I’m going to give you a few days, and be more interested in your opinion then (but be genuinely interested in your opinion then). I think that having announced your early opinion publicly may have been a mistake.
FWIW Matt, I’ll take the karma hit and say that I think the new design is nice. There are minor things that could be tweaked, but I can’t help but think that all this strong negativity is mostly just status quo bias.
Every time Facebook rolls out a new layout, my news feed fills up with people screaming that they’re really going to leave this time, and I get invitations to 5 different “Bring Back the Old Way!” groups. Eventually you start to notice a pattern, and to distrust your Automatic Strong Negative Reaction to Any Change. You let that phase pass, actually put in the minor effort to learn the new interface, and a week later you don’t even notice the difference.
There are little things in the interface that I’m sure will fall into place in the coming weeks (for example, I agree with the notions that there’s a little too much separation on the nested comments, and that the envelope icon is counter-intuitive) , but overall I think that if you “redesigned” the site in reverse, you’d have just as much (probably more) complaining.
It looks good, some of the new features are really nice, and I see the rationale behind some of the more controversial ones. Thanks.
I’m going to give you a few days, and be more interested in your opinion then (but be genuinely interested in your opinion then).
Given that my most significant objection is in regard to a ‘feature’ that I have consistently objected to whenever it has been proposed in the last several years I do not anticipate my opinion changing between now and then. I also have not the slightest illusion about my ability to influence your decision now or then.
For what it is worth the design changes are excellent. If you constrained your influence to improving the graphical presentation then your work would be a valuable contribution worthy of much appreciation.
I also have not the slightest illusion about my ability to influence your decision now or then.
Have I earned that? I’ve changed my mind about a number of our design and functionality decisions in light of comments made in the past 24hrs. Is there some past public discussion I should review that’s good evidence I failed to change my mind when I should have?
wedrifid, you seem grumpier today than you have on any other day I’ve read your excellent contributions to this site. I’m pretty sure that I have an open mind today, because I’ve today concluded that several of our design decisions were errors/sub-optimal, and I’m working to fix them. All of them were (I hope obviously) made in good faith. Are you thinking clearly and positively about how you can best get your way today, or are you feeling grumpy and venting? Please, try hard to just win. I’ll try to help you.
If you constrained your influence to improving the graphical presentation then your work would be a valuable contribution worthy of much appreciation.
I’d love to give you an opportunity to retract that sentence. I think it implies more than is reasonable.
I just wanted to comment and say, seeing your replies has made it very clear that you are listening, and I really appreciate that. When the changes originally went live, I assumed they were a final version and we wouldn’t be seeing much else, especially since there wasn’t a top-level or even discussion post about it. I think a post illustrating this attitude (and ideally listing the changes made thus far, and anything planned-but-incomplete) could be really helpful—I know I’ve relaxed a lot now that it’s clear that (a) you’re not finished and (b) you’re open to feedback :)
Just my two cents, though. Just seeing the comments has done good by me, but I don’t think everyone sees those.
(Choice of post to reply to arbitrary; this one just happened to flip my threshold of “okay, matt seems to genuinely be listening to people who complain, even when they’re being very blunt”)
Thank you. I’m feeling very short of warm fuzzies today, and every little bit helps.
When the changes originally went live, I assumed they were a final version and we wouldn’t be seeing much else…
That seems to have been a very common assumption. I have found that surprising and am endeavoring to change minds on it. Writing a post would take me time I prefer to spend fixing issues, but I’m reaching out for help on managing the torrent of unhappy and expectations of future changes (I’m working today to try to decide what changes we should make, and we’ll start work next week on some changes and some reversions).
If you constrained your influence to improving the graphical presentation then your work would be a valuable contribution worthy of much appreciation.
I’d love to give you an opportunity to retract that sentence. I think it implies more than is reasonable.
If you read a little more literally you will observe that this is strictly a compliment. You already know that I consider the overall effect of the changes is ‘abominable’ and so no new slight is conveyed. Instead, it puts the “agree that we obviously disagree” parts to one side so that approval of the remainder can be honestly expressed. The design changes are overall a solid step forward in elegance. To what extent you appreciate that indication of approval depends on, among other things, to how much of your identity is invested in all the user interface development you have been involved in verses the amount you are invested in the functionality and policy decisions.
