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> That's the "don't listen to real people. Imagine people instead" defense. It's not a defense. I'm invalidating the argument that the vocal users are always r

by rlpb 6y ago

> That's the "don't listen to real people. Imagine people instead" defense. It's not a defense. I'm invalidating the argument that the vocal users are always right. I'm not claiming that this automatically means that what the project owners think instead is correct. Figuring out how best to make everyone happy is more complicated than this. Claiming it is simple ("just listen to the vocal users!") is a fallacy.

kristopolous 6y ago
It really depends. If you're running a passion project where you depend on the dedication and commitment of others to move the project forward, heeding to the vocal users is integral to a successful strategy. Outside of that case it's also really hard to say. I think the best advice I can give are "vocal users who aren't crazy" with all of those words doing magical handwaving and lifting. For instance, certain features have a lot of vocal normal, reasonable users but seem to be ignored. On youtube, disabling the "recommended for you" videos. On facebook, whenever you have a capital letter, an annoying name selector popup happens. There's essentially armies of complaints for an option to disable it, make it only @ etc ... all ignored. Another example is Firefox's ctrl+q issue (finally addressed) or the GTK-3 file selector. There's plenty of things where there's a substantial number of vocal non-crazy users requesting reasonable things And there's a very popular philosophy that strongly advocates for completely ignoring them. I mean open source is partially about addressing the tyranny of decision in closed source. Not through combative forks and team splitting but through open community dialog. Some of these larger projects seem to lift their projects away from that, probably to avoid the aforementioned wackos who overreach their welcome. There's really better amelioration than justifying the restriction of the many by the trespass of the few.

by rlpb 6y ago

kristopolous 6y ago

It really depends. If you're running a passion project where you depend on the dedication and commitment of others to move the project forward, heeding to the vocal users is integral to a successful strategy. Outside of that case it's also really hard to say. I think the best advice I can give are "vocal users who aren't crazy" with all of those words doing magical handwaving and lifting. For instance, certain features have a lot of vocal normal, reasonable users but seem to be ignored. On youtube, disabling the "recommended for you" videos. On facebook, whenever you have a capital letter, an annoying name selector popup happens. There's essentially armies of complaints for an option to disable it, make it only @ etc ... all ignored. Another example is Firefox's ctrl+q issue (finally addressed) or the GTK-3 file selector. There's plenty of things where there's a substantial number of vocal non-crazy users requesting reasonable things And there's a very popular philosophy that strongly advocates for completely ignoring them. I mean open source is partially about addressing the tyranny of decision in closed source. Not through combative forks and team splitting but through open community dialog. Some of these larger projects seem to lift their projects away from that, probably to avoid the aforementioned wackos who overreach their welcome. There's really better amelioration than justifying the restriction of the many by the trespass of the few.