Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
- Original Message - From: Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com To: Shahar Dag d...@cs.technion.ac.il Cc: Haifux haifux@haifux.org Sent: Tuesday, April 27, 2010 5:11 PM Subject: Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop I disagree with the suggestion to hide the browser we use. If I, as a web muster that works with IE will get some complain, I will check it in IE. As a result I will find it a false complain and I will be angry with the dumb user. On the other end if he would mention FireFox I will check it with IE with FireFox and at list verify the problem Then you are not a good web master. One, you should be checking in more than just IE, and if you are so lazy as to not check in any other browser than I have no problems with making you angry. Two, you should know enough to ask the user what browser he is using. Web masters who assume that IE is the only browser are exactly who needs to be targeted to fix the problem. -- Dotan Cohen It is true that I am not a good web master. Failing to test other browsers is not always out of laziness, sometimes is just ignorance. And any how, I think that we want the web master cooperation so why annoy him with missing data. Shahar ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
I'd appreciate to see a summary of the meeting and if there are any follow-up actions here or maybe one of the foss web sites. (I might have joined you on-line but it'll happen in my middle of the night of a work day). Cheers, Amos On 4/25/10, Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com wrote: I wish that I had seen this message sooner. I have been contacting sites about this issue for years. I hope to be there at 18:30, there is a lot that we as a group can do together to convince these sites to change. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Linux-il mailing list linux...@cs.huji.ac.il http://mailman.cs.huji.ac.il/mailman/listinfo/linux-il ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
If you would like to have other means of communicating the current target, please let me know by private email. Orr, we should _not_ all write to the websites at once! It will be obvious that a small group of zealots is targeting them. Rather, it should appear to the sites that there are genuine problems that regularly affect everyday users. We should coordinate so that each site gets a letter from a different user every week, and don't even mention the browser or OS in the initial contact letter. I will gladly volunteer to coordinate this: interested users should register with me, and once a week (not always on the same weekday) I will send to them the address of a site to write to. That will ensure a steady flow of non-related complaints: a tactic that is much more effective than 5 complains all at once. I presented this idea before, and advocates such as Shlomi Fish from Linux-IL showed interest. I will organize everything now, and come to the meeting prepared. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
Dotan hi, Even though we haven't tried as a community to approach such webmasters on a regular basis, history shows that people approached webmasters as individuals, and usually it did not succeed. Maybe trying as a group would have a better effect. Now, approaching several websites at the same time should be OK, as usually they do not correlate and share information about: hey XXX YYY ZZZ WWW all sent me complaints about W3C compliance Moreover, history shows that long term coordinated events are harder to pull over one time energy spike. Cheers, Orr. On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 1:03 PM, Dotan Cohen dotanco...@gmail.com wrote: If you would like to have other means of communicating the current target, please let me know by private email. Orr, we should _not_ all write to the websites at once! It will be obvious that a small group of zealots is targeting them. Rather, it should appear to the sites that there are genuine problems that regularly affect everyday users. We should coordinate so that each site gets a letter from a different user every week, and don't even mention the browser or OS in the initial contact letter. I will gladly volunteer to coordinate this: interested users should register with me, and once a week (not always on the same weekday) I will send to them the address of a site to write to. That will ensure a steady flow of non-related complaints: a tactic that is much more effective than 5 complains all at once. I presented this idea before, and advocates such as Shlomi Fish from Linux-IL showed interest. I will organize everything now, and come to the meeting prepared. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com -- Orr Dunkelman, orr.dunkel...@gmail.com GPG fingerprint: C2D5 C6D6 9A24 9A95 C5B3 2023 6CAB 4A7C B73F D0AA (This key will never sign Emails, only other PGP keys. The key corresponds to o...@vipe.technion.ac.il) ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
Even though we haven't tried as a community to approach such webmasters on a regular basis, history shows that people approached webmasters as individuals, and usually it did not succeed. Maybe trying as a group would have a better effect. I disagree. I have contacted tens of sites, and in most cases found that the sites want to accompany the users. In fact, only Israeli sites seem to have the my way or the highway attitude, and even that has changed since IE 7 came out. We'll talk about that at the meeting. Now, approaching several websites at the same time should be OK, as usually they do not correlate and share information about: hey XXX YYY ZZZ WWW all sent me complaints about W3C compliance Moreover, history shows that long term coordinated events are harder to pull over one time energy spike. A one-time event of ten emails is less effective than a one-time event of a single email. A one-time event of a single email means a lost purchase. A one-time event of ten emails means some zealots are being shmucks. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
