Re: loomio
On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 10:08:31PM +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: So you want to have random people suddenly join, be of the decision and have equal say? I find that a little bit weird. As opposed to the method that we have now which is..? People who are part of the team. If you're investing time into things you'll have more say. I think you're mixing up decisions with doing a study? E.g. you assume because of such a tool suddenly 'GNOME 3' will work different? (to be clear: I'm asking, not suggesting) -- Regards, Olav PS: Please do not cc me on replies. ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 10:06:51PM +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: If someone posts a proposal on gnome-devel, for example, it would not be efficient or easy for each user to give their approval: Yeah I love Here you clearly assume that it will be used for software development. If you want to test something, a usability study should be done. Not random people who show up for some decision. That's going to be just as biased as having the decision taken by the current people. -- Regards, Olav ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
I agree, random people can't have the same influence on votes like the people actually seriously involved, but like Sri and Marco said, there are already existing cases in which such a system can be very useful. Seif offered to try it with the Gnome Music team, but anyone else who wants to give it a try is very welcome too. I couldn't set up an account because I don't personally belong to any team so I can't speak for a whole team, but signing up is quite easy: we just need to fill a form for beta-testing it (currently all organizations using loomio are considered private beta testers, although it is already used successfully by organizations of all sizes): https://www.loomio.org/group_requests/new Anatoly On ג', 2013-04-16 at 23:30 +0200, Andre Klapper wrote: On Tue, 2013-04-16 at 22:08 +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: So you want to have random people suddenly join, be of the decision and have equal say? I find that a little bit weird. As opposed to the method that we have now which is..? (I cannot speak for all teams, as I'm not in all teams. Anybody feel free to correct me please.) Most teams have meetings sometimes, mostly IRC based (though some also have phone or Google Hangouts as far as I know). Except for board and release-team, team membership is not exclusive / defined, and (except for board) meetings are public. Newcomers and lurkers are welcome to meetings and to provide input to influence decisions, but when it comes to hard voting (if decision making process is not consense-based) I'd expect only established people to feel like taking part anyway, or at least expect their votes to have way more weight. In the end that's how I understand meritocracy. Also see section 5.5.2 Community of http://www.dgsiegel.net/foss-development-processes andre ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: [GSoC '13]Gnome Tweak Tool UI Refresh Project
Hi Vishrut, I came up with some wireframes for the Tweak Tool [1], which I'd be happy to discuss. You should also make contact with John Stowers, who is the Tweak Tool maintainer. Best wishes, Allan [1] https://raw.github.com/gnome-design-team/gnome-mockups/master/tweak-tool/tweak-tool-wireframes.png On Sun, Apr 14, 2013 at 4:47 PM, Vishrut Mehta vishrut.mehta...@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I am Vishrut Mehta, a second year students at International Institute of Information Technology, Hyderabad, India. I have been contributing to Opensource organizations since December, like Sahana Software Foundation and E-cidadania. You can have a look at my github profile: https://github.com/VishrutMehta and also have done several other projects related to Python. I am interested to work with GNOME and try to implement the Tweak Tool UI Project. I have much experience in UI design and Python implementation. I want to discuss with you how we can do this project and what are the prospects of the project. Eagerly waiting for your reply. Thank You!! Regards, -- Vishrut Mehta International Institute of Information Technology, Gachibowli,Hyderabad-500032 ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
I think you're mixing up decisions with doing a study? E.g. you assume because of such a tool suddenly 'GNOME 3' will work different? (to be clear: I'm asking, not suggesting) No, I don't think that GNOME will suddenly become the perfect DE, but certain decisions, such as the location of the close button on fullscreen apps, could be improved a lot and polls could be used as evidence for user testing or feedback, rather than saying We thought it was the right thing to do. (for example) BTW Aren't decisions made based on user studies if availible? -- Marco Scannadinari ma...