Mailinglist Archive: opensuse (1702 mails)

[Sven Burmeister <sven.burmeister@xxxxxxx>]

Am Samstag, 5. September 2009 04:57:05 schrieb Jim Henderson:
> On Fri, 04 Sep 2009 22:43:14 -0400, Bob S wrote:
> > I wish you would stop using that word "whine". It is very offensive to
> > tell someone they are "whining" when all they really want is a viable
> > explanation. You seem to think that any question asked or explanation
> > requested is a "whine". Not so.  I don't believe that you are a native
> > English speaker and maybe therein lies the problem.
>
> Well said.  It would be good if instead of focusing on the people, we
> focused on the issues.  When the discussion breaks down into
> classification of people and their behaviour, useful discussion stops and
> we end up not solving the problems.
>
> Sven (et al), it doesn't really help to approach something like this from
> a "you get it for free so stop complaining". 

Which is why there was information about activities given first alongside the 
fact that with them one would get the desired one wallpaper per virtual 
desktop.

Anyway, it's sentences like (and I could find a lot more if I's search the 
archives):

"Well, thank goodness for that. We are back to square one."

or

"Wow. And all this time I have been using multiple desktops to do this. I
wish all the former "Windows" programmers (who only had one desktop to
work with) now working on KDE4 would learn what virtual desktops do
instead of re-inventing the wheel."

or

"This concept of Activities is just well how can i put this but remain polite 
"crap"  just about fits the bill"

or 

"Any way to just get rid of this concept of Activities all together?
It was un-needed, a duplication of what already existed and totally
confusing.

What were development resources wasted on this?  Were the developers
totally unaware of multiple virtual desktops which has been in every
version of Suse since 6?  Its announced like its a totally new invention
that nobody has ever seen before!"

that show that some people on this list, and its always the same group, do not 
only ask for explanations and accept that new features might not have a value 
for them while they do for others, but that they like to add some allegations. 
At that point,  "you get it for free so stop complaining" is my answer to 
those allegations because to me, constructive criticism ends where these 
allegations are put in by those reporting an issue.

If somebody would simply ask: "How do I get different wallpapers per virtual 
desktop", he would get the answer.

Same if somebody asked: "Would it be possible to have the "different 
wallpapers per virtual desktop" with less clicks?".

Yet as you can see in the emails I answered to, they cannot resist to add some 
allegation.

> The people participating
> here on both sides of the discussion have a common goal - to make things
> better.  Dismissing user complaints tells the users they're not
> important.  Since one of the KDE project team's goals seems to be to
> maintain KDE's position in the openSUSE user community as the "preferred"
> desktop, it seems counterintuitive to me to dismiss the user community's
> input, instead attacking the people (or being perceived to be attacking -
> from a PR standpoint, they're one and the same) who are trying to help
> you turn out a better product.

True and this works very well with most KDE users.

> So while I think it's incumbent on everyone to calm down and discuss the
> issues rationally and not make it personal, I think it's probably even
> more important that the developers recognize that when someone raises an
> issue about something that didn't work the way they expected, they've at
> least taken the time to provide the feedback to you.  That says something
> about the community's dedication to KDE - if they didn't provide
> feedback, that would be a bad thing.  So let's take the feedback given as
> first and foremost being offered to make things *better* and go from
> there.

As mentioned above, constructive criticism without any allegations is dealt 
with very well and if you read the archives you will notice that its only the 
same group of people that cannot resist from adding a little extra to their 
questions or feedback.

You will also notice that KDE devs often start participating in a thread, i.e. 
answering the question, and then drop-out because the same known pattern of 
KDE4 bashing starts all over again. I think it is fair that developers do not 
put up with the allegations and waste their time on those that cannot stay 
with constructive criticism. Same for this thread btw. have a look at the 
answer to Will's email.

Sven
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