4 ms·

People in the comments are claiming it is "Feedback". How many of you would critique that presentation that way (like in the comments) to the designers in perso

People in the comments are claiming it is "Feedback". How many of you would critique that presentation that way (like in the comments) to the designers in person? There is a whole world of difference between: "Hey, did you consider this and that." and "What you have done is rubbish. You did not think" For heavens sake the presentation ended with "And here we stop. But, hopefully, the discussion begins." http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/ http://www.wikipediaredefined.com/ If it was that bad, then you do not upvote it. if it was good enough for a discussion (upvote), then discuss politely. Not once in the comments did I see an alternative suggestion. even it it was entirely different from what was proposed. It was all condemnation. At least we can agree Wikipedia can be improved, they made a suggestion. If you cannot constructively improve on what was proposed, then you can avoid polluting it. Or better still propose your own suggestion.

simias 14y ago
"How many of you would critique that presentation that way (like in the comments) to the designers in person?" All other things equal I think internet interactions are "weaker" and carry less weight that regular in-person interactions. If I come to your desk and say "good job" or "I think what you did is terribly lame", I'm sure it won't have the same impact that if I wrote it as a comment in some website. I think that's why internet interactions tend to be more polarizing. So I don't think your question is appropriate. Besides, for many articles linked on HN we don't know whether the creators are ever going to read our comments. I might be a little more gentle and diplomat in a "Show HN" post than in a regular "look what I found in the internet" post.
- mhluongo 14y ago
  But all other things aren't equal- this is HN, not the rest of the internet. I think one of the draws of the HN community is that interactions often carry more weight than your typical comment section on a blog.
samdk 14y ago
If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad as that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign is rubbish and it very clearly was done without thinking about what was important, and nobody benefits by pretending that's not true. As a designer, you should not be offended by people telling you things you've made don't work, so long as they're providing reasons. Those people are doing you a favor. You cannot remain emotionally attached to your own work and be a good designer. It is far easier to work with people who are direct and harsh than the people who dance around the matter. You can never trust anything the latter group of people tell you, and so you end up wasting a tremendous amount of time because you have no idea what they actually want because they refuse to actually tell you. (That said, there is a world of difference between "that is rubbish, you did not think" and "that is rubbish because you did not think about things X, Y and Z". The first is useless, the second is helpful.) -- Your idea that people must offer alternate suggestions before criticism is ridiculous. If you present your redesign idea to the public and it's terrible, the correct response is "that's not very good, go back and try again", not "that's not very good, therefore I will spend the months required to come up with a non-awful alternative before commenting".
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- ShellfishMeme 14y ago
  > If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad as that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign is rubbish and it very clearly was done without thinking about what was important, and nobody benefits by pretending that's not true. As a designer, you should not be offended by people telling you things you've made don't work, so long as they're providing reasons. Those people are doing you a favor. You cannot remain emotionally attached to your own work and be a good designer. I think that's a terrible and even dangerous attitude - especially when done in public - for several reasons. Firstly, if you heavily criticize something when many people are watching, it might keep you from receiving balanced feedback. Some people probably liked some of the aspects of the redesign, but with dozens of people in the thread saying how awful it was, they will rather not speak up and talk about what they liked. If you tell a mass of people "X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid", and some more people join in, the others will probably assume they are idiots for liking it and say nothing. As an analogy: When I was younger I really liked a girl in my class but all my friends were going on about how ugly and weird she was, probably because of some kind of social feedback loop. So instead of telling her that I liked her, I started joining in with the "X is stupid" meme because I didn't want to look like a fool in front of my friends. Had they not talked about it in such an extreme way, things might have went differently, but because of the situation, I lost all my courage to admit it to her and my friends. Secondly, if you mix valid criticism with being a dick about it, people will more likely think that your criticism is less valid since it's easier to just assume you are an asshole. Most people are emotionally attached to their work. If they weren't, their work would probably suck. They'll learn how to handle criticism, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt or demotivate them if you tell them it's rubbish. Thirdly, there is absolutely no need to ever mention that it's rubbish or awful. All you need to do is to list the points where they failed and maybe give advice on how to improve it. Calling their work rubbish helps nobody and makes you feel smarter and more powerful than you actually are. If you treat people like this, their work will become worse, not better, and at the same time they will probably stop asking you for advice because you can't stop being a dick about it instead of just encouraging them to improve on what they did by giving valid advice. People aren't just machines that you can tell "this is all awful, throw it away and start over" without hurting their feelings in at least some way. You should learn to use these emotions to steer them in the right direction, not condemn them and call people who express them unprofessional. You'll get a lot further by nicely packaging your criticism.
panacea 14y ago
According to the authors of that terrible design, they spent two months on it. "Not once in the comments did I see an alternative suggestion." The onus isn't on us to spend two months coming up with an alternative suggestion, when we can clearly compare the existing design with their proposal. If I'd personally spent two months trying to re-invisage Wikipedia, I would certainly have brought that up.
snowwrestler 14y ago
A lot of the heat in the critiques comes from the fact that it is not a real redesign project. If that firm had actually been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation, or even better, actually engaged with the volunteer leadership to work on implementable design improvements, you would not see such anger. But the firm did not do that, which gives the "project" the hallmarks of a pure PR exercise for the firm (which is what it obviously is). The reason this matters is that design is very hard to do because of the real constraints that must be met, in terms of existing technology, limited budget, limited time, internal politics, etc. Pretending constraints don't exist can offend people who spend a lot of their (frustrating, hard working) time actually dealing with them.
vilhelm_s 14y ago
But a post on hacker news is not a comment to the designers in person. Compare with book or movie reviews published in newspapers. They frequently give very harsh and sarcastic criticism, and this is considered fair game. The standards of politeness for face-to-face conversations and public commentary are different.
chc 14y ago
> If it was that bad, then you do not upvote it. if it was good enough for a discussion (upvote), then discuss politely. Why can only goodness be cause for discussion? The top comment by tptacek actually goes into a lot of detail about what's wrong with this. That's useful discussion. It's not positive, but I thought his comment was very high-quality discussion, even if the tone was not positive and happy.
smonff 14y ago
Wikipedia don't need to be cool. It just need to be simple and clear. It don't need a better logo or anything. Wikipedia is content and people who are building it. You design is ok for a design brand or a contemporary art stuff but not for the worldwide encycopedia.

