[Feedback] What did you do with Amarok?

[Alejandro Wainzinger]

On Wed, Jul 29, 2009 at 6:19 AM, Nicolas Will<nico at youplala.net> wrote:
> On Tue, 2009-07-28 at 20:16 -0400, Jeff Mitchell wrote:
>> You're just another whiny user reiterating the same thing that's been
>> said a bazillion times on this list ("man, you guys fucked it up"),
>> with
>> a bazillion direct and indirect insults ("...killer application that
>> Amarok used to be") so that we can give the same answer that we've
>> given
>> a bazillion times on this list ("next time read the release notes,
>> dumbass"). With the cherry on top of telling us how we're the reason
>> his
>> friends went back to Windows.
>>
>> Seriously, this is supposed to *motivate* us?
>>
>> If you want to motivate us to continue working and making it better
>> and
>> adding back features, how about some, I don't know, *constructive*
>> criticism, or maybe even a "thanks for spending your time and effort
>> on
>> this purely volunteer project, I know you guys got a lot of harsh
>> feedback on 2.0, but 2.1 really improved over 2.0 and I'm really
>> looking
>> forward to a ton of improvements in 2.2 as well".
>>
>> Otherwise, go away.
>
> Nice!
>
> I'm guessing that your frustration as a developer is just as great as
> ours, as users.

Greater actually.  We give reasons for our frustrations.  Users
generally whine without real explanation.

>
> Mainly the criticisms from users were not as insulting as you are
> hinting, at least on this list. Many tried to be constructive too.
> Sometimes criticisms are a form of (very twisted, I agree) thank you for
> a great work, past and present.

Not insulting... hmm.... you be the judge:

"I was nearly shocked how bad 2.1 is!"
"... but man things have sucked really bad for a long time."
"you as developpers need to accept that you reallly made a mistake
releasing amarok as poor as the 2nd version was"

Need I go on?  Not likely, you shouldn't have trouble finding more
such enlightening quotes.

>
> Your knee-jerk reaction, however, is not very much constructive.

You're right, we should be happy people are giving harmful and useless
complaints and not express any emotion at all at being constantly and
illogically attacked.

>
> Yes 2.x will be great. Yes your work is important and will produce
> something that stands apart.
>
> But yes, 1.4 gave your users a feeling of comfort that is now gone with
> 2.x.

Comfort means what, a player that always stays the same and doesn't
evolve?  Sure, I can see the value in that in a world that stays the
same and doesn't evolve.

>
> And yes, most distros, not just Ubuntu, went to 2.x by lack of support.
> And no, a single app will not determine a choice of distro.
>
> Did the development team screw-up? Yes. Not with the application, its
> features and functionalities, but with communication and transition.
> Well, shit happen, we'll all survive, but the reaction is in line with
> how your user-base loves your product.

That's funny, I'm pretty sure we were _quite clear_ as to what 2.0
would be and what it wouldn't be, but I suppose blogging and release
announcements aren't clear enough for users, we need to put a pop up
that says "If you are looking for a finished product, please go
elsewhere, this is in heavy development," but that just looks tacky,
doesn't it?

>
> Finally, when you work on something, be ready to accept the positive and
> the negative comments. The positive feels good, but the negative feels
> at least twice as bad when you are as involved as you are, and you
> remember it longer. But users tend to remember the "go away" comments
> too.

No, we don't have to accept anything actually.  We _happen to_ listen
to our users, something other projects may not be willing to do.
Comments are welcome.  Justified comments that is.  Meaningless
comments with no basis that serve only as a soapbox to complain
because a user is unhappy for some vague reason are... well,
meaningless.

As for the "go away" comments, it's our way of telling poisonous
people who are not adding anything of meaning to the discussion and
are just taking uninformed stabs, to find another project to try to
poison and kill, because that's exactly what these comments do.

This project is a team of developers, most of whom are unpaid for
their work on it.  Free time and energy go into it.  This is not a
paid service.  Each of these poisonous complaints just makes it that
much harder to keep working to make things better, so if your aim is
to help the project and not to poison it: stop the meaningless
baseless complaints, make constructive criticisms and work with us to
resolve issues, and file bugs for bad behaviour.  Otherwise, we are
not very inclined to deal with you.

>
> Nico
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> Amarok mailing list
> Amarok at kde.org
> https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/amarok
>