"hacking the social system"

[James Richard Tyrer]

My favorite developer :-) posted this:

http://aseigo.blogspot.com/2005_03_01_aseigo_archive.html

<<
when a software developer wants a program to do something, they usually 
scratch that itch and do something about it. so why is it that when the 
users have a problem with the social scene, they don't try and scratch 
their itch? why don't they try and hack the social system?

i bet if these users put their heads together they could create some 
(social) system that would coax and encourage developers in the 
direction they'd like. and no, bitching on the internet doesn't count as 
a social system.

so all you disgruntled users: scratch your itch. come up with some sort 
of system that works for you and invite the developers to it. make it 
inviting. make it worth our while and your while. you're the only ones 
who know what you want. so hack the system to get it.
 >>

Classic Skinnerian (behaviorist) Psychology

http://www.bartleby.com/61/32/S0453250.html

tells us what to do to hack the social system.  We need to change the 
"contingencies of reinforcement".  If you have no idea what this is, 
please use Google (> 3K hits).

Basically, we need to find ways for rewarding developers for doing what 
we want.  For the issue of conforming to the design guidelines, we need 
to award their applications certification that they conform to the KDE 
UI guidelines.  For usability in general, we need to praise applications 
that have good usability.

Now, I don't know exactly how to do this, but I am just opening the 
subject for everyone to kick around -- that is something that engineer 
types do.

It would appear to me that for the certification that we would need a 
free standing committee to make the decisions by first discussion and 
then a vote.  Perhaps we should have Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and 
Rhodium certification levels corresponding to the percentage of yes 
votes.  And somewhere on the Wiki where we post this information.  Note 
that we would NOT tell anyone what to do, but when they did it the way 
the we considered correct, we would praise them.

We could also offer help by either reports or patches.

-- 
JRT