I haven't been following this thread at all, but if you're criticizing Israeli sites, please include Pelephone's. One of their crimes: In their login page, if you press Enter instead of clicking the button, it won't work, and return you to the login screen without showing an error message. (So you might think you typed the wrong password and waste a lot of time.) Ram. On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 10:50 PM, Eli Billauer e...@billauer.co.il wrote: Orr Dunkelman wrote: history shows that people approached webmasters as individuals, and usually it did not succeed. Maybe trying as a group would have a better effect. Since the event is now over, I'd like to share my opinion about the whole web compatibility issue: In short, I think it's a waste of energy. Not because it's hopeless, but because it's a war to be won with or without the FOSS community in it. In the past, non-IE users were mainly Linux users and otherwise geeks. I don't justify those who ignored complaints from us, but I can understand them. Such a complaint necessarily meant that the person complaining knows how to solve his or her problem (that is, install Windows and IE) but chooses not to. The fact that the site is defective is bad, but if it harms a very small group with some weird ideology about software. In particular, if the complaint included terms such as W3C, it's evident that it's about ideology and not getting access to the site. What is happening, is that Firefox is becoming popular. It's not a W3C compliance issue anymore, but a mass of angry users, some of whom aren't so technically competent. It's evident in the server's logs, and the complaints come from ordinary people. That's a whole different story. So what I'm saying is that the switch to compatible sites is ongoing, and it has nothing to do with us. I'm pretty sure that almost all non-compatible sites have an open project to fix it. I therefore suggest that we mind our own business, such as if we will have a usable GNU/Linux distribution in a few years, which feels like FOSS. That is, assumes that the user is intelligent enough to control his or her computer. If the current trend goes on, we'll find ourselves with Windows clones very soon, for better and for worse. Eli -- Web: http://www.billauer.co.il ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux -- Sincerely, Ram Rachum ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
As Dotan pointed out in the meeting, the problems are going to slowly disappear, as both IE 9.0 is more standard-friendly and as more and more people browse using their mobile devices. At the same time, the more people complain, the faster the support would come. So if a tech junkie would complain with prob. 10%, and a non-tech junkie would complain with prob. 1%, then you can do the math. We still matter. Especially in cases where we increase our rate to 100% complaints. The less non-tech junkies complain two things happen: 1. your complaint is more important. 2. the managers who know that only 1% of the population actually complain, treat the complaints by the tech junkies as more representing. Cheers, On Mon, Apr 26, 2010 at 11:50 PM, Eli Billauer e...@billauer.co.il wrote: Orr Dunkelman wrote: history shows that people approached webmasters as individuals, and usually it did not succeed. Maybe trying as a group would have a better effect. Since the event is now over, I'd like to share my opinion about the whole web compatibility issue: In short, I think it's a waste of energy. Not because it's hopeless, but because it's a war to be won with or without the FOSS community in it. In the past, non-IE users were mainly Linux users and otherwise geeks. I don't justify those who ignored complaints from us, but I can understand them. Such a complaint necessarily meant that the person complaining knows how to solve his or her problem (that is, install Windows and IE) but chooses not to. The fact that the site is defective is bad, but if it harms a very small group with some weird ideology about software. In particular, if the complaint included terms such as W3C, it's evident that it's about ideology and not getting access to the site. What is happening, is that Firefox is becoming popular. It's not a W3C compliance issue anymore, but a mass of angry users, some of whom aren't so technically competent. It's evident in the server's logs, and the complaints come from ordinary people. That's a whole different story. So what I'm saying is that the switch to compatible sites is ongoing, and it has nothing to do with us. I'm pretty sure that almost all non-compatible sites have an open project to fix it. I therefore suggest that we mind our own business, such as if we will have a usable GNU/Linux distribution in a few years, which feels like FOSS. That is, assumes that the user is intelligent enough to control his or her computer. If the current trend goes on, we'll find ourselves with Windows clones very soon, for better and for worse. Eli -- Web: http://www.billauer.co.il -- Orr Dunkelman, orr.dunkel...@gmail.com GPG fingerprint: C2D5 C6D6 9A24 9A95 C5B3 2023 6CAB 4A7C B73F D0AA (This key will never sign Emails, only other PGP keys. The key corresponds to o...@vipe.technion.ac.il) ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
Re: [Haifux] [HAIFUX Workshop] The Web Rant Workshop
I wish that I had seen this message sooner. I have been contacting sites about this issue for years. I hope to be there at 18:30, there is a lot that we as a group can do together to convince these sites to change. -- Dotan Cohen http://bido.com http://what-is-what.com ___ Haifux mailing list Haifux@haifux.org http://hamakor.org.il/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/haifux
