The designers took a big, unsolicited, passive-aggressive public dump on the design of Wikipedia – which is, for all its faults, undeniably a project that has attracted a million people to lavish love on it without pay – and now you profess astonishment that they got some harsh feedback?
Perhaps tomorrow you'll profess astonishment when someone walks into Yankee Stadium wearing a Red Sox shirt and uses the PA system to "objectively" redesign the Yankee pinstripes to "be more functional, more useful, more pleasing to the eye"? Oh, lordy, lordy, who could have predicted the harsh language in response? I thought New York was a civilized town!
If the designers had actually wanted to improve Wikipedia, the correct strategy is to start small and modestly, and aim the pitch at the decision makers - presumably Wikipedia has a design committee? - not the entire Internet. You suggest ideas one or two at a time and collect feedback as you go, not merely because you care what the customer thinks - you do, right? - but because you're trying to get them to feel invested in the new product instead of clinging reflexively to the old.
People don't see designs objectively; that's an artist's special power. The see designs like they see puppies. If a strange puppy walks in and starts fighting with my puppy I'll call Animal Control and have it dragged away in a cage. But if my new puppy chews the furniture, I might scold him, but I probably won't disown the little rascal. The secret is to introduce the small, cute, innocent little puppy to the customer and have it be petted for a while before you let it soil the old rug, drive the customer's other pets insane, and run up vet bills.
To use your metaphor, walking into the Yankee Stadium and using their PA would be akin to this person putting the new design up on Wikipedia, like on a talk page or linking to it from Wikipedia's entry on Wikipedia. No, the person put their new design up on a totally separate website.
He didn't say that Wikipedia has to change, it was merely just his design idea that he wanted to share with the world. Yes, if he actually wanted Wikipedia to change there is a process of contacting Wikipedia and going through the whole bureaucratic process but I think it was more of a show what's possible. Kind of like that design project that was on HN a while back showing a possible rebranding of Microsoft.
I may be in the minority here but I don't believe it warranted such harsh criticism.
"He didn't say that Wikipedia has to change, it was merely just his design idea that he wanted to share with the world."
Well, the cynic in me -- which I've been trying to restrain throughout the last few days of this discussion -- thinks he was doing it primarily as "content marketing" for his design firm. Maybe it's a little unfair to pin that motive on him. And I certainly have no way of knowing what the hidden agenda was, or even if there was one. But when you make a "pitch" to the entire Internet in this fashion, generally speaking, you're doing it to get attention (and business).
There's nothing wrong with content marketing. Some HN luminaries do it all the time. But the content has to provide some value, and a lot of folks (myself included) are still struggling to find the value in the Wikipedia redesign post.
Perhaps tomorrow you'll profess astonishment when someone walks into Yankee Stadium wearing a Red Sox shirt and uses the PA system to "objectively" redesign the Yankee pinstripes to "be more functional, more useful, more pleasing to the eye"? Oh, lordy, lordy, who could have predicted the harsh language in response? I thought New York was a civilized town!
If the designers had actually wanted to improve Wikipedia, the correct strategy is to start small and modestly, and aim the pitch at the decision makers - presumably Wikipedia has a design committee? - not the entire Internet. You suggest ideas one or two at a time and collect feedback as you go, not merely because you care what the customer thinks - you do, right? - but because you're trying to get them to feel invested in the new product instead of clinging reflexively to the old.
People don't see designs objectively; that's an artist's special power. The see designs like they see puppies. If a strange puppy walks in and starts fighting with my puppy I'll call Animal Control and have it dragged away in a cage. But if my new puppy chews the furniture, I might scold him, but I probably won't disown the little rascal. The secret is to introduce the small, cute, innocent little puppy to the customer and have it be petted for a while before you let it soil the old rug, drive the customer's other pets insane, and run up vet bills.