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The thing is, people aren't pissed off. People made Craigslist a huge success. This article is like these "I've been doing LAMP for 2 years now. So, here's what

by nir 17y ago

The thing is, people aren't pissed off. People made Craigslist a huge success. This article is like these "I've been doing LAMP for 2 years now. So, here's what Google should do.." blog posts, except that Wired doesn't have the excuse of being young and naive.

jacoblyles 17y ago
Actually, the article mentions that people aren't pissed off and that Craigslist is a huge success: >>""I hear this all the time," Buckmaster says. "You guys are so primitive, you are like cavemen. Don't you have any sense of aesthetic? But the people I hear it from are invariably working for firms that want the job of redoing the site. In all the complaints and requests we get from users, this is never one of them. Time spent on the site, the number of people who post—we're the leader. It could be we're doing one or two things right." >>"The truth is that a lot of people complain about craigslist. Buckmaster is correct that few of them complain about the design. They complain about spam, they complain about fraud, they complain about the posting rules, they complain about the search, they complain about uploading images. They complain about every way a classified transaction can go wrong. They seldom complain about amazing new features they imagine they might possibly want to use, because they are too busy complaining about the simple features they depend on that don't work as well as they'd like. By eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, craigslist's programmers have cut out all the cushioning layers that separate them from the users they serve, and any right they have to teach lessons in public service comes from the odd situation of running a company that is directly subservient only to the public. "
- nir 17y ago
  Wired isn't ambiguous in the way it chooses to package this article: a title like "Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess" and an "Extreme Makeover" section showing how it should look like (at least one of the suggestions resides firmly in Designerland, where users upload nice little arty photos of their bikes, all in the correct size and never a goatse image..) As for the text itself, I'm still not sure if it's an intentional self-parody or whether Wired seriously claims CL is closed and distrustful for letting anyone post anonymously rather than requiring them to register and partake in some "networking features", or that it has less value for not having tags. I find the conclusion that all this has to do with "Newmark and Buckmaster's wariness about what humans" particularly weird. Personally CL's approach of getting out of the user's way seems a lot more humane to me than forcing the latest UI trend on your users because the CEO read about it in last month's Wired.

by nir 17y ago

jacoblyles 17y ago

Actually, the article mentions that people aren't pissed off and that Craigslist is a huge success: >>""I hear this all the time," Buckmaster says. "You guys are so primitive, you are like cavemen. Don't you have any sense of aesthetic? But the people I hear it from are invariably working for firms that want the job of redoing the site. In all the complaints and requests we get from users, this is never one of them. Time spent on the site, the number of people who post—we're the leader. It could be we're doing one or two things right." >>"The truth is that a lot of people complain about craigslist. Buckmaster is correct that few of them complain about the design. They complain about spam, they complain about fraud, they complain about the posting rules, they complain about the search, they complain about uploading images. They complain about every way a classified transaction can go wrong. They seldom complain about amazing new features they imagine they might possibly want to use, because they are too busy complaining about the simple features they depend on that don't work as well as they'd like. By eliminating marketing, sales, and business development, craigslist's programmers have cut out all the cushioning layers that separate them from the users they serve, and any right they have to teach lessons in public service comes from the odd situation of running a company that is directly subservient only to the public. "

nir 17y ago
Wired isn't ambiguous in the way it chooses to package this article: a title like "Why Craigslist Is Such a Mess" and an "Extreme Makeover" section showing how it should look like (at least one of the suggestions resides firmly in Designerland, where users upload nice little arty photos of their bikes, all in the correct size and never a goatse image..) As for the text itself, I'm still not sure if it's an intentional self-parody or whether Wired seriously claims CL is closed and distrustful for letting anyone post anonymously rather than requiring them to register and partake in some "networking features", or that it has less value for not having tags. I find the conclusion that all this has to do with "Newmark and Buckmaster's wariness about what humans" particularly weird. Personally CL's approach of getting out of the user's way seems a lot more humane to me than forcing the latest UI trend on your users because the CEO read about it in last month's Wired.