Timeline for answer to What does constructive criticism of a design change look like? by Masked Man
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
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21 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Aug 15, 2018 at 10:56 | comment | added | Masked Man | @NathanTuggy Just one little nitpick about that "net +2 score" remark. I posted those answers 12 days after the announcement, and they appear on page 3 when you sort the answers by age. As we all know well by now, SE voting system rewards the early answers, and the later answers only get trickle of votes.Not that I am implying my answer would have got a thousand upvotes if I had posted it first, but that's not really relevant to the point. They had kept the announcement "featured" for that long, and they did not explicitly say they would respond only to highly upvoted feedback. | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 9:12 | comment | added | Nathan Tuggy | @gnat: Anecdotally: I downvoted, but I don't like the welcoming initiative (and have not been especially shy about saying so), and interestingly enough, use Pale Moon like Masked Man does, for similar reasons. I just think this answer went off into the weeds of overfocusing on minor things (net +2 score post got ignored when considering site design, news at 11) and downplaying significant challenges. | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 8:08 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Nicol "Why can't they do the cost/benefit for themselves and decide not to do it?" Isn't that exactly what I am saying? If they have already decided what they want to do, why waste everyone's time asking for feedback? I find it quite interesting that a cost/benefit analysis doesn't consider the people who would actually use the product. But like I said, if that's how they want to run the company, they are certainly entitled to do so. | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 8:06 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Nicol "They fixed the font issues." ... by dropping Unicode support despite 30 out of 174 sites needing it. Is that really a problem they could have figured out only after user feedback? That is more or less how political propaganda works, by the way. First a politician proposes a controversial law, then there is much opposition by the public, so the politician "respects public opinion" and drops the law, somehow gaining a moral high ground for not really doing anything. | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 2:14 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @MaskedMan: "It is certainly not impossible to pay off technical debt while also retaining customizations." Just because it's "possible" doesn't mean it's worth the effort. Why do they have to decide to invest in such a thing in order to be considered "listening" to their users? Why can't they do the cost/benefit for themselves and decide not to do it? | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 2:12 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @MaskedMan: "It seems we are back to "actionable" being only things they were planning to do anyway." They fixed the font issues. The original design was that all sites would use the same fonts, but when people pointed out how unworkable that was, SO acted. That is the point of asking for feedback; to find problems before instituting a change, then assessing how to address them. SO hasn't considered font issues, so they planned on standardizing it. But thanks to our feedback, they changed. | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 0:31 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Nicol Why does it have to be one or the other? Customization of vote buttons and badge icons isn't such a hard problem. Every other site does something similar to this (WordPress, et. al.). It is certainly not impossible to pay off technical debt while also retaining customizations. It seems we are back to "actionable" being only things they were planning to do anyway. What is the point of asking for feedback if you are going to ignore them anyway? | |
| Aug 15, 2018 at 0:27 | comment | added | Masked Man | @HDE It has been 5 months now since those suggestions were put up. That isn't enough time to respond? OK, will check again in another couple of years or so. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 22:20 | comment | added | gnat | interesting that vote split here shows 6 votes down, same amount as on another answer written in similar tone (that other answer eventually got positive score due to 20 upvotes). As if there is a group of voters who believe that answers here must be written in a friendly, cooperative... welcoming manner and any deviation from this is bad | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 19:32 | comment | added | HDE 226868 | @MaskedMan There have been a whole lot of suggestions put forward about basically every aspect of the themes, and there are only a finite number of people on the design team. SE can't respond to everything very quickly, and responding to some of these takes a lot of thought. Even rejecting something requires effort to be put in to considering ideas. