4 ms·

I accept your criticism but I still find your comment to be unconvincing, if you have reason to believe some statistics (such as 5% users) are faked, then it wo

by md8z 5y ago

I accept your criticism but I still find your comment to be unconvincing, if you have reason to believe some statistics (such as 5% users) are faked, then it would be helpful to show: 1. Evidence of that 2. Other more accurate statistics that do show it affects more than 5% of users 3. An explanation as to why 5% is a meaningful threshold. Why shouldn't it be lower? Higher? 4. Suggestions on how to reduce workload if it's too much work or it's too hard Or any other data that you think could back up the conclusion. I understand that this is not easy to do. But if it's not done, then it will continue to be a battle of egos as you describe, and that's not helpful. You don't have to stop complaining but in my experience it pays off to always improve your complaints and make sure they're done in a fully convincing manner. It also helps to avoid insults and personal comments about others, those just distract from the issue. It pays to make sure your complaints are as fact-based as possible. In a big project the original person who made the decision may not even be there anymore, so it's really everyone else that you need to convince. Edit: And please don't just show them to me, show them to the stakeholders who matter and can get things done. I may think some of your info is interesting but that's about as much as I can do, I am not the person you need to be convincing and neither are other random commenters on social media. I get that it's fun to rant on social media but the real hard work doesn't happen there.

simion314 5y ago
OK, so when someone says we removed X feature, or you should do X like we want because is OUR vision, then I think I do not need to bring evidence that this is EGO based and not fact based. About the percentage based excuses, there are several issues: 1 this big ego projects never shown the statistics/telemetry data so I can't prove them wrong since I am not the one that has the data. 2 it is easy to lie with statistics (or studies) so you need to keep an open mind when the source of the statistics is the big ego person and this statistic is supporting his point. 3 I bet that Chrome dev tools are used by less then 5% of users but you don't see the big ego dude removing those super complex features and moved them into a dev version of Chrome only. Why is a super small option super important for this designer person but this super complex and scary and not cool looking feature is there in the menus for a random clueless users to open? The stats are only used when the dude wants to impose his vision. Complaining is important, see Apple new laptop changes, the big ego designers forgot to do actual UX and test with real users/customers and that costed Apple a lot of time. I understand that for open source project I can't apply same demands for good UX research with real users but GNOME has the money from RedHat and it's toxic community forced it as default on distros over DEs with actual real UX research. Conclusion, I as a simple user that just tested Chromium I can't open a ticket and put in it real world data to maybe convince the big ego dudes that are wrong, I can at most put a me too there and get ignored for decades like the File Picker GNOME meme issue, and I will probably get spammed each time an upset user will add it's me too comment and the developers repeat again "you are using it wrong". But I use Chromium/Chrome as minimum as needed, I avoid GNOME and the entire Linux community social media , just the comment I responded was complaining about X and Y browser and I added the Z browser there too to complete the list, and I was salty sicne the solution is to install some "chrome extension" to fix it - it reminds me of the install a GNOME extension excuse too.
- md8z 5y ago
  Sorry, I'm not saying that what they're saying isn't ego-based. I really don't know because I wasn't there for the conversation. What I'm saying is, the only way you can shift it from being ego-based to being fact-based is to present those facts that show the right way, or at least find a way to change the conversation into being headed in that direction. Just calling out ego-based behavior isn't enough. To me this has applied to every professional situation, it's how to keep any meeting on-track and avoid having coworkers getting into fights about egos. If you don't have the data then it's going to be hard to make a convincing argument, I don't know a good solution to this unfortunately. It requires real work and you may have to get creative. At a big company often the most convincing argument you can make is that a decision will save X amount of dollars, so you can start from there. For a volunteer open source project you will have to find out what else really motivates the developers and then go from there. Apple I think is a good example. It only mattered to Apple when it cost them a non-significant amount of resources. Ultimately they are a company and they respond to profit, if people buy or don't buy the product then that's the strongest fact that will influence them. Also I think it is a misconception that GNOME has a lot of money from Red Hat. They don't really from what I've seen, most of the Red Hat people I know are pretty strapped for time. I also have no idea what you mean by forced it as default. Distros don't have to choose it, I've seen many distros that choose other things or just don't have a default. If you mean things like Ubuntu, IIRC they chose to retire Unity and go with GNOME because Unity wasn't profitable for them. So with companies it always comes back to that... I also don't really think it is useful to call out people for imposing their vision. On a certain level, everyone who builds things is doing that. They have their point of view and that's the only thing they can express, because well, what else would they express? If they expressed your point of view all the time, then they wouldn't be themselves, they would be you. It's possible to change someone else's vision but that's usually done by presenting new information, i.e. convincing facts.
  - simion314 5y ago
    - GNOME forced on people, the things that come to mind was pushing of tech like Wayland that makes it hard for little DEs. As for the default I remember clearly a giant anti_unity mob , there were some big Youtube channels giving Ubuntu and Linux a chance and the GNOME fanboys popped up in chat and convinced the dudes to purge Unity and install GNOME, this was idiotic because it was not a correct procedure so they created a broken Ubuntu and gave Linux a bad image. About the "vision" comment, at my work there is always a support team, they get feedback from users and we never give a response "it is our designer vision or our dev leader vision that things are like this". The differences are that 1 we care for each and even one of our users so we never say "go use our competitors because we don't care about your problem" 2 we do not have a big birocracy or a tyrant with a big vision, so we can think for ourselves, propose solutions and implement them. Sure it happen that later the designers demand we simplify the GUI but we know that each complex feature is still used by some power users and w propose ways to keep it in, but more hidden so designers don't complain. Maybe GNOME does not have enough money for their big ambitions but they have a lot more then other DEs. My summary would be, vision is fine in your hobby toy project, GNOME, Chrome, Apple's OSX are not toys, if you do a radical change only based on a dudes vision IMO you are doing it wrong, you forgot about the users and are only thinking at your ego/CV.