(Note, by the way, that you opened up communication with grinding your teeth then proceeded with an emphasis on other-optimisation. This almost never works unless you have a strong indication that the other is fully emersed into your frame. But who cares? You don’t need to engage with me or to control what expressions I make. You would lose almost nothing just by ignoring me and letting me answer CronoDAS’s question then move along.)
Please, try hard to just win.
Be very careful what you wish for. Wedrifid when he is trying hard to win scares me. Even in the few seconds it took to write this paragraph he plotted several paths for victory. They were… creative.
So that this context isn’t lost in this unfriendly exchange: I’ve enjoyed your contributions to this site for a long time, and expect to continue to enjoy them in the future. I have much respect for your clarity of thought and intelligence. Now…
You already know that I consider the overall effect of the changes is ‘abominable’
So you know why I’m still bothering you - Each change can be individually further tweaked, reverted, or replaced with something else. I’m uninterested in your opinion of the “overall effect” of the changes and interested in your particular thinking on each change. I’m more interested in your opinion after it seems to me that you’ve had the opportunity to understand our thinking behind each change rather than only your first responses.
You would lose almost nothing just by ignoring me and letting me answer CronoDAS’s question then move along.
Hmm… I seem to be assuming it’ll be easier for one of us to change the other’s mind than you do. I honestly don’t know whether I’d change my mind or you would, if we invested the time to understand each others reasons, but I think it likely enough that I’d profit from listening that I’m happily investing the time. … though, I guess you’ve not convinced me that today isn’t an uncharacteristically grumpy day for you, so I guess I will leave you alone for the next few hours.
Again: you have my respect and I expect to continue benefiting from your contributions to this site.
I seem to be assuming it’ll be easier for one of us to change the other’s mind than you do.
It isn’t personal. The prior for changing people’s mind is abysmal and in this case I am also able to take into account information about the political context. There are people with more status and more power than me who disagree with me on the underlying issue. One of them is Eliezer. This is not a situation in which I wish to internalise a goal of changing the mind of the implementors.
you’ve not convinced me that today isn’t an uncharacteristically grumpy day for you
Nor should I have, for it is a grumpy day. But that doesn’t mean I don’t endorse my comments fully on reflection. I also suggest you see aggression when there is mere flippancy, leaving you with more of a feeling of personal unpleasantness than I have.
I appreciate the attempt to maintain goodwill. That matters to me given that I’ll be returning to Melbourne once I’m done at Berkeley and I understand you are prominent among the Melbourne LW community.
Then goodwill is maintained, and I look forward to seeing you at a future Melbourne meetup. By the status afforded through karma, you’ll be by far the highest status participant if you do attend :)
I’m going to give you a few days, and be more interested in your opinion then (but be genuinely interested in your opinion then).
I think that having announced your early opinion publicly may have been a mistake.
FWIW Matt, I’ll take the karma hit and say that I think the new design is nice. There are minor things that could be tweaked, but I can’t help but think that all this strong negativity is mostly just status quo bias.
Every time Facebook rolls out a new layout, my news feed fills up with people screaming that they’re really going to leave this time, and I get invitations to 5 different “Bring Back the Old Way!” groups. Eventually you start to notice a pattern, and to distrust your Automatic Strong Negative Reaction to Any Change. You let that phase pass, actually put in the minor effort to learn the new interface, and a week later you don’t even notice the difference.
There are little things in the interface that I’m sure will fall into place in the coming weeks (for example, I agree with the notions that there’s a little too much separation on the nested comments, and that the envelope icon is counter-intuitive) , but overall I think that if you “redesigned” the site in reverse, you’d have just as much (probably more) complaining.
It looks good, some of the new features are really nice, and I see the rationale behind some of the more controversial ones. Thanks.
heh
Given that my most significant objection is in regard to a ‘feature’ that I have consistently objected to whenever it has been proposed in the last several years I do not anticipate my opinion changing between now and then. I also have not the slightest illusion about my ability to influence your decision now or then.
For what it is worth the design changes are excellent. If you constrained your influence to improving the graphical presentation then your work would be a valuable contribution worthy of much appreciation.
Have I earned that? I’ve changed my mind about a number of our design and functionality decisions in light of comments made in the past 24hrs. Is there some past public discussion I should review that’s good evidence I failed to change my mind when I should have?
wedrifid, you seem grumpier today than you have on any other day I’ve read your excellent contributions to this site. I’m pretty sure that I have an open mind today, because I’ve today concluded that several of our design decisions were errors/sub-optimal, and I’m working to fix them. All of them were (I hope obviously) made in good faith. Are you thinking clearly and positively about how you can best get your way today, or are you feeling grumpy and venting?
