Re: Nautilus 2.6 - We're going all spatial

[Roberto Rosselli Del Turco <rosselli ling unipi it>]

Jens Knutson wrote:
> On Tue, 2003-09-16 at 02:27, Eugenia Loli-Queru wrote:
>
>
> > > 2) Almost anybody who's noisy is an enthusiast. You are assuming just
> > > because 1000 people complained this indicates that pretty much all your
> > > population loves navigation model.
> >
> > When this complain was happening (1999-2000), BeOS was in its hey day: it
> > had more than 150,000 users. Sure, it is not many compared to OSX's 7
> > millions of users, but it is a good and _clear_ sample of what the majority
> > wanted.
>
>
> No, it's what a sample of what the majority of *vocal* users wanted.  I
> think you're greatly over-estimating the number of users who participate
> in forums and email lists vs. the total number of users for a given
> desktop.  Again, see Seth's bit about "self-selection bias" - just
> because a user has an opinion about a piece of software doesn't mean
> you'll ever hear from that user.  Most computer users have no idea how
> to complain about or praise the software they use, and even if they did,
> they probably wouldn't know who to talk to!  Thus, it is really only
> fair to say "BeOS's *enthusiasts* hated this." and not "the majority of
> BeOS's *entire userbase* hated this."

OTOH, when a user is complaining or asking for a feature, there are an n
number that share his opinions but didn't have the time, inclination or
whatever to make them known to the public. This is a common assumption
when a magazine, for instance, receives a certain number of letters on a
given subject, they are considered representative of a much larger
number of readers.

So, what can be said for sure is that a non negligible part of BeOS
users weren't satisfied with the current version of the Tracker. I don't
see the point in trying to distinguish "enthusiasts" from "entire
userbase": a user is a user, and if a large percentage of users isn't
satisfied with your product you *should* take that into account (unless,
of course, you're writing your software for your pleasure only, in the
which case reaching a 100% satisfaction is quite easy).

Ciao

--

Roberto Rosselli Del Turco	roberto.rossellidelturco at unito.it
Dipartimento di Scienze		rosselli at ling.unipi.it
del Linguaggio			Then spoke the thunder	DA
Universita' di Torino		Datta: what have we given?  (TSE)

  Hige sceal the heardra,     heorte the cenre,
  mod sceal the mare,       the ure maegen litlath.  (Maldon 312-3)