Re: bad press in the G+ circles/press

[Bryen M Yunashko <a11yrocks bryen com>]

On Mon, 2011-08-08 at 11:11 -0500, Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 8, 2011 at 10:58 AM, pecisk gmail com <pecisk gmail com> wrote:
> > If dissenting voices has nothing to offer than "it is all wrong, I
> > will go with product x", then it is not even worth to bother, because
> > all it does it creates flame wars like this. There is constructive
> > criticism (bug reports, written use cases which doesn't work), and
> > then there is just empty posturing, just because you disagree with
> > overall direction of platform.
>
> I didn't say "it is all wrong" or anything of the sort. I simply said
> that it might be instructive to note that few GNOME users are coming
> out to support GNOME 3 in the wake of Linus, Ted, and others
> criticizing it.
>
> I'm 100% certain that wouldn't have been the case three years ago. I
> talk to a lot of people, and I've found very few who genuinely like
> GNOME 3.0 - and I'm talking about people who've loved or at least
> liked GNOME 2.x.
>
> BTW, Linus and others, while ranting, have also pointed to specific
> things they do not like about GNOME 3.
> -- 
> "Our brains just have one scale, and we resize our experiences to
> fit." ~ Randall Munroe (xkcd)
>
> Joe 'Zonker' Brockmeier <jzb zonker net>
> About: http://www.dissociatedpress.net/about/

I don't think its a good idea to invalidate those who don't have positive things to say about GNOME3.  Joe makes an excellent point that the lack of noise in the other direction is telling.   

I'm one of those people who aren't quite happy with GNOME3.  One of the claims made about GNOME 3 was that it would enable us to be more task-oriented and less distracted from other stuff.  And yet, I find myself unable to focus on my tasks when using GNOME 3.  (And I gave G3 my best shot.)

My initial reaction to G3 was "Oooh this is nice and slick."  And I did what everyone said  "Just stick with it and you'll get used to it in time."  Well, time has passed and I'm less impressed than my first iimpression.

The reason why I haven't been vocal is simply because I wasn't directly involved in the development process.   Actually, I had discussions with some of the leading people on the project more than a year ago and was told about certain features being dropped becaue that's the way develoeprs thought it should be, even though I disagreed with it.  The response felt quite alienating.

Now, marketing team != developer teams so there's no use discussing how to actually fix things that users seem unhappy about on this list.  But, we are in the position of hearing and listening and conveying issues to relevant teams.  And this thread is already pointing out that we don't seem to want to hear dissenting opinions, only those that rave and glorify.  That's not exactly productive in my opinion.

What we *should* be discussing is ways to listen more and address concerns.  Does more or better documentation need to exist?  Is there something that actually has a solution conveyed to our users?  Do we need to create more how-to videos like the one Jason did?

Also, a part of me assumes that many of the specific complaints out there have been largely heard and are being addressed for 3.2.   Is that the case?  If it is, are we telling people this and giving them the hope that things will be better and thus will stick with using G3?

Bryen