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Now I actually start to worry. Did anybody here ever have the problem of making people happy with a software project? The usual complain goes like this "You ne
by erikb 11y ago
Now I actually start to worry. Did anybody here ever have the problem of making people happy with a software project?
The usual complain goes like this "You need to do X because I want to be able to do Y." In the complainers mind there is the untested idea that having X will enable him to do Y which solves his unspoken problem Z that he isn't even aware off. The thing is, at this time you don't know Z. You don't know if Y is really solving Z. And you don't know if X is really solving Y. And neither does he. But if you want him to use your tools he doesn't need to worry about that as much as you.
What happens if you just go like "Okay, user wants X, here is X!" is that the users will continue to complain (maybe even more) because Z is still not solved, and because there was no testing and planning involved X is actually creating another problem Z2 that nobody had before. At least that's my experience with an open source project I managed for about 3 years.
What I found actually needs to happen is to discover Z and to discover a way to solve it in the context of the project (which other people may not be as aware of as you are), and with an at least minimized chance of creating more problems. Then this actual solution needs to be sold to the users, because they are not aware of Z, so they think they don't care that you solved Z. But only after doing all that people will stop complaining (not even remembering that there was a problem and how much pain you went through to solve it of course).
Hope that makes sense and explains why I start to worry now, when everybody starts cheering. What I hoped would happen is that you don't hear much about the suggested changes, some other changes happen a few weeks down the road, and then the complains stops without anybody noticing. A success would be that you don't read about github anymore after 1-2 months. People cheering and github saying "Hey we did X" is a really bad thing.
- james-skemp 11y agoI'm confused, probably because of too much variable usage in your comment. If one or more of the variables were GitHub, or issue templates, then: Don't be concerned. The user community listed grievances with some missing functionality. GitHub listened and implemented some. In this case without changing functionality for people who didn't want this. (So the person who likes the URL method can stick with that.) Good on GitHub implementing something to help their users. Isn't that what we want? Or do you want then to ignore their community?
- erikb 11y agoThey implemented the wrong thing though. And now you ask "What's the right thing?" to which I will say "Nobody knows yet" X = proposed solution by users, Y = guessed problem by users, Z = actual problem nobody knows about yet. The proposed solution is only maybe a solution to the proposed problem, probably not. Because users won't go and try things out and then come to you and tell you what they found out. They have a feeling in their stomach and they tell you about it. The same goes for the problem they tell you about. It's maybe not their real problem but a symptom of another problem. You need to go and solve the actual problem. Example: Patient (=user) goes to doctor (=github) and says "I have a headache (=Y), please give me some pills against headaches (=X)". Well, headaches can be because of lack of sleep, lack of water, too many worries, an infection, or maybe even cancer. Now the doctor's job is to figure out which of the actual problems it is. He talks to the user, does some analysis and figures out the actual problem is lack of water (=Z!!!). He tells the patient to drink more water (solving Z, Y is indirectly solved, and no word about X). Patient goes home, drinks more, is happy, doesn't come back to the doctor.