On Sun, Jun 26, 2016 at 3:26 PM, Ian Clarke <i...@freenetproject.org> wrote:
> I think the 501c3 question is secondary. > Visitors to our website are there to learn about Freenet, hopefully > download it > and use it, and/or become developers. Why would we plant a huge ugly green > banner in the middle of our front page to send these people away to another > website, regardless of how worthwhile we might think that campaign is? It > really > makes no sense to me. > This has been explained very well in the conversation on IRC in #freenet, but being one of those involved in the decision to place the banner, I'll take this opportunity to explain it from my point of view. Visitors to our website are interested in anonymity and escaping from surveilance. As such, they tend to seek software like Freenet, and may end up on our website to download it. It exactly this set of people who may be most concerned about he proposed changes to rule 41 as described on the EFF's website, as they oppose, in my humble opinion, both the interests of our users and the project's goal. As such, knowledge on the proposed changes to rule 41 may be of the best interest to Freenet's users and by extension to the project itself, as Freenet cannot function without its users. The EFF had announced a single day to raise awareness of this issue. For all of the reasons explained earlier, it struck me as useful to our (American) users to be made aware of this. I'm also concerned that this action was taken even though multiple people > had > pointed out how ugly the banner was, utterly inconsistent with the color > scheme > of the website. This reads as if one person decided to publish the banner, even though others actively opposed that decision based on the perceived ugliness of the result. As you may know, this was not the case. All active participants in the discussion, myself included, perceived the banner as ugly, and all of us agreed with still having the banned for a strongly restricted amount of time despite its ugliness. At the time, my judgement was that the perceived ugliness was outweighed by the expected utility to our users given it would only appear for a limited time. I am by no means saying that in retrospect, this was for sure the best judgement that could have been made. > Don't people understand the importance of having an > aesthetically pleasing and well structured website for the project? It just > strikes me as extreme carelessness. > This leads me to infer that you judge our decision as to having been careless. I respect your opinion on that, but I'd strongly appreciate it if you could refrain from writing such general complaints passively addressed to nobody in particular, while from the context it is immediately clear whose behaviour you are attempting to complain about. It may be a cultural difference, but it strikes me as needlessly offensive to generalize those known to be involved to "people" in general. I am well aware that you disagree with the decision we made at the time, and I am sure the others involved are well aware of that too. Your complaint only conveys a judgement, but does not address what action you expect to be taken next. The banner has already been removed since yesterday evening, which is well before you sent your latest message that I am replying to. How is it exactly that you'd like us to follow up on this complaint? > Hopefully we can use part of the $25k donation to pay for a professional > website > redesign, it will be well worth the investment. > This has already partly been addressed in the Outreach section of the Freenet Task Planning Stage #2 document. Please feel free to expand that section to justify how and why donation money should be spent on website redesign. That said, I do think it might indeed be in the interest of our users if we reconsider the look and feel of our website. Kind regards, Bert _______________________________________________ Devl mailing list Devl@freenetproject.org https://emu.freenetproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/devl