Please, try hard to just win. I’ll try to help you.
I’d love to give you an opportunity to retract that sentence. I think it implies more than is reasonable.
I just wanted to comment and say, seeing your replies has made it very clear that you are listening, and I really appreciate that. When the changes originally went live, I assumed they were a final version and we wouldn’t be seeing much else, especially since there wasn’t a top-level or even discussion post about it. I think a post illustrating this attitude (and ideally listing the changes made thus far, and anything planned-but-incomplete) could be really helpful—I know I’ve relaxed a lot now that it’s clear that (a) you’re not finished and (b) you’re open to feedback :)
Just my two cents, though. Just seeing the comments has done good by me, but I don’t think everyone sees those.
(Choice of post to reply to arbitrary; this one just happened to flip my threshold of “okay, matt seems to genuinely be listening to people who complain, even when they’re being very blunt”)
Thank you. I’m feeling very short of warm fuzzies today, and every little bit helps.
That seems to have been a very common assumption. I have found that surprising and am endeavoring to change minds on it. Writing a post would take me time I prefer to spend fixing issues, but I’m reaching out for help on managing the torrent of unhappy and expectations of future changes (I’m working today to try to decide what changes we should make, and we’ll start work next week on some changes and some reversions).
ETA: I thought of a shorter post I could write.
Very awesome. Thank you for providing that feedback in a visible place :)
If you read a little more literally you will observe that this is strictly a compliment. You already know that I consider the overall effect of the changes is ‘abominable’ and so no new slight is conveyed. Instead, it puts the “agree that we obviously disagree” parts to one side so that approval of the remainder can be honestly expressed. The design changes are overall a solid step forward in elegance. To what extent you appreciate that indication of approval depends on, among other things, to how much of your identity is invested in all the user interface development you have been involved in verses the amount you are invested in the functionality and policy decisions.
(Note, by the way, that you opened up communication with grinding your teeth then proceeded with an emphasis on other-optimisation. This almost never works unless you have a strong indication that the other is fully emersed into your frame. But who cares? You don’t need to engage with me or to control what expressions I make. You would lose almost nothing just by ignoring me and letting me answer CronoDAS’s question then move along.)
Be very careful what you wish for. Wedrifid when he is trying hard to win scares me. Even in the few seconds it took to write this paragraph he plotted several paths for victory. They were… creative.
So that this context isn’t lost in this unfriendly exchange: I’ve enjoyed your contributions to this site for a long time, and expect to continue to enjoy them in the future. I have much respect for your clarity of thought and intelligence.
Now…
So you know why I’m still bothering you -
Each change can be individually further tweaked, reverted, or replaced with something else. I’m uninterested in your opinion of the “overall effect” of the changes and interested in your particular thinking on each change. I’m more interested in your opinion after it seems to me that you’ve had the opportunity to understand our thinking behind each change rather than only your first responses.
Hmm… I seem to be assuming it’ll be easier for one of us to change the other’s mind than you do. I honestly don’t know whether I’d change my mind or you would, if we invested the time to understand each others reasons, but I think it likely enough that I’d profit from listening that I’m happily investing the time.
… though, I guess you’ve not convinced me that today isn’t an uncharacteristically grumpy day for you, so I guess I will leave you alone for the next few hours.
Again: you have my respect and I expect to continue benefiting from your contributions to this site.
It isn’t personal. The prior for changing people’s mind is abysmal and in this case I am also able to take into account information about the political context. There are people with more status and more power than me who disagree with me on the underlying issue. One of them is Eliezer. This is not a situation in which I wish to internalise a goal of changing the mind of the implementors.
Nor should I have, for it is a grumpy day. But that doesn’t mean I don’t endorse my comments fully on reflection. I also suggest you see aggression when there is mere flippancy, leaving you with more of a feeling of personal unpleasantness than I have.
I appreciate the attempt to maintain goodwill. That matters to me given that I’ll be returning to Melbourne once I’m done at Berkeley and I understand you are prominent among the Melbourne LW community.
Then goodwill is maintained, and I look forward to seeing you at a future Melbourne meetup.
By the status afforded through karma, you’ll be by far the highest status participant if you do attend :)