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This is *not* (only) about prettynessThis is *not* (only) about prettynessPosted Mar 13, 2013 15:12 UTC (Wed) by duffy (guest, #31787)In reply to: This is *not* (only) about prettyness by Yenya Parent article: Duffy: Improving the Fedora boot experience
"All the others are minnor usability/polish problems, or even enhancement requetsts (#5 about brltty). And in my opinion it is not wise to trade enhancements (for some users) or even polish for something that is outright regression for other users."
In my opinion, refusing to support vision-impaired users who have Braille readers and casting off their concerns as an 'enhancement' is pretty cruel.
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This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 13, 2013 17:25 UTC (Wed) by Yenya (subscriber, #52846) [Link]
Well, my previous post did not use the best possible wording. There are two _independent_ claims which I have joined together more than was necessary, and which you have quoted:
1) #5 is an enhancement request
2) it is not wise to trade enhancement and polish requests for regressions for other users
I still think both are true despite your (unnecessary) notes about cruelty. What does matter is how many users (on both sides) are affected, and how severely are they affected.
For the #5 brltty issue, I have no problem with that, because it could probably be done with no affected users on the other side. It should even be possible to install the screenreader stuff (as a GRUB module?) to /boot only for users who need them.
Moreover, for the other problems - whether to see the GRUB menu or not, and whether to do three or two video mode switches during boot, the screenreader users are on "my" side - they would need to get the GRUB menu with sufficient timeout anyway, and the number of mode switches does not matter for them.
What does matter is, that solving the majority of the "Outright bugs" (in fact mostly polish issues) from the list in the original article can lead to inconveniencing users who do not mind one or two mode switches and a few seconds delay in the GRUB menu, but who do mind when they are unable to see what is currently going on in the system, because somebody has decided that it is not "pretty enough", and "might confuse the ordinary users". This is Apple-style approach to UNIX, and I have to say I am not very happy to see Fedora going this way.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 13, 2013 18:02 UTC (Wed) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]
"I am not very happy to see Fedora going this way."
I'm sorry you feel that way.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 13, 2013 18:48 UTC (Wed) by tpo (subscriber, #25713) [Link]
>> I am not very happy to see Fedora going this way."
> > I'm sorry you feel that way.
What's exactly the point of that reply? Is its purpose maybe to "win" the argument?
In case your goal is to find important problems and solutions to them then I'm under the impression that Yenya's contribution here has the potential for some useful insights.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 13, 2013 20:01 UTC (Wed) by jspaleta (subscriber, #50639) [Link]
I know this might be difficult for some of us in this community, because we have our "tact filters" installed backwards when we were built at the factor....
If this were a face-to-face conversation, and someone expressed disappointment with another person's decision making, the person receiving the complaint could easily be genuinely sorry that the decision made the other person unhappy and trying to express that. If you could see Mo's facial expression, body language and could hear the tone of her voice you could know whether or not this was meant as a genuine attempt to show either sympathy and/or empathy.
Text as a medium is very difficult when it comes to handling emotive language, or the things you humans call "feelings". It's very difficult to know for sure if the person making an emotive statement is doing so in a genuine fashion or is being patronizing or dismissive. Its just as easy to read both sides of the conversation as trollish regardless of either person's intent.
Unfortunately we tend to project our out state of mind when we read these sort of conversations. If we are angry or upset, we will read responses as if they were intended to be angry or upset. We don't of correlating tone and body language context to help us sort it out.
Be wary, and give everyone the benefit of the doubt with regard to emotional intent.
-jef
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 14, 2013 8:47 UTC (Thu) by Company (guest, #57006) [Link]
I don't agree with this. It's as hard in the real world as it is with text to figure out if somebody is being sarcastic or honest. Usually what we rely on is a bunch of unwritten rules for communication, and those exist for online communication just as they exist for face-to-face.
The only reason why you (and I) didn't read it as a passive-aggressive trolling comment was because we know the person who wrote the comment. Because it said "duffy" and not "slashdot".
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 14, 2013 15:22 UTC (Thu) by sebas (subscriber, #51660) [Link]
I disagree, and agree very much with Jef. We'll end up being in a pretty bad place if the default interpretation of something that can easily be interpreted as genuinely nice becomes sarcastic and dismissive.
I don't want to be in this place, it helps nobody.
I do want to be in a place where you can express being personally sorry when disagreeing over a technical issue without being mistaken for a sarcastic disk who just wants to pour some extra salt into the wound.
