Re: The good, the bad, the insane

[Owen Taylor <otaylor redhat com>]

The only real cultural mismatch I think exists here is what the right
response is to do if the user gets confused by a menu that says:

 Suspend 
 Hibernate
 Power Off
 Restart

Is the right thing to do to provide training for the user, or is the
right thing to do to improve the user interface? I'm strongly of the
opinion that we should improve the user interface.

- Owen

[ I'll try to find time to write up some comprehensive, far too long
  response that goes in detail into design considerations, environmental
  consideration, etc. But for now, let me say that this discussion
  stopped being productive several months ago. We'll revisit the
  power-off situation at some point before 3.2, but thousands of
  pages of mailing list discussion rehashing the same points isn't going
  to be taken into account at that point. This also applies to repeated
  comments on Bugzilla bugs rehashing the same points. If someone brings
  up the subject on this list, please just say "Yes, this has been
  discussed a lot, here's the bugzilla #, also see the list archives" ]

On Fri, 2011-05-27 at 13:28 +0200, Rovanion Luckey wrote:
> 
> The whole argument for not having Power Off as a visible option in the
> menu seems to boil down to cultural convention. And I hope everyone
> here understands that people do things in different ways in different
> cultures. Sometimes people even do things differently than the local
> convention.
> 
> You cannot design Gnome to fit the standard behaviour of your specific
> culture. The number of people in  your culture is vastly outnumbered
> by the ones not in your culture. The solution to a behavioural issue
> in your culture may have been to remove the power-off button. But it
> also breaks Gnome-Shell for everyone who does not do things the way 
> things are done in your culture.
> 
> 
> So removing functionality might just make sense in your cultural
> context, it may make it easier for the population in your culture to
> do what's "better". But in cultures where everyone is already doing
> what's "best", you are removing functionality that everyone uses for,
> from their cultural context, what seems to be no reason what so ever
> and. 
> 
> Maybe the reason why there have been so many strong reactions to this
> decision is because from other cultures than yours, it makes no sense.
> Until I read the last parts of this thread I could not for the life of
> me understand why someone would make such a decision. But that was
> because it was trying to solve an issue that did not exist in my part
> of the world.