the confessional

the whole "Enter sends in Kopete" conversation (and i use that word lightly in this context) has been most interesting. so far i've been told all sorts of things that have been like revelations from the breaking clouds for me (sarcasm?), covering everything from the style of my blogging to the content found herein.

apparently i should use the shift key "properly", e.g. capitalize sentence beginnings and not use ALL CAPS for emphasis because that's shouting. thanks for the advice, but i like how i misuse my shift key (take a look at the by-line to my blog). and i'm not shouting, i'm using something in place of bold. old skool, baby! speaking of shift keys, it's interesting that all-lowercase is as easy and in some cases easier to read than mixed case! so are thinner columns of text. i wonder if this blog engine supports multicolumn entries without forcing me to do tables in html. hm...

oh, and a "use case" has nothing to do with usability either. some kind fellow straight out of software requirements felt like informing me of this, because, as we all know, there is exactly one type of and one purpose for the phrase "use case". sorry to tread on your terminology.

i'm also supposed to be nicer in my headlines, because saying things like "a lesson to all" is mean spirited or something. i wonder, is it akin to jumping out of a closet and growling like a bear when someone walks down the hallway at night?

eventually we get to more topically relevant input, such as when i say that "yes it's a multilineedit, but that technical detail doesn't override how people use it" the appropriate reply seems to be to shout ever louder "but, but.. it IS a multilineedit!" uh-huh... apparently if at first the user doesn't "get it", just repeat it louder until they do! (or is it "until they ignore you and your software?")

and then it's not enough that users ask frequently how to change this. suddenly the origin of the users is in question. it's not enough that our users are unhappy or befuddled, we need to ensure that their unhappiness is not due to some past we don't care about or agree with. the fact that our users have found an ergonomic way to use these things isn't in and of itself enough? where one learns a good way of doing something shouldn't matter. if it's an inferior way of doing things, then we may have to weigh the issue, but it it isn't inferior, then why complain?

i do wish those providing feedback would spend more time considering how IM chatting is like conversation or like IRC, though. seems few, save those who agree with the change, want to broach the topic of what the actual purpose of the application is and how people accomplish that task (which i called a "use case", mea culpa!). instead, we are requested to pay attention to the widget class and my use of words.

when it comes down to it, we tend to dislike change. we tend to like keeping to our rigid rules, even when they are superstition. we are creatures of comfort, and those who move the proverbial pillows on us piss us off.

there have been a number of changes made in KDE over the last couple years that have met with similar morose frustration and anger. on the other side of the release, these same changes have often been praised by reviewers and users alike. as KDE marches towards better usability, these sorts of issues keep arising. and in a project where peer review is a primary mechanism for stability, if one starts having to pick and choose which peer review to pay attention to, does that defeat the whole purpose of it? i think that's where the idea of "meritocracy" comes in. we build reputations through our abilities and actions, and that allows others to weight our input. this has been one of the key points that has kept KDE as a whole from devolving into chaos.

some have thought it works by "whoever commits the code to cvs first" or "whoever talks the longest/loudest". we've seen a few examples of this in the recent past, but generally the meritocracy concept remains more or less in tact as a balancing rod.

as for the content of my blog, i'm not writing here to change the world. i'm writing here because these are the thoughts in my head, and this is my navel-gazing look-out point onto the fractured state of those thoughts.