unity-design team mailing list archive

[Jeremy Bicha <jbicha@xxxxxxxxxx>]

On 4 May 2012 00:10, Mark Shuttleworth <mark@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> There's lots of value in having a public, unmoderated list for design
> discussions. It's good to have a place where anybody can generate ideas.
> And this list is fine for that. I'd like to propose an additional list,
> unity-distilled, which would be public and unmoderated, but open by
> invitation only. Participation there would be predicated on a shared
> understanding of our values, goals and modus operandi. People would be
> invited if they show an interest, insight into and agreement with the
> answers to the above boring threads, and several more like them. I'm
> sure we'll have vigorous debates on -distilled, but folk there would
> have demonstrated an ability to have the debate, settle the question and
> move on to more interesting matters rather than letting the same topics
> come up repeatedly.

I object to "People would be invited if they show...agreement with the
answers to the above boring threads." I like helping out with Ubuntu
desktop design and working with the full-time designers to suggest
improvements or reporting things that don't work as well. Sometimes I
even submit patches to fix the bugs! And I generally like Unity but
there's no way I agree with every design decision (and I'm sure Mark
and the designers don't either).

I don't think that agreeing with the design specifics should be a
requirement to participate (and what happens if someone agrees with
everything except for the window buttons on the left -- would they
allowed to post or not?). We want to encourage diversity of
perspective while focusing on creating a single best default user
experience for Ubuntu. I.e. not groupthink.

The unity-design list (and its predecessor the ayatana list) is
amazing in that anyone has a direct line of communication to Mark &
the rest of the design team. It shows that Canonical *respects* the
contributions of the community. It's important if you as a non-insider
want to influence Ubuntu's design that you *respect* others,
specifically by not wasting time and cluttering inboxes by discussing
things that have already been well-discussed. There are plenty of
other pieces of the desktop that need attention and are open for
improvement.

I don't think the list should be completely unmoderated (to encourage
focus), but I don't care for "censorship" either.

Jeremy