Re: F-Spot mission statement

["Ben Monnahan" <monnahan gmail com>]

2006/8/28, Warren Baird <photogeekmtl gmail com>:

> F-Spot aims to help you manage your digital photos in a powerful yet
> highly-intuitive way.  It makes common tasks like finding a certian
> photo or photos quickly, organizing via tags, doing minor touchups, and
> sharing with friends and familiy trivial.  In addition, more powerful
> features for expert users are available where it is possible to do so
> without sacrificing userfriendliness.  It also strives to be standards
> compliant and interoperable with other programs all the while being
> available under the GPL.

Hmm.   I rather don't like "In addition, more powerful features for
expert users are available where it is possible to do so without
sacrificing userfriendliness."  I've never believed that expert
functions *HAVE* to have a negative impact on user-friendlyness...

If expert functions *HAD* to have a negative impact on user-friendlyness it wouldn't be worth including the statement because it would never pass the test. :)  That statement is all about wanting to add expert features, but not at the expense of making it overly complex for the common user.  I like features too.  It's really about making basic usability the top priority.
 

I really believe that f-spot needs to target both naive *AND* expert
users.

Wherever possible I agree.  But sometimes they may be at odds and I think its best to make it clear where the priorities are. (Mine for example is making it usable for me as well as Grandma, Dad and the wife.   But that may be a minority opinion)  In any case I'm hoping plugins can really help out in this case.  If they are able to add fairly major functionality, we should be able to please both sets without upsetting the others.  (Experts would need to enable plugins, but that should be OK, they are experts after all)

To be blunt, I consider myself an expert user, and if f-spot's mission
doesn't explicitly address my needs...   Well, that doesn't exactly
convince me to contribute to the project, does it?

The wording may be too harsh.  Hopefully I've explained better my view of what the mission should be.  Its  just my opinion though we'll see what everyone else thinks.
 

I also agree with John that shorter is better than longer.   I don't
think words like 'standards' really need to be in a mission statement.

I personally like it in there because although its something we probably all already agree on, its something I'd like to have written just to make it clear unless there was a disagreement in the future.  I wouldn't fight too much having it removed though, since I'm guessing most people already take it as a given.
 

How about something like:

F-Spot helps you manage your digital photos in a powerful yet
highly-intuitive way.  It provides easy ways to perform common tasks
like finding a certain photo or photos quickly, organizing photos via
tags, doing minor touchups, and sharing photos with friends and family.

(basically - the first two sentences from above, restructured a bit)

I'd be OK with this, but it seems a bit weak for my taste.  It sounds more like a marketing campaign than a policy document.  I guess I like the part about prefering ease of use over expert features. (Again, not necessarily at the expense of expert features, as you pointed out they don't always need to contradict each other)  I also like the content of the last sentence of my proposed bmon-bengt hybird, although something less wordy is probably called for.

Warren: Hope to see you at the meeting tonight to discuss this in real time.  I don't actually think our positions are that far apart.


See you all at the meeting,
Ben