Daniel Carrera wrote:
Joerg Barfurth wrote:
And of course many votes don't necessarily mean that the issue must be
done with any urgency or even done at all. First, we don't have
countervotes. What if there are 200 in favor, but 2000 against?
1) People can leave comments saying they disagree.
2) Not a single reason why a user would dislike this feature was ever
given.
Compared to the number of users of OOo or even to the registered
project members, 200 is not much.
Honestly, that's a silly argument. You will never get a million users to
vote for anything. A usability lab would never expect that. A usability
lab is happy to get 20 people, they often have to make do with 5.
200 votes is a lot. Considering how hard it is for a regular user to
reach the point that they can vote in IZ, 200 votes is huge.
And last in an OSS project no developer is obliged to develop anything
on someone else's schedule or priority list.
That is fair enough, and it's not a wrong thing to say. But the comment
that started this thread was the proposition that OOo users had a lot of
power to have things changed. I was trying to point out that they don't
have a whole lot of power really.
And couldn't the developers expect more responsiveness as well?
We go to the trouble to write specifications, which are announced on the
[email protected] list.
Okay, we're getting somwehre. There is certainly a communication problem
here. I don't think that [EMAIL PROTECTED] is a good way to reach the
community. I can't see people signing up to [EMAIL PROTECTED] and reading the
specs in the off chance that one of them happens to forshadow a loss of a
feature which they feel should "obviously" be there, because it's already
there.
Perhaps we should look at how to best communicate between the developers
and the users.
And then, well after the fact, the complaints start coming in and
developers are supposed to turn everything that has matured for month
over within a few weeks.
Thank you for giving us the developers' POV. It's important that we hear
about it.
Okay, so developers and users are not communicating. We need to think of a
way that they can. The current channels don't work well (which doesn't
surprise me). We need something different.
Robert Derman replies: If it's Bugzilla & Issuezilla you are reffering
to in the above paragraph Daniel, then I couldn't agree more. The
learning curve to use the zillas is far too steep for the vast majority
of simple end users. If that is the only avenue for them to report
problems, complain about missing features etc. Then we simply will never
here from them. They will just get discouraged and go back to M$.
I don't have a full solution right now. But I expect that whatever
solution happens, will involve sending emails to the discuss list, since
that's where discussions happen, and where users are located.
I have a question: How regular are the emails to [EMAIL PROTECTED] ? How long
are they?
Hypothetically speaking, if those were CC'd to discuss, would they totally
drown the list? If they wouldn't, then perhaps that's an avenue to
explore. What do you think?
I don't really complain. We have become used to it. Much of it is simply
human nature. But I still find it unfair, if developers are called
"unresponsive" on this background.
Well, I'm glad you said something this time. The only way I can try to
solve a problem is if I find out about it. I had never heard of
[EMAIL PROTECTED], and I suspect that I am in more OOo lists than 90% of the
active contributors.
Sorry for the rant. I don't want to offend anyone.
Thank you for the rant. It sets the stage for correcting a problem.
Cheers,
