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Subject: Re: Replaygain without a setting, and other menu cleaning.

Re: Replaygain without a setting, and other menu cleaning.

From: Paul Louden <paulthenerd_at_gmail.com>
Date: Sat, 20 Jun 2009 07:51:02 -0500

Jeff Goode wrote:
>
> I do have to object to the ingrained arrogance on display here by some
> posters. How else can you describe an attitude that states: we
> designed such-and-such a feature, so you must use it.

Read what is said, rather than assuming implied things. Nobody said you
must use it. You can opt in to using it by including the supported tags.
Seriously, if you don't have the tags, you don't use it. It's an opt
*in* by adding them.

> That's getting away from the philosophy that the end-user's needs
> should be satisfied first and foremost, and it's the developer's job
> to decide how best to do that. That doesn't mean dictating what those
> needs are. Taking options *away* from the end-user For-His-Own-Good,
> or Because-We-Say-So, or even
> Because-We-Don't-Do-That-Nobody-Should-Do-That, is rampant arrogance.

What option is taken away? You can avoid using replaygain by not having
the tags for it. If you didn't want it, why is your music tagged such?
It's an issue of "having something just work without a user needing to
know about a setting nested in the menu somewhere" vs "letting people be
lazy with their collections." It's an option between two types of user
friendliness.

It's arrogance in my mind to take such an absolute view that "if I have
to do ANY work to avoid using a feature, the developers have forced me
to use it because it's absolutely unreasonable that I might have to
actually manage my collection, and therefor I can get away with
statements like saying things like they told me 'you must use the
feature' when in reality it's nowhere near so dire of a situation."

> Be developers. Do cool stuff. Design great features. But don't
> unnecessarily limit the end-user's options because you don't do things
> that way. Chances are very good that somebody out there does. Faulty
> tags or no.

So tell me how your options are limited if you don't have faulty tags,
rather than ranting about a *proposal* that *has not been implemented*
and was specifically brought up for discussion to get feedback BEFORE
anything was forced on anybody?

Seriously guy, you need to lighten up and understand that ideas get
discussed and debated. At no point were you forced to do anything. If
feedback WASN'T wanted, the idea would've been implemented without your
say. You should be saying "thanks for taking the time to discuss this
with us, and asking us for more information when we didn't cover
everything to a degree enough that you understood fully why we wanted it
that way."

Saying "how dare you for suggesting I might not have good reasons"
because you interpreted "asking what those reasons are" as "you don't
have reasons, go away" is not a way to encourage people to seek your
feedback in the future.

You need to read things literally in text. If you assume intonation
you're just going to get yourself worked up over a conversation where
there is no intonation, and you're creating your own hassle, as well as
discouraging people from trying to get more information from you in the
future. Especially when you call such communication attempts "arrogance"
when they actually tried to get as much information from you as they
could, instead of simply dismissing you outright and ignoring you (which
at least to me seems like the actually arrogant option).
Received on 2009-06-20

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