4 ms·
While it's an amusing story, it feels like the analogue doesn't really work. In reality low value options are removed because few users use it. In the story opt
by jsnell 5y ago
While it's an amusing story, it feels like the analogue doesn't really work. In reality low value options are removed because few users use it. In the story options (keys) are being removed even when used by absolutely everybody, as long as the relative frequency of the key is low. That's a huge difference.
And of course you don't evaluate an experiment to remove an option like in the story, by looking at before/after rates on how often the option is triggered.
It's e.g. pretty clearly not what happened in the the Firefox encoding menu example that motivated the rant.
- clysm 5y ago> In reality low value options are removed because few users use it. Should accessibility options go away as well because few users use it? The underlying point (even if not conveyed through the best analogy) is that there are critical features that must exist regardless of what telemetry says.
- marginalia_nu 5y agoHonestly this was really just a low effort joke to vent my frustration, not intended to be fair or convincing. Anyway, the point is more subtle than that. Whether a feature is used is as much a function of the overall design as much as the feature's usefulness. If you hide a feature away or make it awkward to access, then it will see less use. Sometimes an infrequently used feature can aid a more frequently used feature to work more smoothly.