@scannadinari.co.uk ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 10:06:51PM +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: If someone posts a proposal on gnome-devel, for example, it would not be efficient or easy for each user to give their approval: Yeah I love Here you clearly assume that it will be used for software development. I did say for example - this service can be used globally accross the GNOME Foundation and its groups. If you want to test something, a usability study should be done. Not random people who show up for some decision. That's going to be just as biased as having the decision taken by the current people. I'm not saying that we should invite everyone to the discussion, but even so, having random people would be completely un-biased, as they would probably have no affiliation with the project (for usability studies anyway). We could probably have a discussion locked to members of the design-team, devel-team(?), translation-team, etc, and have invites sent if someone is not part of the team and would be appreciated in the discussion. Even if this feature does not exist, the source is free and can be modified on GNOME's own loomio instance if the devs are not willing to implement the potential commit(s). -- Marco Scannadinari ma...@scannadinari.co.uk ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 17:24 +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: No, I don't think that GNOME will suddenly become the perfect DE, but certain decisions, such as the location of the close button on fullscreen apps, could be improved a lot and polls could be used as evidence for user testing or feedback, rather than saying We thought it was the right thing to do. (for example) Please not. Polls are popularity contests and cannot replace user testing. http://nat.org/blog/2006/02/dan-winship-on-design-by-committee/ comes to my mind (unfortunately the paintings are not online anymore). andre -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
Lets consider a concrete example. Before Gnome Shell was initially released, I (like many others) didn't like the lack of a power off option in the system menu (or anywhere on the desktop). I've been an on and off lurker on IRC for a while. I brought up the concern a few times perhaps. At one point, I got into a small debate with owen about the design/user experience trade-offs of the issue. He made multiple specific arguments *against* having it in the menu and for having suspend (which I found completely unconvincing). I made multiple arguments *for* including it in the menu. It ended with him saying he'd wasted enough time debating the issue. Three release cycles later, all of a sudden, there's a power off option in the menu right where suspend used to be (with the inverse behavior now! Alt-click - suspends). I'm glad for it; don't get me wrong. But, what I'd like to know is, what arguments were made to finally convince owen and whoever else pushed through the change? Were the arguments he mead before somehow obsolete? I'd be fascinated to know, since I did my best to make a persuasive case before and was ultimately shot down. (Seriously, if anyone knows of a record of this, I'd like to see it) Is it possible a tool like loomio could help? I don't know much about it in particular, but I think it's clear that the Gnome development process could greatly benefit from more of what it appears to facilitate. On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 12:38 PM, Andre Klapper ak...@gmx.net wrote: On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 17:24 +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: No, I don't think that GNOME will suddenly become the perfect DE, but certain decisions, such as the location of the close button on fullscreen apps, could be improved a lot and polls could be used as evidence for user testing or feedback, rather than saying We thought it was the right thing to do. (for example) Please not. Polls are popularity contests and cannot replace user testing. http://nat.org/blog/2006/02/dan-winship-on-design-by-committee/ comes to my mind (unfortunately the paintings are not online anymore). andre -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Fwd: loomio
(Apologies if this is a resend.) Lets consider a concrete example. Before Gnome Shell was initially released, I (like many others) didn't like the lack of a power off option in the system menu (or anywhere on the desktop). I've been an on and off lurker on IRC for a while. I brought up the concern a few times perhaps. At one point, I got into a small debate with owen about the design/user experience trade-offs of the issue. He made multiple specific arguments *against* having it in the menu and for having suspend (which I found completely unconvincing). I made multiple arguments *for* including it in the menu. It ended with him saying he'd wasted enough time debating the issue. Three release cycles later, all of a sudden, there's a power off option in the menu right where suspend used to be (with the inverse behavior now! Alt-click - suspends). I'm glad for it; don't get me wrong. But, what I'd like to know is, what arguments were made to finally convince owen and whoever else pushed through the change? Were the arguments he mead before somehow obsolete? I'd be fascinated to know, since I did my best to make a persuasive case before and was ultimately shot down. (Seriously, if anyone knows of a record of this, I'd like to see it) Is it possible a tool like loomio could help? I don't know much about it in particular, but I think it's clear that the Gnome development process could greatly benefit from more of what it appears to facilitate. Jesse On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 12:38 PM, Andre Klapper ak...