Being friendly is not a bad thing at all, in fact it's often missing in the discourse in Free software communities, and probably makes quite some people stay away, or leave, because they just don't possess the time and energy to put up with discouragement.
In KDE (and a few other communities I know of), this has even been codified in a code of conduct, read for example http://www.kde.org/code-of-conduct/ or, maybe more relevant here, Fedora's: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct (although the latter is not very clear on this assume-positive directive).
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 17, 2013 0:54 UTC (Sun) by duffy (guest, #31787) [Link]
"What's exactly the point of that reply? Is its purpose maybe to "win" the argument?"
No, I'm sorry that the project isn't going the direction you would have liked. It's disappointing and frustrating when you follow a project for a while and then it veers away from what you liked about it. That doesn't mean the project is doing anything wrong, just that for you personally it's not working out anymore. I'm sorry.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 17, 2013 11:34 UTC (Sun) by tpo (subscriber, #25713) [Link]
>> What's exactly the point of that reply? Is its purpose maybe to
>> "win" the argument? > > No, I'm sorry that the project isn't going the direction you would have > liked. It's disappointing and frustrating when you follow a project for a > while and then it veers away from what you liked about it. That doesn't > mean the project is doing anything wrong, just that for you personally > it's not working out anymore. I'm sorry.
Your reply answers the second question ("Is its purpose maybe to 'win' the argument?"), not however as far as I understand the first one.
I am assuming that designing an OS is foremost /not/ a question of personal likes or playing the psychosocial instruments of the community to advance one's agenda, ego or ideas.
Certainly, us all being human (apart from the dogs collaborating incognito on various projects), tastes and social mechanisms also need to be considered ("I'm sorry"), but they should be secondary and only means to the end of creating a system that is technically and objectively as good as possible [1][2].
That's my assumption of what Gnome and most fundamental and large open source projects are about.
So under the stated assumption, answering "No, I'm sorry that the project isn't going the direction you would have liked" to a person that is trying to point out in detail what's wrong from a technical and usecase standpoint about the direction that some software solution is taking does not make any sense to me.
It's like saying "No, I'm sorry that the project isn't going the direction you would have liked" to a colorblind person that is trying to explain, why choosing a red on green font is not a good choice for his use case.
Is my limited understanding preventing me to comprehend it all?
[1] Also, as shown by many benevolent dictators "taste" can be an effective mechanism of choice in the face of "unresolvable complexity".
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 17, 2013 17:33 UTC (Sun) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
> It's like saying "No, I'm sorry that the project isn't going the direction you would have liked" to a colorblind person that is trying to explain, why choosing a red on green font is not a good choice for his use case.
Oh come off it!
Look at the post again: http://lwn.net/Articles/542734/
It was in response to "I am not very happy to see Fedora going this way."
"I'm sorry the project isn't going the way you like" is a perfectly valid response to "The project isn't going the way I like". What other response do you expect? "Oh, OK, we'll change the project's direction to please one commenter on LWN?" Maybe the direction *should* change, but presumably it's been decided by Fedora contributors on Fedora lists for various good and bad reasons, changing it based on one commenter on a non-Fedora site, no matter how well reasoned the points, would be a strange way to run the project.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 17, 2013 20:10 UTC (Sun) by HelloWorld (guest, #56129) [Link]
> Maybe the direction *should* change, but presumably it's been decided by Fedora contributors on Fedora lists for various good and bad reasons, changing it based on one commenter on a non-Fedora site, no matter how well reasoned the points, would be a strange way to run the project.
Oh, so nowadays it doesn't matter whether a point makes sense but where and by whom the point was made? I'd call *that* a strange way to run a project.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 17, 2013 21:16 UTC (Sun) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
No. I didn't say it doesn't matter. I implied one person's opinion generally matters less than the combined opinions of all the other users and contributors who've participated in the project and the discussions that have already taken place. If that one person changes the rest of the project's opinion by well-reasoned arguments then by all means change the direction, but don't do it just because one person makes some good points somewhere on the web, which most of the contributors haven't read.
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 18, 2013 10:04 UTC (Mon) by nix (subscriber, #2304) [Link] "Oh, OK, we'll change the project's direction to please one commenter on LWN?"But of course! But only if the commenter is me. Have a sense of proportion here!
This is *not* (only) about prettyness Posted Mar 18, 2013 17:42 UTC (Mon) by jwakely (subscriber, #60262) [Link]
Yes, obviously, I assumed that went without saying!
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