Re: on the role of debian among its derivatives
On 27/08/10 at 10:43 +0200, Stefano Zacchiroli wrote:
[ Agreed with everything you wrote before that ]
> > I don't see handling Ubuntu in some special way in DDPO (as proposed
> > in this discussion) as such an horrendous thing. Couldn't we simply
> > ack the fact that having a bug report rate that is 10 times higher
> > than the one in "core" Debian is making it special in some way?
>
> Now, this is tricky as it's where principles clash with reality. The
> column in DDPO is surely technically useful, for all of us who would
> like to benefit from Ubuntu-originated feedback and work. The fact that
> the column exists is just great.
>
> At the same time I don't see much of a benefit in having it enabled by
> default. After this discussion, I've checked my DDPO settings to notice
> that I've been using from years a DDPO cookie who stored my preferences,
> so I doubt I'll ever have to care again bout the default view. This is
> probably the case for 99% of regular DDPO users.
>
> So I must admit I find all this technical discussion a bit useless: what
> are the benefits of having that column visible *by default*? Just make
> sure it is evident that columns are customizable and how preferences can
> be saved (cookie/bookmark/whatever). In fact, there's a clear usability
> problem in DDPO as the number of columns grows; the best default view is
> probably one where the shown columns are kept at the very minimum as
> that, in turn, will also invite more eagerly users to explore which
> columns they can enable.
I'm not trying to force people to use the Ubuntu column or to care about
Ubuntu. However, based on discussions, I have the impression that many
people just don't know that this column exists.
You assume that, if we disable most of the columns, people will think
"it's surprising that this interface doesn't do more, let's search the
hidden options for more features", and thus add the additional columns
they want. I don't think that it is a good solution (because it means
that DDPO would be crippled by default). I prefer to make everything
visible by default, and make it easy for people to customize their view
to fix the usability problem in a way that really suits them (again, 3
mouse clicks!).
I agree with the general usability problems of DDPO, that limit its
usefulness. There's an open bug against qa.debian.org to develop
something in the lines of a "per-maintainer TODO page" (#461898). I
profundly agree with that, and would tackle that if I had more
time[1,2]. It's something quite easy to do with UDD, so if someone is
interested...
[1] http://lists.debian.org/debian-qa/2010/08/msg00014.html
[2] http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/2010/02/msg00320.html
Lucas
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