Re: GNOME user survey 2011 (v4)

[Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com>]

On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 5:02 PM, Frederic Muller <fredm gnome org> wrote:
> On 08/19/2011 09:13 PM, Felipe Contreras wrote:
>> On Fri, Aug 19, 2011 at 4:08 PM, Andy Wingo <wingo pobox com> wrote:
>>> On Fri 19 Aug 2011 13:33, Felipe Contreras <felipe contreras gmail com> writes:
>>>
>>>> That's a reasonable alternative. How about "pleased"? Any other people
>>>> have an opinion?
>>>
>>> You present yourself as reasonable by adjusting on the small points,
>>> but you ignore the feedback of greater importance.
>>>
>>> My opinion is that you are not the right person to lead an effort to
>>> gather feedback on GNOME.
>>
>> Is there anyone in the universe able to create a user survey worthy of
>> GNOME? Can you convince him of doing so?
>>
>> In the meantime, this is the best that we have. I will continue
>> listening for constructive feedback, but comments such as "this is not
>> good", "you are doing it wrong", "it's impossible", lead to nowhere.
>>
>> Besides, as Alan Cox said, it doesn't have to be perfect, like
>> software, we can learn from the mistakes of the 2011 survey, and make
>> a better one for 2012. Can we not?
>>
>
> I actually thought that Andy's feedback was constructive.

Really? Then you can take that feedback and translate it into concrete
actions, right?

To me, that sounds as useful as the advice of some academic that says
that no software should ever be deployed without strong static
analysis. He might be right, but if he is not offering himself to do
the job he is proposing, what's the point?

IOW; Talk is cheap, show me the code.

> Your approach,
> motives and way to handle this discussion are questionable. You have
> obviously failed to convince the GNOME community and GNOME developers
> that your survey would be useful, and I'm afraid nobody feels like
> taking leadership on the project neither.

Yeah, I failed at an impossible task, maybe.

> A lot of people have already told you that enough feedback has been
> gathered at this time.
> I doubt you will get much endorsement or help around here anymore (I
> could of course be wrong on that last point).
>
> To tell you the truth I have been involved in trying to run a survey for
> GNOME 2 years ago IIRC (and I think it's a "recurrent project" - you can
> find some old pages on our wiki) with a group of other people, and we
> reached the same conclusion: a survey will not help GNOME to get better.
> I obviously had very different motives (and GNOME 3 was not around).

I strongly disagree. You can't know that until you actually *try*. Why
are you so afraid to try?

> So if you want to help GNOME maybe you should discuss further with the
> design team and see how to contribute in a positive manner.

All I am trying to do is get some user feedback. Without such feedback
I doubt any kind of discussion on the design would be fruitful,
because it all be dismissed based on assumptions and wishful thinking.

Cheers.

-- 
Felipe Contreras