might
have agreed to do this but I've just forgot).

Regards