@gmx.net wrote: On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 17:24 +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: No, I don't think that GNOME will suddenly become the perfect DE, but certain decisions, such as the location of the close button on fullscreen apps, could be improved a lot and polls could be used as evidence for user testing or feedback, rather than saying We thought it was the right thing to do. (for example) Please not. Polls are popularity contests and cannot replace user testing. http://nat.org/blog/2006/02/dan-winship-on-design-by-committee/ comes to my mind (unfortunately the paintings are not online anymore). andre -- Andre Klapper | ak...@gmx.net http://blogs.gnome.org/aklapper/ ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 13:10 -0400, Jesse Hutton wrote: Lets consider a concrete example. Before Gnome Shell was initially released, I (like many others) didn't like the lack of a power off option in the system menu (or anywhere on the desktop). I've been an on and off lurker on IRC for a while. I brought up the concern a few times perhaps. At one point, I got into a small debate with owen about the design/user experience trade-offs of the issue. He made multiple specific arguments *against* having it in the menu and for having suspend (which I found completely unconvincing). I made multiple arguments *for* including it in the menu. It ended with him saying he'd wasted enough time debating the issue. This example is not an usability study, it was a debate between 2 people having different opinions. I could also make the case in opposite direction, debates that proven to be right with the time, in both 2.x and 3.x cycles. The most famous that comes to my mind is workspaces versus viewports. Today nobody cares. Does this prove anything? I do not think so. Three release cycles later, all of a sudden, there's a power off option in the menu right where suspend used to be (with the inverse behavior now! Alt-click - suspends). I'm glad for it; don't get me wrong. But, what I'd like to know is, what arguments were made to finally convince owen and whoever else pushed through the change? Were the arguments he mead before somehow obsolete? I'd be fascinated to know, since I did my best to make a persuasive case before and was ultimately shot down. (Seriously, if anyone knows of a record of this, I'd like to see it) What makes you think that Owen changed his mind? or what makes you think that he did the changes? or what makes you think the change was done because of your arguments? I do not know, but it could have been all coincidence and -perhaps- the 'I told you so' argument does not apply here. This seems to be the relevant bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647441 Is it possible a tool like loomio could help? I don't know much about it in particular, but I think it's clear that the Gnome development process could greatly benefit from more of what it appears to facilitate. IMVHO, other problems seem more important to solve in the short-term, such as: 1. Few people are building and testing the whole system since early stage of development. 2. Plenty of bugs (usability issues included) are reported late in the development cycle (after the beta period). There is ongoing work to improve this situation in the long-term, but having a system for voting does not seem to help in none of these unfortunately. It could help in other areas, though. It is different discussing with empirical data than just discussing different points of view (sometimes with a partial understanding of the goals, implementations details or restrictions). IMVHO, the former helps more. -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 13:10 -0400, Jesse Hutton wrote: Lets consider a concrete example. Before Gnome Shell was initially released, I (like many others) didn't like the lack of a power off option in the system menu (or anywhere on the desktop). I've been an on and off lurker on IRC for a while. I brought up the concern a few times perhaps. At one point, I got into a small debate with owen about the design/user experience trade-offs of the issue. He made multiple specific arguments *against* having it in the menu and for having suspend (which I found completely unconvincing). I made multiple arguments *for* including it in the menu. It ended with him saying he'd wasted enough time debating the issue. This example is not an usability study, it was a debate between 2 people having different opinions. I could also make the case in opposite direction, debates that proven to be right with the time, in both 2.x and 3.x cycles. The most famous that comes to my mind is workspaces versus viewports. Today nobody cares. How do you know that nobody cares? It might be nice to actually have the arguments for and against a given issue documented and archived. It would at least provide some history and evidence as to why certain decisions were made. Some people may find that interesting and valuable. Does this prove anything? I do not think so. Three release cycles later, all of a sudden, there's a power off option in the menu right where suspend used to be (with the inverse behavior now! Alt-click - suspends). I'm glad for it; don't get me wrong. But, what I'd like to know is, what arguments were made to finally convince owen and whoever else pushed through the change? Were the arguments he mead before somehow obsolete? I'd be