simias 14y ago

"How many of you would critique that presentation that way (like in the comments) to the designers in person?" All other things equal I think internet interactions are "weaker" and carry less weight that regular in-person interactions. If I come to your desk and say "good job" or "I think what you did is terribly lame", I'm sure it won't have the same impact that if I wrote it as a comment in some website. I think that's why internet interactions tend to be more polarizing. So I don't think your question is appropriate. Besides, for many articles linked on HN we don't know whether the creators are ever going to read our comments. I might be a little more gentle and diplomat in a "Show HN" post than in a regular "look what I found in the internet" post.

mhluongo 14y ago
But all other things aren't equal- this is HN, not the rest of the internet. I think one of the draws of the HN community is that interactions often carry more weight than your typical comment section on a blog.

samdk 14y ago

If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad as that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign is rubbish and it very clearly was done without thinking about what was important, and nobody benefits by pretending that's not true. As a designer, you should not be offended by people telling you things you've made don't work, so long as they're providing reasons. Those people are doing you a favor. You cannot remain emotionally attached to your own work and be a good designer. It is far easier to work with people who are direct and harsh than the people who dance around the matter. You can never trust anything the latter group of people tell you, and so you end up wasting a tremendous amount of time because you have no idea what they actually want because they refuse to actually tell you. (That said, there is a world of difference between "that is rubbish, you did not think" and "that is rubbish because you did not think about things X, Y and Z". The first is useless, the second is helpful.) -- Your idea that people must offer alternate suggestions before criticism is ridiculous. If you present your redesign idea to the public and it's terrible, the correct response is "that's not very good, go back and try again", not "that's not very good, therefore I will spend the months required to come up with a non-awful alternative before commenting".

deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
ShellfishMeme 14y ago
> If I am working with someone on a design and they bring me something as bad as that redesign, I'm going to tell them it's awful. That redesign is rubbish and it very clearly was done without thinking about what was important, and nobody benefits by pretending that's not true. As a designer, you should not be offended by people telling you things you've made don't work, so long as they're providing reasons. Those people are doing you a favor. You cannot remain emotionally attached to your own work and be a good designer. I think that's a terrible and even dangerous attitude - especially when done in public - for several reasons. Firstly, if you heavily criticize something when many people are watching, it might keep you from receiving balanced feedback. Some people probably liked some of the aspects of the redesign, but with dozens of people in the thread saying how awful it was, they will rather not speak up and talk about what they liked. If you tell a mass of people "X is rubbish and whoever came up with this is stupid", and some more people join in, the others will probably assume they are idiots for liking it and say nothing. As an analogy: When I was younger I really liked a girl in my class but all my friends were going on about how ugly and weird she was, probably because of some kind of social feedback loop. So instead of telling her that I liked her, I started joining in with the "X is stupid" meme because I didn't want to look like a fool in front of my friends. Had they not talked about it in such an extreme way, things might have went differently, but because of the situation, I lost all my courage to admit it to her and my friends. Secondly, if you mix valid criticism with being a dick about it, people will more likely think that your criticism is less valid since it's easier to just assume you are an asshole. Most people are emotionally attached to their work. If they weren't, their work would probably suck. They'll learn how to handle criticism, but that doesn't mean it won't hurt or demotivate them if you tell them it's rubbish. Thirdly, there is absolutely no need to ever mention that it's rubbish or awful. All you need to do is to list the points where they failed and maybe give advice on how to improve it. Calling their work rubbish helps nobody and makes you feel smarter and more powerful than you actually are. If you treat people like this, their work will become worse, not better, and at the same time they will probably stop asking you for advice because you can't stop being a dick about it instead of just encouraging them to improve on what they did by giving valid advice. People aren't just machines that you can tell "this is all awful, throw it away and start over" without hurting their feelings in at least some way. You should learn to use these emotions to steer them in the right direction, not condemn them and call people who express them unprofessional. You'll get a lot further by nicely packaging your criticism.

panacea 14y ago

According to the authors of that terrible design, they spent two months on it. "Not once in the comments did I see an alternative suggestion." The onus isn't on us to spend two months coming up with an alternative suggestion, when we can clearly compare the existing design with their proposal. If I'd personally spent two months trying to re-invisage Wikipedia, I would certainly have brought that up.

snowwrestler 14y ago

A lot of the heat in the critiques comes from the fact that it is not a real redesign project. If that firm had actually been hired by the Wikimedia Foundation, or even better, actually engaged with the volunteer leadership to work on implementable design improvements, you would not see such anger. But the firm did not do that, which gives the "project" the hallmarks of a pure PR exercise for the firm (which is what it obviously is). The reason this matters is that design is very hard to do because of the real constraints that must be met, in terms of existing technology, limited budget, limited time, internal politics, etc. Pretending constraints don't exist can offend people who spend a lot of their (frustrating, hard working) time actually dealing with them.

vilhelm_s 14y ago

But a post on hacker news is not a comment to the designers in person. Compare with book or movie reviews published in newspapers. They frequently give very harsh and sarcastic criticism, and this is considered fair game. The standards of politeness for face-to-face conversations and public commentary are different.

chc 14y ago

> If it was that bad, then you do not upvote it. if it was good enough for a discussion (upvote), then discuss politely. Why can only goodness be cause for discussion? The top comment by tptacek actually goes into a lot of detail about what's wrong with this. That's useful discussion. It's not positive, but I thought his comment was very high-quality discussion, even if the tone was not positive and happy.

smonff 14y ago

Wikipedia don't need to be cool. It just need to be simple and clear. It don't need a better logo or anything. Wikipedia is content and people who are building it. You design is ok for a design brand or a contemporary art stuff but not for the worldwide encycopedia.