Re: This list, suggestions, frustration

[Shane Fagan <shanepatrickfagan ubuntu com>]

Hey Owen,

I understand what your saying but I think its a little bit near-sighted
IMO. I think this list should be more used by the developers for
feedback about design. Most people cant watch IRC 9-5 5 days a week at
the times you guys work just in case something comes up that they might
be interested in because of day jobs and time constraints. Not
everything can come up on IRC and not everything can be filed as a bug
report. 

Is an opinion on a dodgy design decision worthy of a bug report? I know
this mailing list can get a bit crowded at times and developers cant
look at everything but you cant really think that ignoring it is the
best option. 

I accept your point about the kind of people who subscribe to mailing
lists but what if it was a user just curious installs Gnome Shell (its
fairly easy I dont know how other distros do it but in Ubuntu/Debian is
simple sudo apt-get install gnome-shell) and this person has an issue so
they ask some to point them to the place to mention it and someone
points them here hoping for an answer to their real world feedback and
they should be ignored just because they found their way here instead of
IRC? 

It just seems like you are cutting off the one avenue for some people to
participate their views and try to get involved which isnt really in the
spirit of what Gnome stands for IMO. I know you will still look at the
list and reply if it suits you and you have time but its not good to
discount a valid means of communication.


--fagan 

On Mon, 2010-07-05 at 20:12 -0400, Owen Taylor wrote:
> On Tue, 2010-07-06 at 01:33 +0200, Frederik Nnaji wrote:
> > On Mon, Jul 5, 2010 at 22:43, Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com> wrote:
> >         * You aren't a representative user. (How do I know
> >           this?  Because you are reading a mailing list on gnome.org;
> >         which
> >           puts your interest in technology and motivation well beyond
> >         most
> >           users.)
> > 
> > could you expand a little on the logic of this assumption?
> 
> For close to 10 years, the philosophy of GNOME has been to design for
> the general case - to build a desktop not for us, but for our customers,
> friends, and family.
> 
> Now, no user is completely typical - an general office user doesn't use
> the computer the same way as a graphics artist, who doesn't use a
> computer the same way as a teenager chatting with their friends.
> 
> But we can make some generalizations that cover 90% or so of users,
> among them:
> 
>  - Mailing lists aren't normal forms of communications; they require
>    a lot of sophistication to set up, and a lot of sophistication
>    to use in a useful fashion. IM, web forums, Facebook, and personal
>    email are more common communication forms.
> 
>    (That isn't to say that the normal user isn't on a mailing list
>    or two, that goes to their inbox, unfiltered. But they aren't
>    on 20 or 30 mailing lists, as most of us are, at a minimum.)
> 
>  - Users don't distinguish the parts of the user interface, or the
>    parts of the operating system. They may know the names of their
>    applications, but the text at the top of the screen is just
>    something that's there in "Linux"
> 
> Since you aren't conforming to those rules, you probably are atypical in
> other ways, perhaps:
> 
>  - You use the terminal a lot
>  - You customize your environment heavily
>  - You have multiple web browser extensions installed
>  - You understand of the difference between windows, applications, and
>    processes.
>  - Etc.
> 
> This doesn't disqualify you has a GNOME Shell user. As I said, we are
> designing for the general case, and the power user / enthusiast is part
> of the general case. But as power users, we have to remember that what
> works for us doesn't work for everybody, and a change that makes things
> worse for us occasionally makes things better for someone else.
> 
> - Owen
> 
> 
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