On why removing features makes people unhappy
dgsiegel.net
dgsiegel.net
Next step is of course to find understanding that users' reactions are based on numerous reasons, rather than originating from one source. Losing access to features previously found is one cause, but so is the lack of rational and balanced discussions explaining why the features were removed, and missing instructions on how to get similar functionality in Gnome 3, or the lack of tools to migrate old Gnome 2 applications to Gnome 3. To take a comparing example of Gnome2->Gnome3, lets look at Python 2->Python 3 and see what the Python Software Foundation did right.
#1: Features removed were announced years before they were removed, with clear instructions on how to migrate to better and improved features.
#2: 2to3 was invented, an automatic translator for source code from Python 2 to Python 3, to make it easy for developers to migrate over to new version.
#3: Any feature that was removed had clear documentation and discussion that explained why it was removed, and what users could do to move forward.
#4: New features were back-ported from Python 3 and made available in Python 2. This allowed users to test out things from the security and familiarity of Python 2, without getting tangled in all the changes at once in Python 3.
#5: Python 2 and Python 3 was/is developed in parallel, giving people plenty of glimpses (and warnings) of the future, and insight over what would be future safe activities.
Gnome 3 did none of these things. One could argue that there were practical reasons why, but not doing any of those things will hurt a project. At any rate, I have not seen Gnome 3 give any practical reasons why they did such an abrupt move from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3, beyond that they "had to".
(Written by a Gnome 3 user, on Gnome 3)
If they had created a new product instead of bumping Gnome's version number all these problems would have gone away because the user's expectation is to have something different instead of an evolution of an existing product.
They're trying to build a better product, and they're only a bunch of part-time volunteers.
At some point they had a bunch of features, but to keep up with the other desktops (Aero, Quartz) they had to focus on rearchitecting and, being a small team, there haven't enough manpower to keep all the features.
I also don't think language (api's) are not at all comparable to desktop environments. There's just so much going on in a desktop environment.
I thought quite a few of them worked for Redhat?
>> At some point they had a bunch of features, but to keep up with the other desktops (Aero, Quartz) they had to focus on rearchitecting and, being a small team, there haven't enough manpower to keep all the features.
That seems a bit of a rosy view of what happened. A cynic might say that they decided to scrap everything and start again, users be damned, and went out of their way to make 3/Shell incompatible with 2 to force people away from it, announcing that it was now abandoned and of no further interest. Then, as now, they explained how everyone that didn't like that move was wrong and stupid, and they set about making the desktop experience that you will absolutely love because we say so and if you don't do it our way you're a curmudgeon and intellectually subnormal.
and not only this cynic would be wrong, but he would also be full of crap, because it's such a trivial thing to check in the public repositories, public mailing list archives, and public bug tracking system.
but, obviously, crapping on a bunch of volunteers trying to work on the project they like is easier.
Are you saying they didn't force incompatibility with Gnome 2? Or that they didn't just decide to change everything to exactly how they wanted the desktop, regardless of users?
Maybe they didn't scrap some of the underlying libraries, but the whole look, layout, interaction pattern/user flow and pretty much everything else was a total change.
Ironically, the Redhat-employed ones seem to be working on Classic mode (so they can release RHEL 7 someday), which minimizes the damage the non-Redhat-employed ones have done: http://news.softpedia.com/news/Red-Hat-Linux-7-Will-Have-a-T...
How much time that is spent on packaging, documenting existing features, building communication systems, and doing cool new features is indeed hard resource questions for a project manager. Then there is policy questions which effect resources.
Python demands PEPs to be written before changes is considered. That demand for PEPs is less a resource question, and more a policy question. It forces developer to write down in words what they try to accomplish with a change, and also write down what effect it has on users.
In my opinion, the community reaction to gnome3 is not very surprising. Its a result of "less restrictive" developer process and few efforts into mitigation of community outrage. I can only hope they will find some insight from other projects, and start to handle feature changes with more user awareness.
Wow... so now that you've read Machiavelli and Cialdini, and feel you understand users better... then instead of using that to respond better to them and make the world a better place for them... you decide to take delight in their unhappiness instead?
