On 28/06/13 11:47, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Friday, June 28, 2013 10:44:36 Peter Williams wrote:
On 28/06/13 05:52, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
On Thursday, June 27, 2013 13:47:53 Adam D. Ruppe wrote:
On Thursday, 27 June 2013 at 06:59:49 UTC, Jonathan M Davis wrote:
But if we make a design decision that favors 1% of our userbase
I really think we all need to be more careful about these kinds
of statements. I often see posts on the newsgroup where someone
says "feature/function X is totally useless".... and it is
something I actually use.
In this thread, there's I think three people who said the extra
arguments are a good thing (myself, Andrei, and Peter). And
there's what, maybe a dozen participants in the thread (I didn't
count, I think it is less though)?
That's not a big enough sample to be statistically significant,
but what are the odds that this thread is so skewed that only 1%
of D's userbase feels this way, when 25% of the thread disagrees?
I wasn't arguing that only 1% of the users care about this particular
feature. What I was objecting to was that Andrei seemed to think that
argumentum ad populum was an invalid argument,
Plato would agree with Andrei.
It's definitely true that just because a lot of people think something does not
make it true (e.g. having the majority of people think that the sun goes
around the earth does not make it so). But when you're debating an API, your
debating what a lot of people are going to be using, and if the majority of
them don't think that it's user-friendly or otherwise well-designed, then I
really don't think that it makes sense to say that the fact that most of the
users think that doesn't mean anything or that it's not relevant. I think that
majority opinion is _very_ relevant when discussing APIs or any type of user
interface. It may be the case that they're wrong and that after using a new
API or user interface, they'll eventually come to the conclusion that they're
wrong, but their opinion is _very_ relevant IMHO.
Yes, but voting is very seldom the best way so decide a technical issue.
You want the best technical solution not the one supported by the best
lobbyists.
Peter
