[wp-testers] Center

[zamoose at gmail.com]

I think I may have come across as harsher than intended, Matt, and if
that's the case, I apologize.  I'm trying to express that I understand
the inherent tensions we're dealing with here and that I can see
validity in both sides' points of view.

On 3/28/08, Matt Mullenweg <m at mullenweg.com> wrote:

[snip]

> That was completely out of line and an ad hominem attack. Talk about the
> ideas, not the person. If you can't do that, find another mailing list.
>

Not sure if that was directed at me, but I didn't make the comment in question.

> This has been in core in a public repository for 3 months now. There
> have been over 50k downloads of a non-release version, and thousands of
> people have sent in feedback. The feedback, especially those who took
> the time to provide it earlier in the process, has resulted in
> assumptions being retested, designs redone, and even *gasp* the
> introduction of an option (for colors), and those of you around for a
> while know I am usually religiously opposed to options.
>

But the core assumptions in regards to the layout and workflow haven't
really been up for questioning.

I do think that visual design and ergonomics/aesthetics are
fundamentally different than creating code, as they rely far more upon
impressions and emotions.  This is, in my view, where the harsh
reactions are coming from and, in many ways, is why many Open Source
projects have such lousy visual design.  FLOSS attracts great coders
in droves and people with really great ideas and visions, but (at
least until recently) hasn't attracted many artsy types, and therefore
we're left with a situation where coders have to fire up the ol' CSS
editor, color wheel and Photoshop.  The results are rarely pretty.

> And aesthetics has been one of the areas most people have agreed is
> weakest in the WP dashboard. Not being afraid of trying a new process to
> address that persistent problem I think is indicative of why its been
> able to remain popular in a vastly changing web landcsape where many
> other products have come and gone.
>

Here I disagree.  I think WordPress is popular because it's

1) easy to install
2) easy to extend
3) easy to find great new looks for

It's never been about the admin screens, and so much of the
adaptability is not due to WP itself but rather highly-motivated
coders willing to create really awesome plugins that do things people
want to do.


> > But Matt, here's the problem: you have a whole slew of faithful users
> > that bring nothing BUT preconceived notions to the table when
> > approaching a new release and when you flippantly dismiss their input
> > because a whole bunch of n00bs like paper mock-ups, well...
>
> That is false. The new admin would be a LOT different if existing users
> were not an concern.

I'd love to see what you, Happy Cog, or anyone else has up their
sleeves if this condition were true. And, if we're already moving the
radio buttons on people's Pontiacs, why not replace the steering wheel
with a joystick?

> In development we take a fairly conservative stance
> against leaving existing users out in the cold, and frankly it's
> interesting to see some of the same people fairly radical about pushing
> people into a new language requirement (PHP4 to PHP5), which would have
> prevented hundreds of thousands of people from upgrading, be so
> reactionary about the moving of a category box, where the worst case
> scenario seems to be that someone forgets to put in a category.
>
> Let me repeat that, even if the category placement is worse, which I
> believe it is not, the worst thing that happens is that people have to
> scroll down a bit to edit a category, or that they forget (once? twice?)
> and need to re-edit the entry.
>

No, the worst outcome is that they get ticked off and switch to MT, TXP, etc.



--
-Doug
http://literalbarrage.org/blog/