Re: collecting negative reviews

[Murray Cumming <murrayc murrayc com>]

On Mon, 2005-09-12 at 02:28 -0300, Santiago Roza wrote:
> It's done: I've read [almost] every single comment from the 2.12
> release articles (including Slashdot and OSNews, which Travis was
> going to cover... sorry Travis, I got carried away), and here's the
> compiled list of complaints/suggestions/etc.
> 
> I guess someone (who has actual contact with them, unlike me) should
> pass this to the development list as soon as possible, cause it's very
> valuable information IMHO.

So, I eventually found this in the archive. I'll respond, because you
seem to want more responses. But I'm not really a developer. Sorry for
being my normal harsh self. I greatly appreciate the effort that went
into this first attempt.

I don't think this is of much value to the developers. They do tend to
read web site comments when we do major releases, so reiterating the
comments doesn't help them much. Some analysis of what opinions are
representative, and/or what leads people to these opinions, might be
useful, but that's a big job that would normally happen over at
usability gnome org, and would normally involve two-way communication
with users.

Most of the stuff at the end of this list is outlying stuff that does
not belong in any overview.

If this process is going to work in future, I guess that developers
would like to see 
- Top 3 major negative perceptions. (and maybe which of our "target
markets"/personas those affect most)
- Suggestions for how to fix those perceptions.

It would have to be concise and rational. The developers will pay
attention if the marketing-list apply their special expertise to the
problem, but not just because it comes from the marketing-list.

> * GENERAL CRITICISMS/SUGGESTIONS: TOP 5
> (common to most articles)
> 
> 1) add full GNOME VFS support to all applications (especially GNOME apps)

Yes, this is well known.

> 2) optimize performance and memory footprint

Yes, and there's lots of work on this. This will probably be a big
selling point for the 2.14 release:
http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointThirteen_2fReleaseNotes

> 3) Nautilus seems to be the most criticised GNOME app: many people say
> it's slow (compared to Konqueror or Win Explorer),

You'll see equal "it's slower" comments about each of Nautilus,
Konqueror, and Win Explorer. It's always something that needs detailed
investigation, because people are usually not doing like-for-like
comparisons, and the perception of slowness can take many forms. This is
a well known phenomenon.

>  many complain about
> not being able to type URLs in the File Selector/Manager (without
> pressing Ctrl+L), many complain about not being able to (easily) turn
> off the multi-window behaviour, and some others think it lacks
> functionality (found in Konqueror or Win Explorer)
> 4) most people disliked the new menu editor; they suggest we bundle
> SMEG (or something equally capable)
> 5) many many readers asked where to find updated packages for their
> distribution; maybe we should work alongside with major distros to
> have GNOME packages ready on release time (or make our own packages)

The start pages do mention that distros will have it soon,
http://www.gnome.org/start/2.12/
and we supply a LiveCD so they can try it immediately. Personally, I
like to see people eager to get the new stuff.

> * OTHER GENERAL CRITICISMS/SUGGESTIONS:
> (not so common and/or relevant)
> 
> - stability issues with xcompmgr (X Compositing Manager; it handles
> transparency/shadows)

This is obviously a very niche experience from some who is happy to hack
his system together.

> - doubts about the nature of the GNOME LiveCD ("what is it based on?"
> - IMHO next time we should clearly state it's based on Ubuntu)

OK. I added that to the list of improvements here:
http://live.gnome.org/TwoPointThirteen_2fReleaseNotes

> - complaints about certain lack of ACL functionality (some users
> suggest that we should at least integrate Eiciel into Nautilus)

I think ACL functionality is on the way. I'm not 100% sure.

> * CRITICISMS/SUGGESTIONS FROM SPECIFIC ARTICLES:
> (and/or their comments)
> 
> http://www.osnews.com/story.php?news_id=11800
> - incomplete/confusing API documentation
> - add full front-end to the Bluetooth stack
> - "phone and PDA syncing that actually works"
> 
> http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11788&limit=no&threshold=-1
> http://www.osnews.com/comment.php?news_id=11800&limit=no&threshold=-1
> - easily open a terminal in the current directory (like the
> nautilus-open-terminal add-on)

The terminal is something that we avoid. The add-on seems to do a good
job for people who want it.

> - "merge all settings into one single preferences application"
> 
> http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/09/07/2329227&from=rss
> - stability of multimedia software (especially Totem and the GStreamer
> framework in general)

Obviously in progress.

> - some readers say their GNOME 2.12 "feels" faster due to 3D
> acceleration;

This is their imagination.

>  in the future we should think of some way to tell them
> if it's turned on or not (to avoid these false impressions)

When did the users get the idea that something changed with this?

> http://gnomedesktop.org/node/2391
> - "spatial metaphor in GNOME broken and violated (eg: the file open
> dialog is always navigational, never spatial)"
> 
> 
> 
> * ARTICLES WITH NO COMMENTS:
> (or no interesting comments... or which comments I couldn't find
> because I'm an idiot :P)
> 
> http://barrapunto.com/article.pl?sid=05/09/07/191200
> http://lwn.net/Articles/150676/
> http://channels.lockergnome.com/linux/archives/20050907_gnome_212_released.phtml
> http://www.neowin.net/comments.php?id=30291&category=software
> http://www.desktoplinux.com/news/NS4356551088.html
> http://digg.com/linux_unix/GNOME_2.12_Released
> http://www.linuxparatodos.net/geeklog/article.php?story=20050908001403158
> http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/4696
> http://episteme.arstechnica.com/eve/ubb.x?a=dl&s=50009562&f=174096756&x_id=1126212290&x_subject=GNOME+2.12+is+afoot&x_link=http://arstechnica.com&x_ddp=Y
> http://planet.gentoo.org/developers/flameeyes/2005/08/25/gnome_2_12
> http://news.softpedia.com/news/GNOME-Launches-GNOME-2-12-Desktop-7909.shtml
> http://cofradia.org/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=15041
> http://www.techspot.com/news/18650-gnome-212-released.html
> http://hardware.newsforge.com/newsvac/05/09/07/207230.shtml
> http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=danews.story&STORY=/www/story/09-07-2005/0004102090&EDATE=WED+Sep+07+2005,+01:13+PM
> http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050907/sfw131.html
> http://www.linuxelectrons.com/article.php/20050907120839978
> http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/GNOME_Project_unveils_latest_version_of_Linux_and_Unix_desktop
> http://br-linux.org/linux/?q=node/1715
> http://www.softwarelivre.org/news/4696
> http://news.zdnet.co.uk/software/linuxunix/0,39020390,39217105,00.htm
> http://www.techtree.com/techtree/jsp/article.jsp?article_id=67998&cat_id=580
> http://www.newsforge.com/newsvac/05/09/07/1546239.shtml
> http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1856185,00.asp
> 
> 
> 
> * ARTICLES IN GERMAN/FRENCH:
> (two languages I can't read, so unless we want to trust Google Translate...):
> 
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/63253
> http://derstandard.at/?url=/?id=2160606
> http://linuxfr.org/2005/09/08/19543.html
> http://www.pro-linux.de/news/2005/8610.html
> http://www.heise.de/newsticker/meldung/63689
> http://www.oszine.de/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=3941
> http://www.linux-community.de/Neues/story?storyid=17628
> 
> 
> -- 
> Santiago Roza
> santiagoroza gmail com
> http://santiagoroza.blogspot.com/
-- 
Murray Cumming
murrayc murrayc com
www.murrayc.com
www.openismus.com