Wow, I've never said something like this on HN before, but unless undetected sarcasm is wooshing over my head: what a prick.
At the end of the they, the GNOME developers own the project. Unlike the people running the MS Excel team, they aren't accountable to customers, just patrons. It's easier to keep patrons happier with a long term vision than the customers who actually use your stuff every day.
Apple was able to successfully pull the re-invention thing off a couple of times (iPod, iPhone, iPad) via radical simpification, and whole market is pivoting to try to accomplish the same thing. That creates it's own problems, as now we have Linux and now Windows desktops that really aren't very good from the perspective of the people using them. It's a vicious circle, as the crappyness of the new-"old-style" desktop experience is pushing users into the new "Post-PC" world.
Instead he's satisfied having de-constructed users' reactions, and just leaves it at that. It's like saying I figured out _why_ punching you in the face will make you upset, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the show.
What he's suggesting, depending on which of Machiavelli's kingdom types the author is referring to, is actually either the wrong approach (the people revolt [leave Gnome]) or the ruthless tyrannical approach (crush [ignore] the cries of the masses and force the prince's system on the people without any lenience [concessions]).
Blog poster basically comes across as a bit of a sociopath.
Gnome 3 is not "all" bad, BTW, but some of the (missing) functionality is a daily PITA.
Seems like it represents the general view by users of the Gnome team. He points out that the perception of the Gnome team is anti-user, that they are tone deaf and don't care enough about the community. He doesn't argue against it, mind you, and then goes on to largely reinforce the correctness of the called-out viewpoint. He was reading The Prince and now he gets what all those dumb serfs were rioting about.
Then I read the whole thing and I now wish I had stopped after two sentences like so many others.
I wouldn't be so quick to attribute this to arrogance or nonconformity. I noted that the brevity of individual paragraphs is similar to the way I had been writing. Mixed with the font, which does make it easier to catch the beginnings of sentences, it's entirely possible that he's making exactly the same mistake I made in exactly the way I made it—such that he hasn't yet noticed it does have an impact on reading speed.
Edit: Some of the other comments take a similar view, so I do want to point out that I may lack context. I don't use GNOME and I'm not particularly well-informed on the subject. My comment refers only to the lack of capitals and an anecdote about my own experience with avoiding capitals.
On the same note, I don't understand why in some countries signs on highways use all-capital letters. Words written that way are actually harder and slower to read [1] than ones written with proper capitalization.
Because of that all of the old signs were in all-caps. New signs with proper capitalization look odd.
Can we please talk about what he says?
Is the topic in any way related to good blog design?
There are quite a few blogs without capitalization and if it is really so important to you feel free to write about it.
IMHO All those comments on design/grammar/font/... in every discussion on HN are mere distractions and add no value.
But speaking of substance, there wasn't really much there. He talked about users like they were an inconvenience and were unreasonable, and that they had some odd psychological issue that needed correcting. Yet he never addressed the genuinely useful features that were removed, or the feeling by users that if they used features in Gnome they might one day lose them, even if the need them.
The author's lack of capitalization is not important enough to me to write an article about it and post it to HN, but it was important enough to me to point it out in a comment on the forum page discussing the article.
It seems to me to exemplify exactly what is wrong with the author's approach to features... and by extension, with the GNOME development team's approach to the same.
This is terrible, terrible design philosophy and no one should ever listen to it. The end.
In Keyboard 2.1, the caps lock key was removed as you can use the shift key. The Windows key was surplus to requirements, there's a perfectly good alt key.
Fast forward to Keyboard 3.0. There is no longer a control key (hold down alt for 2 seconds!), numlock is gone (the top row has numbers), cursor keys gone (you can use a mouse to move around).
In Keyboard 3.1 they removed the shift key as stylistically capitals aren't necessary.
in keyboard 3.2 they removed the comma and semicolon. these really aren't necessary as you don't need to pause when reading.
in keyboard 33 there is no need for single quotes because you should not use contractions. that just causes confusion and besides the amount of debates and derision around it were getting ridiculous. justification: world peace and an end to grammar nazis.
in keyboard 35 they are seriously considering removing the enter key the exclamation mark and any characters that require umlauts. this will help with a cleaner text rendering codebase.
