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List:       kde-usability
Subject:    Re: bikeshedding by a list veteran
From:       Janne Ojaniemi <janne.ojaniemi () nbl ! fi>
Date:       2006-03-18 11:22:08
Message-ID: 200603181322.08262.janne.ojaniemi () nbl ! fi
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On Saturday 18 March 2006 02:04, Aaron J. Seigo wrote:
> On Friday 17 March 2006 16:07, Janne Ojaniemi wrote:
> > openusability. And there are others that want to discuss some things that
> > are a bit more "vague" ("How could we make this thing easier? What is the
> > rationale behind this thing? What do you think of this idea?"). And those
> > have usually been taking place in kde-artists.org (or some other place),
>
> to be honest, the noise/signal ratio at kde-artists.org was not great.
> well, it was actually pretty bad =/

I think that there was a real problem in k-a.o. It was that the forums were 
divided in to too many pieces. You could never really be 100% sure that did 
some particular suggestion belong to some particular forum. And then when we 
did have discussion going, they were quite often split up in to different 
parts of the forums, because some parts of the discussion moved in to other 
direction. All in all, it made the discussions a bit splintered.

But as to what you said.... Of course there were messages there that didn't 
really go anywhere. And those messages got soon pushed down the pile, whereas 
the active discussions stayed on top.

Of course it could be debated that does an "active" discussion mean that it's 
actually worthwhile discussion, or that is it just "noise". Of course we 
can't have discussions that are 100% gold, there will always be some noise. 
But I think that many of the discussions in k-a.o were pretty good, and 
people came up with great ideas. Of course there were some bad ideas as well 
(IMO), but the point was that people were actually thinking about things, 
instead of just passively sitting there and waiting what might happen. People 
were "activated" so to speak. Active users are more likely to turn in to 
actual members of the project. If they are nothing but passive users of the 
software, they will never contribute anything back. Never. By having websites 
like k-a.o, we are actively activating those users. We are turning them from 
passive users in to active users. And active users are a lot more likely to 
actually help the project. And I'm not talking about making pointless 
"suggestion" in kde-usability, I'm talking about things like bug-reporting or 
joining some part of the projects (developers, documenters, yes, even the 
usability-team if they have what it takes). But passive user is NOT going to 
sit there and suddenly decide "You know, I'm going to join the 
translation-team". An Active users might do just that. And that is why we 
need those places of discussion, even if those discussions have lots of 
noise.

> there's certainly room for discussing how to make individual things or even
> discuss the desktop holistically, but those discussions need to be kept
> purpose driven with commitment by those discussing them to keep the content
> factual and based on real usability purposes, be able to draw lines between
> and see the interactions between "visuals" and "usability" and actually
> work to making things a reality.

And people were doing just that, in their own way. And still, I can't really 
see what's so bad in having a bit less "formal" discussion about things. I 
think that it's absolutely fantastic that KDE has users that spend their time 
brainstorming about KDE and discussing it. But now we are being told that we 
are "discussing it wrong"? Huh?

> those kinds of focused discussions are quite valuable. it's the random
> "hey! i've got a concept! let me share it and 3 other ideas that occurred
> to me this afternoon!" threads that degrade things dramatically.

Again: I do not really see how KDE is harmed from having bunch of people 
sharing ideas and concepts in some website. You CAN say that KDE is harmed if 
one of the primary tools of working on usability-issues (this list) is 
swamped by random people making random suggestions. You would have a point 
there, and that is why we are discussing the future of this list right now. 
But I don't know how kde-artists.org (or some other website) relates to this 
at all. Or are we to have a march through the internet, check how people are 
discussing KDE in various places and tell them "you are discussing this 
wrong. you need to do it like this instead"?

I don't really see how things "degraded" in k-a.o. There were lots of 
interesting discussions there. And there were discussions that went nowhere. 
Maybe those kick-ass discussions didn't lead to any earth-shattering changes 
to KDE (I don't know to be honest), but I do not know how KDE could be HARMED 
by such discussions. If anything, those discussions made people feel like 
they were a part of a community, and that was a GOOD THING.

> hm... an analogy that just struck me: rock climbing. some people like to go
> out a couple times a month during the warmer seasons and scale some
> outcrops; then there are people who mount up serious expeditions to the
> tops of tall mountains that take determination and great skill. both due it
> out of passion and for "fun" but there's a very different set of
> commitments and expertise involved. imagine if one of the weekender cliff
> scalers decided to tag along with a group arranging a trek up a world-class
> slope. sometimes this list feels a bit like that.

And that is why we are discussing this list right now. But you could also say 
that k-a.o (or some other website) is that rockface those weekenders are 
climbing, whereas this list is Mount Everest. And the people climbing the 
Everest are not held back even if there are some people scaling rockfaces on 
weekends.

Now that we have been discussing this list, I agree that things need to 
change, as far as this list is concerned. I'm all for it. That said, I think 
that there is a need for websites like k-a.o. Maybe they wont give KDE huge 
and immediate benefits (although I think that they can help KDE 
substantially). What they can do is to serve as a place where people can feel 
like they are part of a community. This list is meant for hard-core 
usability-discussion. And I'm fine by that. But that also means that 95% of 
users and their opinions are not fitting for this list. So where should they 
go? Asking them to be silent is not a good thing, it alienates them. 
bugs.kde.org is not ideal IMO. It has that "official" stamp on it, it's not a 
place for bunch of users to discuss things, it's meant for bug-reporting. If 
we start using it for "discussions", 6 months from now we would have 
developers complaining that b.k.o is getting swamped by idle gossip that 
doesn't benefit KDE at all.
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