fascinated to know, since I did my best to make a persuasive case before and was ultimately shot down. (Seriously, if anyone knows of a record of this, I'd like to see it) What makes you think that Owen changed his mind? or what makes you think that he did the changes? or what makes you think the change was done because of your arguments? I do not know, but it could have been all coincidence and -perhaps- the 'I told you so' argument does not apply here. This seems to be the relevant bug: https://bugzilla.gnome.org/show_bug.cgi?id=647441 You misunderstand me. I don't assume that the change was done because of the arguments I made in IRC a year and a half ago. In fact, I really hope not. What I am genuinely curious about is what are the arguments that finally convinced the deciders (whoever they are) to do an about face? The bug report below offers no reasoning besides suspend being available by shutting a laptop lid (or w/power button). Both of those things were discussed before! So, what changed? Jesse ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 14:55 -0400, Jesse Hutton wrote: On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 2:41 PM, Germán Póo-Caamaño g...@gnome.org wrote: On Wed, 2013-04-17 at 13:10 -0400, Jesse Hutton wrote: Lets consider a concrete example. Before Gnome Shell was initially released, I (like many others) didn't like the lack of a power off option in the system menu (or anywhere on the desktop). I've been an on and off lurker on IRC for a while. I brought up the concern a few times perhaps. At one point, I got into a small debate with owen about the design/user experience trade-offs of the issue. He made multiple specific arguments *against* having it in the menu and for having suspend (which I found completely unconvincing). I made multiple arguments *for* including it in the menu. It ended with him saying he'd wasted enough time debating the issue. This example is not an usability study, it was a debate between 2 people having different opinions. I could also make the case in opposite direction, debates that proven to be right with the time, in both 2.x and 3.x cycles. The most famous that comes to my mind is workspaces versus viewports. Today nobody cares. How do you know that nobody cares? It might be nice to actually have the arguments for and against a given issue documented and archived. It would at least provide some history and evidence as to why certain decisions were made. Some people may find that interesting and valuable. I am pretty sure the discussion (and all the bike-shedding) are documented and archived in bugzilla and the mailing lists. For instance: https://mail.gnome.org/archives/desktop-devel-list/2002-May/msg00173.html Anyway, I do not want to start repeating the discussion over and over again. See http://ometer.com/free-software-ui.html for a good summary (replace GNOME 2 by GNOME 3 and you are done). -- Germán Poo-Caamaño http://calcifer.org/ signature.asc Description: This is a digitally signed message part ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
Re: loomio
On Wed, Apr 17, 2013 at 05:34:55PM +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: On Tue, Apr 16, 2013 at 10:06:51PM +0100, Marco Scannadinari wrote: If someone posts a proposal on gnome-devel, for example, it would not be efficient or easy for each user to give their approval: Yeah I love Here you clearly assume that it will be used for software development. I did say for example - this service can be used globally accross the GNOME Foundation and its groups. If you want to test something, a usability study should be done. Not random people who show up for some decision. That's going to be just as biased as having the decision taken by the current people. I'm not saying that we should invite everyone to the discussion, but even so, having random people would be completely un-biased, as they would probably have no affiliation with the project (for usability studies anyway). A usability study is totally different than voting! Furthermore, if you invite random people to join, things *will* be biased. Only people who care enough will show up. The objective should be to have usable software. For that, there should be usability studies. IMO there are not enough usability studies done at the moment. But if we lack usability studies, I don't see voting as a solution. IMO it'll just make things worse. We could probably have a discussion locked to members of the design-team, devel-team(?), translation-team, etc, and have invites sent if someone is not part of the team and would be appreciated in the discussion. Even if this feature does not exist, the source is free and can be modified on GNOME's own loomio instance if the devs are not willing to implement the potential commit(s). Release team just votes in an IRC channel and we make minutes and write those on a wiki. Sometimes we're meeting in person and we vote by asking 'who agrees'. I'm not saying a web tool might not help with such cases, but you're arguing two different things at the same time. Partly about voting within existing teams, partly that other people should join with IMO the assumption that would improve usability (I disagree, others already gave enough explanation why). -- Regards, Olav ___ desktop-devel-list mailing list desktop-devel-list@gnome.org https://mail.gnome.org/mailman/listinfo/desktop-devel-list
