On Fri, Jan 24, 2014 at 4:51 PM, Benjamin Striegel <[email protected]>wrote:
> No one's saying usability can't be discussed. If there are problems, we > DESPERATELY DESPERATELY NEED to be made aware. Even if it's just "the names > of these types confuse me", that's valuable feedback. But belaboring the > point through this many mailing list posts just makes noise and wastes > energy that the full-time devs (note: I am not a full-time dev) can spend > on more valuable tasks. > The stronger claim that seems to be implied here (I'm not sure if you intended it!) is that the role of "outside people" in discussing usability issues should be confined to reporting problems. I don't agree with this. At a minimum, even if the core developers do the deciding, a discussion like this can provide them with ideas to choose from among or to draw inspiration from, and gives them an informal survey of the preferences of people who care enough to comment. Once in a while, a consensus may even emerge (for example `box`). When goals are clear, the collective can divide and conquer. But design and > usability are subjective tasks, not objective ones, and instead of dividing > and conquering we merely multiply and surrender. > The weaker claim is that "usability issues" can't be productively resolved through a community process, and I'm not sure I agree with this either. Or rather, I agree that if the only criterium that can be applied is personal preference, this is true, but that doesn't hold in every case. For example, words have meanings. In a debate about naming, it's very much possible to bring arguments from reason concerning which names have meanings that best align with the semantics of the construct in question. There may not always be a clear winner (and then it's back to personal preference), but it's worth looking for one. (I agree that we have more important problems to solve than this, and that the time of people who can is better spent building bikesheds than painting them.)
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