Now if people would start tech blogging in rhyme or iambic pentameter, that might be awesome.
If you like Gnome, great. If you don't like Gnome, you should use something else. Arguing this old subject hasn't yet accomplished anything, and there are plenty of alternatives available now. (I really like KDE4.)
If project developers are genuinely screwing their pooch, then a stampede to alternatives will convince them far more thoroughly than even the most well-crafted internet argument. If there's no stampede, then people are just arguing personal preferences in the face of popular preferences, and they'd still be better off switching to something else.
Save passionate arguing for situations in which it can do some good.
The problem is that a lot of people liked Gnome2 but dislike Gnome3. They feel betrayed because the Gnome team killed their favorite desktop environment on a whim, and that sort of thing isn't supposed to happen with open source.
Due to Gnome 2 / 3 name conflicts maintaining Gnome 2 is fairly difficult.
Basically the Gnome devs wanted to go in a new direction and are abusing their powers to kill off the old product. Users have legitimate reason to to upset.
http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html
Be sure to note the date on this.
Maybe I misunderstood this. So are you saying that the same volunteers can handle a total rewrite of the module maintaining its specified (hopefully) behavior, while remaining incapable of fixing its bugs?
It's true that taking away something that people count on makes them unhappy. To declare, however that this is the sole or main reason for the widespread rejection of the Gnome changes requires more evidence. It is definitely false in the case of many users (myself included).
It's really just a variant of the old line "you dislike this only because it's different; but try it our way and you'll find it's better". This is a dishonest, and frankly an offensive rhetorical trick. It presumes to know the reader's mind better than the reader does; implies that familiarity is the only reason anyone ever prefers one thing over another; and assumes that all change is always good - all of which is absurd.
Similarly in the linked article, the author pretends that there is no objection based on the actual merits of the software: in other words, users object that the removal makes the software less useful, and the writer pretends to misunderstand the complaint as "we now have n - 1 features instead of n features". He even arrogantly says that some features they "shouldn't have had in the first place" - when in reality, people complain because they were using the feature for something they cared about and aren't satisfied with the new way.
The really important hidden premise of apologists like this is that there are no intrinsic merits of one design over another - that it's only a matter of style and fashion and what's familiar, and there's never any factor of one way being intrinsically better or worse suited to the interaction of human and device. That's a big assumption, but once they've put in a huge amount of work based on it, they can't even admit that anyone could have any intelligent objection, and defensively blame any dissent on an irrational emotional response.
The same observations apply in the case of Ubuntu Unity and Windows 8: the root cause of their failure is a sort of paternalism where the GUI designers disregard what users actually prefer, and can't even admit that the preferences are based on practical workflow considerations rather than emotional reactions.
And it doesn't surprise me at all that Gnome Devs read Machiavelli.
While I tend to agree with most things they did in the past few years, some are just plain idiotic. For example the type to search instead of prefix matching in nautilus just plain doesn't work, while the original feature have been replaced. I feel like I've received a 7 inch tablet to hack on a C project.
While I understand gnome gets a lot of hate and that they might take up that tact as a defense mechanism instead of actually dealing with it, it bodes really poorly for their user interface.
Too often in the past GNOME removed the availability of a feature entirely. The people using that feature "owned" it, thus following the first quote the removal impinged on their "property", and then the GNOME devs would insult people for wanting it because it was "wrong", impinging on their "honour". It's only through assuming GNOME devs are infallible and the people are wrong that allows this guy to use the second quote, which boils down to "children want their toys", to cancel the first and then "smilingly fall back in my chair and enjoy reading mean comments with a bag of popcorn".
Also I agree with the others regarding the lack of capitalization, but I suppose we are all "wrong" on this.
The no capitals thing is just icing on the cake. "Capitalization is pointless so I removed it"
If I wanted a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, company-approved UX.. I'd buy one in a pretty silver box.
