Re: [Usability] Call for vote: Nautilus use Browser view for fedora 11

["natan yellin" <aantny gmail com>]

I'm just one user, and I haven't read the entire forum thread that was mentioned, but I think I can represent every Gnome user I know when I say that opening new windows is confusing and annoying. If people feel strongly about opening new windows then they can change their own personal settings. It doesn't makes sense to force a feature onto a majority that is confused by it.

That said, there's really no need to attack anyone or give names. I highly doubt that anyone has been intentionally ignoring the community's opinion, and making accusations will not help your cause.

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 8:02 PM, Mark <markg85 gmail com> wrote:

On Sat, Dec 20, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Jeff Spaleta <jspaleta gmail com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 19, 2008 at 9:10 PM, Dimi Paun <dimi lattica com> wrote:
>> So what do we get for asking that we see this changed?
>>  - snide remarks
>
> In this thread..ive seen snide comments from multiple parties on both
> sides.  I've seen a round in the cycle of existing hostilities.  There
> are no saints here, we are all sinners.  Keeping score of the assumed
> intent of the multitude of emotional comments on one side or the other
> is futile and serves no useful purpose. If you are keeping score of
> snide comments, then you've already given up on a constructive
> discussion.  You have to be able to give everyone the benefit of the
> doubt as to intent. The medium of email is excruciatingly poor at
> communicating irrational emotive discourse. The subtle nuances of body
> language, or vocal and facial ques which regulate the flow of face to
> face conversations are not there to help us read intent with any
> accuracy whatsoever.
>
>>  - we are ask to produce numbers nobody can produce
>
> In this thread, I have not seen the decision makers ask that numbers
> be produced. I see numbers being produced by people to sustain their
> own arguments and getting upset that other are critical of the
> numbers.  The numbers are a false premise, they shouldn't be debated,
> they should be summarily ignored. To debate them gives credibility to
> the idea that accurate numbers are going to impact the design, and no
> one has come forward and promised that in this thread..
>
>>  - we are sent on wild goose chances "upstream" when this
>>    is a packages maintained by RH.
>
> Yes this has happened in this thread. I have in fact done this myself
> before and I still stand by it.  If this change is going to be made is
> going to be made as part of an upstream discussion around the design
> goals of the default GNOME experience, a discussion broader in scope
> than this one change.
>
> I think the proponents of change do a disservice to their chosen cause
> in choosing the argumentation they have so far.  Trying to coerce a
> change by hammering away with the blunt instruments of populism.  It's
> not going to work. Coercion is the wrong method and populist arguments
> are the wrong tool.  You have to persuade the decision-makers, and to
> do that you have to understand how they prioritize and think.   The
> art of persuasion is a subtle science. It's brain surgery, not to be
> performed with the hammer or rhetoric or with the pitchforks and
> torches  of populist appeal.   You have to crawl inside the heads of
> the people whose minds you are looking to change, and think like them.
>
>> But hey, these things happen, we can work around them. What's not cool
>> is the attitude that it's OK to diss the users. That just sucks the
>> fun out of being part of Fedora.
>
> I think you are reading way to much into the responses of a a very
> long and very heated discussion which this thread is but one chapter.
> The exact same sort of thing could be said about it being uncool to
> diss developers.  There have certainty been posts in this thread which
> could be read as dissing developers.  I think we can all agree that
> its uncool to diss people generally.  I'll go further and say that
> most people are going to screw up and when things get heated are going
> to choose words poorly and end up writing something that is laced with
> too much emotion and will be interpreted as a personal slight or
> attack.  The real trick is figuring out how to make it possible to
> keep those mistakes from invoking another round of emotional responses
> in a self-perpetuating cycle of over-reaction.
>
> -jef

Oke, first thing first.
I subscribed to the gnome usability list and added that. this mail is
being send to them as well so therefore i include my original message.