by md8z 5y ago

simion314 5y ago

OK, so when someone says we removed X feature, or you should do X like we want because is OUR vision, then I think I do not need to bring evidence that this is EGO based and not fact based. About the percentage based excuses, there are several issues: 1 this big ego projects never shown the statistics/telemetry data so I can't prove them wrong since I am not the one that has the data. 2 it is easy to lie with statistics (or studies) so you need to keep an open mind when the source of the statistics is the big ego person and this statistic is supporting his point. 3 I bet that Chrome dev tools are used by less then 5% of users but you don't see the big ego dude removing those super complex features and moved them into a dev version of Chrome only. Why is a super small option super important for this designer person but this super complex and scary and not cool looking feature is there in the menus for a random clueless users to open? The stats are only used when the dude wants to impose his vision. Complaining is important, see Apple new laptop changes, the big ego designers forgot to do actual UX and test with real users/customers and that costed Apple a lot of time. I understand that for open source project I can't apply same demands for good UX research with real users but GNOME has the money from RedHat and it's toxic community forced it as default on distros over DEs with actual real UX research. Conclusion, I as a simple user that just tested Chromium I can't open a ticket and put in it real world data to maybe convince the big ego dudes that are wrong, I can at most put a me too there and get ignored for decades like the File Picker GNOME meme issue, and I will probably get spammed each time an upset user will add it's me too comment and the developers repeat again "you are using it wrong". But I use Chromium/Chrome as minimum as needed, I avoid GNOME and the entire Linux community social media , just the comment I responded was complaining about X and Y browser and I added the Z browser there too to complete the list, and I was salty sicne the solution is to install some "chrome extension" to fix it - it reminds me of the install a GNOME extension excuse too.

md8z 5y ago
Sorry, I'm not saying that what they're saying isn't ego-based. I really don't know because I wasn't there for the conversation. What I'm saying is, the only way you can shift it from being ego-based to being fact-based is to present those facts that show the right way, or at least find a way to change the conversation into being headed in that direction. Just calling out ego-based behavior isn't enough. To me this has applied to every professional situation, it's how to keep any meeting on-track and avoid having coworkers getting into fights about egos. If you don't have the data then it's going to be hard to make a convincing argument, I don't know a good solution to this unfortunately. It requires real work and you may have to get creative. At a big company often the most convincing argument you can make is that a decision will save X amount of dollars, so you can start from there. For a volunteer open source project you will have to find out what else really motivates the developers and then go from there. Apple I think is a good example. It only mattered to Apple when it cost them a non-significant amount of resources. Ultimately they are a company and they respond to profit, if people buy or don't buy the product then that's the strongest fact that will influence them. Also I think it is a misconception that GNOME has a lot of money from Red Hat. They don't really from what I've seen, most of the Red Hat people I know are pretty strapped for time. I also have no idea what you mean by forced it as default. Distros don't have to choose it, I've seen many distros that choose other things or just don't have a default. If you mean things like Ubuntu, IIRC they chose to retire Unity and go with GNOME because Unity wasn't profitable for them. So with companies it always comes back to that... I also don't really think it is useful to call out people for imposing their vision. On a certain level, everyone who builds things is doing that. They have their point of view and that's the only thing they can express, because well, what else would they express? If they expressed your point of view all the time, then they wouldn't be themselves, they would be you. It's possible to change someone else's vision but that's usually done by presenting new information, i.e. convincing facts.
- simion314 5y ago
  - GNOME forced on people, the things that come to mind was pushing of tech like Wayland that makes it hard for little DEs. As for the default I remember clearly a giant anti_unity mob , there were some big Youtube channels giving Ubuntu and Linux a chance and the GNOME fanboys popped up in chat and convinced the dudes to purge Unity and install GNOME, this was idiotic because it was not a correct procedure so they created a broken Ubuntu and gave Linux a bad image. About the "vision" comment, at my work there is always a support team, they get feedback from users and we never give a response "it is our designer vision or our dev leader vision that things are like this". The differences are that 1 we care for each and even one of our users so we never say "go use our competitors because we don't care about your problem" 2 we do not have a big birocracy or a tyrant with a big vision, so we can think for ourselves, propose solutions and implement them. Sure it happen that later the designers demand we simplify the GUI but we know that each complex feature is still used by some power users and w propose ways to keep it in, but more hidden so designers don't complain. Maybe GNOME does not have enough money for their big ambitions but they have a lot more then other DEs. My summary would be, vision is fine in your hobby toy project, GNOME, Chrome, Apple's OSX are not toys, if you do a radical change only based on a dudes vision IMO you are doing it wrong, you forgot about the users and are only thinking at your ego/CV.