This guy just comes across as incredibly smug. Does the ego-trip come free when you buy a ticket to chase the silver-box UX for your own product and its completely different userbase with entirely different needs and expectations?
IMHO Xfce4 has reached the level that now it does the Gnome 2 thing better than Gnome 2 did. (Just needs some tweaking, if you don't like the default blue theme.)
...
No, seriously, I think Gnome 1 had a lot over Gnome 2, and it amuses me to no end that people prefer Gnome 2 over Gnome 3.
As a software developer and producer, one needs to develop thick skin. If I make a change and one person complains, I need to remind myself that other people like it.
However, if many people complain about a specific change, then I should listen, try to understand their perspective, and consider rolling back and/or adding an option to have things either the old way or the new way.
With the "add an option" approach, however, one must be careful not to gain lots and lots of UI-cluttering options in the Preferences.
The "add an option" approach can also result in more complicated customer support - users inadvertently turn off features/changes in the Preferences.
So there are a number of issues being balanced here: the customer's (or user's) dislike for change; the potentially real complaint that the change has worsened the software for some users; keeping the software flexible; but not drowning the user with too many unnecessary options; nor making customer support too complicated.
I would think that having understood the reaction, you might have tried to lessen it, or re-frame taking features away into something else (even if the end result is the same).
GNOME used to be the go-to "Community" DE that I relied on, and I tinkered around with using it as my GUI toolkit as well. Now, it doesn't feel community run at all, and as a GUI toolkit, Qt is much nicer.
I wonder if this will change in the future?
You mean like KDE?
Joking aside, he is obviously aware of KDE and didn't mention it for a reason, presumably because it's not what he wants to see.
I know a lot of people hate KDE because of the early 4.x builds. It has gotten a lot better now, and it's constantly getting even better.
If this is the case, he should take it for a spin. I find that it's the most customizable and user centric DE around.
There are a lot of settings you can tweak, probably too much for some, but I know each time I test Gnome/Unity/Xfce/Lxde/Cinnamon etc. I miss a lot of easily accessible settings.
The community is also great, there is a saying: KDE is the community, not the software.
I generally like a very minimal interface along the lines of Openbox. Right click for menu, middle click for window list, windows minimize to desktop icons, scroll wheel cycles through virtual desktops. Maximized windows don't cover a few pixels along an edge, so I always have access to the desktop. The only taskbar type stuff visible is a clock and the system tray, which on the computer I'm using right now auto-hide in the upper left. (I optimized for screen space on a netbook that didn't have any, and found I liked it anyway.)
I'm happy to spend a while wading through settings to get this set up as I like, but KDE won't let me (not that I really blame them). However, I do find it annoying when it's billed as the most customizable DE out there. In terms of the color of any particular thingamabob, absolutely. In terms of major differences in overall layout, not so much.
Xfce and LXDE have always worked flawlessly for me.
The only problem is, I've never been able to use KDE for longer than about a day before experiencing major (read: show-stopping) performance regressions and severe crashes (read: listening to music while programming, suddenly whole desktop disappears and it drops back to the login manager, or I'm beset by dozens of dialog boxes about SIGSEGV errors buried in 30-thread spaghetti messes while my music mysteriously stops). I've also run into serious data corruption issues where something nuked the Nepomuk databases or something else nuked the Plasma widget configs.
As a result, I've found KDE 4.x completely unusable. I try it now and then to see if they've fixed anything, but as of 4.10, I still can't use it for more than a few hours without something blowing up.
So, to me, the community is irrelevant if the software is useless.
I even used Konqueror as my main browser (circa 2000-2002) -- the alternative was the unwieldy Mozilla.
So, here's an observation about the community: back then, I read dot.kde.org (the official "KDE news" blog), and it would fill with 10-15 news stories every day or two. Each story would have a 50+ comment thread. Now, if you go there, there are one month old stories in the first page, and most stories have zero or 1 comment.
I don't know about the use base, but the active community has definetily shrank.
(There were also tons of announcements, new projects, theme sites, interviews with KDE hackers, this Mosfet guy, the Kompany, etc etc).