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 19:24 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @MaskedMan: Let me put it another way. What does it take for them to be considered to be "listening" to the community while still not doing "bad icon/vote button customization"? | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 19:23 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @MaskedMan: "Only actions that didn't go far outside what they were planning to do anyway." Well, yes. Again, "don't do that" is not an actionable suggestion. If they have a problem with technical debt and maintenance, telling them "don't do the thing that fixes your technical debt/maintenance problem" isn't going to be acted upon. "The badge icon customization and vote button customization specifically linked in my post have not been acted upon despite being highly upvoted." So now we're back to them having to act on them or be declared "not listening". | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 18:52 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Nicol "So "listening" means that every individual, independent suggestion must have a personalized response?" Yes, because that is what they said they would do. "Don't post feedback as comments, post them as answers, so that we can respond to them." or something along those lines. "dozens of others from that very thread were either responded to or acted upon." Only actions that didn't go far outside what they were planning to do anyway. The badge icon customization and vote button customization specifically linked in my post have not been acted upon despite being highly upvoted. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 18:20 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @MaskedMan: So "listening" means that every individual, independent suggestion must have a personalized response? That's just not a scalable idea. And while your particular ideas were not responded to, dozens of others from that very thread were either responded to or acted upon. So I'm having a hard time seeing the "not listening" thing... | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 18:10 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Nicol Bolas I did not say anything of the sort. Posting 4 links to the site on its own home page is bad web design. Besides, my point is not that they didn't do what I asked, but that they didn't respond at all. I am a bit surprised the ZERO in capital bold didn't make that clear. Regarding gathering statistics, what's the point of having "users" on the primary navigation bar, along with a paywall that nobody really cares about? That's the point of collecting statistics, to improve the user experience which is what is claimed in that announcement. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 18:05 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Jon No, I'm afraid I haven't had any such misunderstanding. I only gathered from the post that sites are going to lose customization and nobody likes the change. While these "beta blue" sites getting more options is certainly welcome, it need not be at the expense of other sites losing customizations. If every single site looks the same (except for a banner and maybe some colors here and there), that's not really "customization". It is also not clear why it should be this way, since changing icons is a matter of choosing an underlying image sprite, the code doesn't need to change at all. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 18:03 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | @MaskedMan: "not having 4 links to Stack Overflow on Stack Overflow, hiding the left bar by default and gathering usage statistics are "actionable"." That doesn't mean that not doing them is tantamount to not listening. You're basically saying that if SO disagrees with a piece of feedback, then they're "not listening". That's not a reasonable standard. Also, if the left nav is going to happen for reasons that have nothing to do with "usage statistics" (ie: teams), what's the point of gathering them? | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 17:59 | comment | added | Masked Man | @Nicol Bolas If the definition of "actionable" is "what we wanted to anyway", then that is correct, of course. Go through the feedback on the ch ch ch ch (of which I have linked to two of the answers by other users). Many of those responses are "actionable". I also believe that not having 4 links to Stack Overflow on Stack Overflow, hiding the left bar by default and gathering usage statistics are "actionable". Especially the last one, because it doesn't even ask them to change anything. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 17:49 | comment | added | Jon Ericson StaffMod | I think you misunderstood my point about some sites getting more customizations. Right now 100+ sites have the beta theme from 6 years ago. (The announcement doesn't even have images anymore!) Those sites have 2 customizations: favicon (most are the site's initials) and site name. As I said, I'm also sad we're losing custom badges and voting icons, but I'm really excited for the sites that currently are "beta blue" to have some other options. It is my job to care about sites in addition to the ones that have designs. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 17:41 | comment | added | Nicol Bolas | I'm not sure I understand what you're getting at here. You seem to be suggesting that, if someone is not doing what a piece of feedback tells them to do, then they're not "listening" to it. Yes, they're not going to follow any feedback of the form, "Don't change anything." These are changes they need to make for reasons that they've outlined. The question is how to make those changes in such a way as to allow everyone to still get done the stuff they need to. They're still listening; just not to feedback that is not actionable. | |
| Aug 14, 2018 at 17:26 | history | answered | Masked Man | CC BY-SA 4.0 |