Re: [Usability] Is this a closed list?

[David Moles <david moles vykor com>]

On Fri, 2002-02-22 at 11:17, jonathan lupo wrote:
> All,
> 
> Respectfully, there seems to be active threads by a core group here.  I 
> joined this discussion list because I thought that it was a general 
> Usability forum.

It's for usability issues in the GNOME project. Sorry if you
misunderstood. 

I notice there's no description for the list on

  http://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo

Maybe someone should add one? I'm not even sure who the list
administrator is.

> Since my posts seem to be left unanswered, I guess I should post elsewhere.  
> I apologize for cluttering up your in-boxes.

There's a "core group" because they're the people that are actually
doing GNOME development with usability implications.

Speaking as someone who's definitely non-core by that definition, I
can say that I don't have the impression this is a closed list. 
However, people working on something specific aren't easy to distract
with something general (and we end-users should probably be grateful
for that).

And, among general topics, you may find you need to put some effort
into piquing people's interest -- "this site is useful" doesn't get
much attention by itself. There needs to be enough information to
make the reader think it's worthwhile to spend the time to check it
out.

For what it's worth, the "Bobby test" sounded vaguely intriguing,
but I didn't find anything about it on the w3.org site. And I'm
afraid most readers of this list aren't likely to check out a VB app
for text-to-speech -- some of them out of prejudice, but most of them
simply because this is a list about a Unix/Linux/GNU software project.
(Of the four machines I use on a regular basis, only one of them has
Windows [98] installed on it, and it generally only gets booted up
every couple of weeks for gaming.)

That said, if you're into usability and accessibility, then as a
GNOME user (and one who has a real bee in his bonnet about usability),
I'd say please stay on the list, and please give GNOME a try if you
haven't already. Free software offers a great opportunity to create
much more usable systems than the commercial vendors have, and 
unlike the commercial vendors will actually accept input from
individuals, if it's good input.

But you might want to lurk for a while, and concentrate on adding
value to ongoing discussions until you get into the swing of things.
It's no different from the real world -- you can't just walk into a
large room full of people talking about carrots and say "hey, guys,
zucchini!" and expect them to start talking about zucchini right
away.