It feels like you are just trying to look special by not following a thousand-year-old standard.
Then after reading it again once or twice, I saw there were periods where I did not expect them.
With guys like this working on Gnome, it doesn't need enemies.
What bothered me most was that they destroyed gnome2 when creating gnome3 by using the same filesystem namespace. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't seem possible to have both usable on the system. I would have been happy to stay on gnome2 until 3 became mature.
But that didn't happen. Despite the numbers we were forced from ~2.30 to 0.5 beta. I know there is the MATE fork, but it wasn't available initially and I'm not keen on learning new names for every single program used.
Still, they've gone too far with nautilus... it is now almost useless and I've had to move to thunar to get work done. I don't see why nautilus can't use plugins to add features.
In pursuit of their utopian airy-fairly idea of simplicity, they simply screwed up a perfectly working system which catered to practically all its users just fine.
Heck, Opera wasn't even going to add in normal bookmarking until they received a huge community backlash against it. Many of us have hundreds of bookmarks and the alternative they were providing[1] would have made it a burden to find anything useful when one has more than a few dozen bookmarks.
In short, removing features makes people unhappy when they rely on them being there in order to be productive. Adding new features or dramatically altering the way long time ones work, sure go ahead, as long as current users are given the option to keep using those long time features (ones more than a few years old) the same way they expect by undoing some option in settings. Some might scoff at this as being impossible, but that was how Opera actually functioned from the beginning up until the switchover to Chromium in Opera 15.
[1] http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2013/07/08/shop-smarter...
In all seriousness though, I stopped complaining about GNOME 3 and moved on to Xfce4. The GNOME project developers aren't going to change and they have the right to dictate the direction of the project regardless of whether or not I personally agree with their decisions. Open source is about having choices and my choice was to move to another desktop environment.
Now I still miss my features, and I still think that you think your users are dumb, and that you obviously know better than them now that you've read a book, which prompted you to decide that capitalization needs to be removed as well. Hilarious.
I really don't understand the "do not let people customise anything" attitude. I agree that supporting users who have made customisations is annoying and hard; just force people to return to a default config before they make any support requests. I agree that sane defaults are nice, and that option screens are ugly; offer sane defaults, and hide all the config stuff in a text file.
It DOES matter when it is replaced by something better for them, not better for the GNOME guys.
The GNOME guys consider removing features "better" because it makes their lives easier, less combinatorial bugs, less work designing, less work fixing, more centralization and why not to say it, ego boost and power(users do exactly what I design, how important I am).
So the fact that something is "better" for them does not mean that the user is going to consider it "better". The fact that you are already forcing your users to learn something new is worse by default, so it has to be really much much better for them to have to change their own routines.
Humans are routine animals. Don't break the routines.
Any users pretending to have had need for capital letters are just expressing their disgruntlement over losing something they felt they possessed. That doesn't mean we think users are stupid, just that they have no idea what they actually need or use.
Now I'm happy again, having found this: https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/
It seems like Gnome is actually allowing MORE freedom now, with this js extension api. If you don't like how it works - just write a small extension.
Or the up button in Nautilus. Or any one of the dozens of useful things they removed. I was quite a fan of Gnome 2.x, but the "remove features people use because we are right and they are wrong" mentality means I switched back to Windows, and run VirtualBix for my coding, debugging, etc.
It perfectly fits my use case (running a few apps fully maximised) and gets out of my way. Also, it is rock solid and has never crashed on me.
One of the main causes behind the bashing is that a perfectly stable Gnome 2 (which was a more mainstream/"full featured" WM) was butchered to create something which took out a lot of functionality people _actually_ use.
Obviously your use case, being a much simpler subset of what people typically do with their WMs, would fit in with most of the WMs so maybe the hoopla surprises you.
Normally when you make a products you decide the features and when those are stable, they are set in stone trough out the history of that whole/stable version. If the Gnome team was serious about their product in anyway they would not even pretend to have a stable product, but kept 2x as the stable release until the whole feature set was coherent between all applications.