design and communication issues [was Re: How do we change fonts now]

[Jason D. Clinton]

On Sun, Feb 27, 2011 at 22:32, Adam Williamson <awilliam at redhat.com> wrote:

> > We're trying really hard to stay on message and keep people in the
> > wider community informed and then I see threads like this
> > <http://lists.fedoraproject.org/pipermail/test/2011-February/097081.html>
> where a Red Hat employee *paid* to work on the desktop somehow manages to
> throw factually inaccurate gasoline on an already burning fire. It's really
> disheartening.
>
> > I actually banged my head on my desk when you did that.
>
> I did ask you to correct me if I was wrong...but I'm not sure I was.
> That's the way I remember it being presented during the Test Day...and
> there's still no reboot option in GNOME 3 as of right now.
>
> You may have banged your head on the desk, but you don't appear to have
> actually replied and provided correct information, whatever that may be;
> I don't see a single post from you in that thread. I don't actually see
> a post from anyone on the desktop or GNOME teams.
>

I saw the flurry of frantic IRC conversations among your coworkers
scrambling to figure out which one of them was going to set you straight.
That's the only reason I was made aware of the thread.



> It's also not easy to find the correct information. People who have
> issues with GNOME 3 design are generally referred to gnome3.org, or the
> FAQ at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/FAQ , or the design
> whiteboards at http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards ;
> I've been looking through all this stuff for ten minutes and I can't
> find anything that accurately reflects the current actual status of the
> shutdown/restart/suspend design. The document on this -
> http://live.gnome.org/GnomeShell/Design/Whiteboards/SystemStopRestart -
> refers explicitly to a 'Restart' option which does not exist in my
> up-to-date F15 system. So what *is* the party line here, anyway?
>

What I hope you would take away from my admonishment and suggestion is only
the suggestion component: lurk on the IRC channel so you can pop over and
ask *before* you respond. Often times, the discussion to come up with the
right response is itself informative.


I'm not paid to work on the desktop, by the way. I'm paid to test stuff,
> or rather, to facilitate community testing of stuff. As far as that
> goes, I will work professionally to ensure that we do as much as we can
> to test that GNOME 3 does what it's designed to do. But *personally*,
> I'm just a GNOME user - a longstanding GNOME user - who is, like many
> other GNOME users, rather frustrated by a lot of the design choices made
> in GNOME 3, which seem to target a potential audience whose chances of
> materializing are at best dubious, in preference to the audience of
> real, existing GNOME users. I perfectly understand the different
> possible positions on this, but I assert my right to represent mine. I'm
> raising my personal issues here, I'm not representing Red Hat or Fedora
> QA.
>

Sure. And I understand that. But I think you might feel differently if you
had a chance to get a more nuanced answer from the decision makers involved
in an interactive forum like IRC and then you could, perhaps, pass along
that nuanced position more effectively.

You *are* doing a good job as evidenced by the vast majority of the messages
that you send to test@ but I hope that you see that I'm suggesting a subtle
change in your work flow that might, at least, make the F15 release go
slightly better.
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