My original message:
On Thu, Dec 18, 2008 at 9:56 PM, Mark <markg85 gmail com> wrote:
> Hey,
>
> The question is simple:
> Lets use the browser view of nautilus in the next fedora release.
>
> Motivation:
> A new window for each folder that i open is so painful!!
> 1. My taskbar fills up in notime each time i open a new folder
> 2. New features of nautilus: tabbed browsing! completely useless if
> your not using the browser mode
> 3. Tabbed browsing (files/folders or web) is "hot" these days
> 4. It feels so.. old (windows 95? 3.11?)
> just to name a few
>
> Cross posted to the devel list because it's for the next fedora
> version (currently in development thus the devel list)
>
> Bug report: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=477052 (wow! i
> couldn't find an existing one for this! made one myself)
>
> So, lets vote:
>
> +1 from me
>
> I hope this can be done for Fedora 11 (it's just changing one gconf value).
> All vote plz
>
> Mark.
>

To the people reading the gnome usability list and see this for the
first time.. look here for the full discussion (about 150 posts):
http://fcp.surfsite.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=65669&viewmode=flat&order=ASC&start=0

Now to react on the memory and cpu stuff (heavy off topic but i want
to respond on that).
I don't give a damn that memory and cpu are cheap these days. does
that mean my memory needs to be full with junk and have a 100% cpu
load all the time? NO and NO! I want my pc to be fast and not to work
as a heater in my room.

Now on topic.
Lets do a little rounding up (conclusions how i see them! correct me
if i'm wrong on any of them)

1. Somewhere in 2003 or 2004 it is decided for whatever reason to make
the spatial mode in nautilus and put it as the default mode. To my
knowledge no research is done if people even wanted that. it just got
pushed through there throat and they are expected to just take it in
not spit it out. We are now (and a lot of users back then) spitting
that decision out and clear that bad taste. Nearly all gnome based
distributions do the same and the people using those distributions
seems to be happy about the browser mode.

2. I always was under the impression that gnome especially was a
democracy but it turns out it's under dictatorship and then call it:
"Meritocracy" with a dictator like taste.

3. Fedora has a community but when the community starts demanding
something (use the browser mode as default) then it turns out that the
actual fedora community, the ones that are helping to make fedora
"better", are just a hand full of people. the rest (like me) can be
easily put aside and be ignored. It would be good if Max Spevack or
Paul Frields would respond on this. So there we are.. yelling to
change something but just about 10 max 20 ppl are being listened to.
What i or any other community member says is simply being ignored. WE,
the community want this feature to change and i'm not going to be
silent about it! Also i HAD the idea that the fedora community was
democratic as well. They have votes in fesco with just 10!!!! people
but we can't have it here because it's "not representative" the fedora
community lead (those max 20 ppl) is just a dictatorship group. As
long as the community thinks the same as them there is no issue. But
when we think different we see the true fedora community leadership
aka dictatorship.

4. There is just ONE person here that decided to make it spatial and
that one person can't be convinced (Alexander Larson). Just look at
the replys here of the ppl that  want the browser mode and the people
that want the spatial mode. browser mode is heavily in favor here! And
coming with good arguments to "convince" Mr. Larson that his idea is
flawed and browser mode should be the default is useless because he
kinda made it! and he, of cause, believes in his own (broken)
invention. He, Alexander Larson, added the "always_use_browser" in
gconf and turned it to false by default! By turning it to false he,
since gnome 2.6 now, has enabled the spatial mode for all of us. It IS
a flawed desicion which perhaps wasn't obvious back then in 2004 but
is more then clear now in 2008 nearly 2009.

5. I was about to open a bug report on gnome for this now but it turns
out there is one already:
http://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=427628

6. Convincing people.. yea possible but is FOUR (yes 4!) FREAKING
YEARS not proof enough that there decision was wrong. If that doesn't
convince them, again mainly or even only Alexander Larson, then they
can simply not be convinced in this subject.

7. This is a conclusion again about the community. A few months ago
Max Spevack came to my school to hold a presentation about linux,
redhat and fedora and open source in general. He also told some things
about the community and how they got things done that otherwise
wouldn't have been done or a lot later. At that time i already knew
that the fedora community was going in the wrong direction. Everything
they did just didn't seem to lead anywhere. the result of that was the
extremely buggy Fedora 9 release which was another few months before
Max came to my school. So for me the community was going in the wrong
direction. Now it all becomes much clearer to me because now i know
that there is no big community at all! there might be in numbers but
that's it. nice for marketing talk. the actual community is just about
20 ppl from what i can see and they do NOT listen to the others
(thousands?) i'm not quite sure if max said something like 1100
community members or 11000...

A very good example of the bad community direction is, to name someone
again, Rahul. He always points you to your mistakes (fine in a way)
but never adds (not in my experience) something constructive or
helpful.... always a link to a wiki of somekind.

And for this entire issue where i made this thread for in the first
place. Don't expect me to be silent now. I will be vocal about this.
fedora has a "freedom" sign in it's logo so make that a reality!
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-Natan