
On why removing features makes people unhappy - dgsiegel
http://www.dgsiegel.net/news/2013_07_27-on_why_removing_features_makes_people_unhappy
======
belorn
It's good that Gnome developers recognize that users do get unhappy when Gnome
removes features or makes non-backwards compatible changes.

Next step is of course to find understanding that users' reactions are based
on numerous reasons, rather than originating from _one_ source. Losing access
to features previously found is one cause, but so is the lack of rational and
_balanced_ discussions explaining why the features were removed, and missing
instructions on how to get similar functionality in Gnome 3, or the lack of
tools to migrate old Gnome 2 applications to Gnome 3. To take a comparing
example of Gnome2->Gnome3, lets look at Python 2->Python 3 and see what the
Python Software Foundation did right.

#1: Features removed were announced years before they were removed, with clear
instructions on how to migrate to better and improved features.

#2: 2to3 was invented, an automatic translator for source code from Python 2
to Python 3, to make it easy for developers to migrate over to new version.

#3: Any feature that was removed had clear documentation and discussion that
explained why it was removed, and what users could do to move forward.

#4: New features were back-ported from Python 3 and made available in Python
2. This allowed users to test out things from the security and familiarity of
Python 2, without getting tangled in all the changes at once in Python 3.

#5: Python 2 and Python 3 was/is developed in parallel, giving people plenty
of glimpses (and warnings) of the future, and insight over what would be
future safe activities.

Gnome 3 did none of these things. One could argue that there were practical
reasons why, but not doing any of those things will hurt a project. At any
rate, I have not seen Gnome 3 give any practical reasons why they did such an
abrupt move from Gnome 2 to Gnome 3, beyond that they "had to".

(Written by a Gnome 3 user, on Gnome 3)

~~~
tinco
I'm not very familiar with the Gnome team, but isn't this just a resource
problem?

They're trying to build a better product, and they're only a bunch of part-
time volunteers.

At some point they had a bunch of features, but to keep up with the other
desktops (Aero, Quartz) they had to focus on rearchitecting and, being a small
team, there haven't enough manpower to keep all the features.

I also don't think language (api's) are not at all comparable to desktop
environments. There's just so much going on in a desktop environment.

~~~
Nursie
>> They're trying to build a better product, and they're only a bunch of part-
time volunteers.

I thought quite a few of them worked for Redhat?

>> At some point they had a bunch of features, but to keep up with the other
desktops (Aero, Quartz) they had to focus on rearchitecting and, being a small
team, there haven't enough manpower to keep all the features.

That seems a bit of a rosy view of what happened. A cynic might say that they
decided to scrap everything and start again, users be damned, and went out of
their way to make 3/Shell incompatible with 2 to force people away from it,
announcing that it was now abandoned and of no further interest. Then, as now,
they explained how everyone that didn't like that move was wrong and stupid,
and they set about making the desktop experience that you will absolutely love
because we say so and if you don't do it our way you're a curmudgeon and
intellectually subnormal.

~~~
ebassi
> A cynic might say that they decided to scrap everything and start again

and not only this cynic would be wrong, but he would also be full of crap,
because it's such a trivial thing to check in the public repositories, public
mailing list archives, and public bug tracking system.

but, obviously, crapping on a bunch of volunteers trying to work on the
project they like is easier.

~~~
Nursie
That's certainly how it has looked from the outside.

Are you saying they didn't force incompatibility with Gnome 2? Or that they
didn't just decide to change everything to exactly how they wanted the
desktop, regardless of users?

Maybe they didn't scrap some of the underlying libraries, but the whole look,
layout, interaction pattern/user flow and pretty much everything else was a
total change.

------
crazygringo
> _" and since i understand why people react this way, i can smilingly fall
> back in my chair and enjoy reading mean comments with a bag of popcorn."_

Wow... so now that you've read Machiavelli and Cialdini, and feel you
understand users better... then instead of using that to respond better to
them and make the world a better place for them... you decide to take delight
in their unhappiness instead?

Wow, I've never said something like this on HN before, but unless undetected
sarcasm is wooshing over my head: what a prick.

~~~
orclev
Seems right on par for a gnome dev. I also like how he routinely adds "that
specific feature was replaced by something better" when most of the features
being removed were instead replaced by "TODO: some release way in the future"
or a locked down version that prevented you from making any meaningful
configuration changes.

------
alipang
This is so bizarre. He's not even taking the Machiavellian advice, which would
be to actually _not_ take stuff away from your users (assuming he wants happy
users, which, I guess, doesn't actually concern him).

Instead he's satisfied having de-constructed users' reactions, and just leaves
it at that. It's like saying I figured out _why_ punching you in the face will
make you upset, so I'm just going to sit back and enjoy the show.

~~~
deoxxa
Yeah, I was really expecting it to end with "so here's what I'm going to do to
try to make the situation better," instead of "HA HA DELICIOUS TEARS."

------
virtualwhys
So, remove features -- even incredibly useful ones like f'ing drag & drop, no
drag & drop across the entire interface! -- and kick back in Prince'ly fashion
enjoying the cries of the masses.

What he's suggesting, depending on which of Machiavelli's kingdom types the
author is referring to, is actually either the wrong approach (the people
revolt [leave Gnome]) or the ruthless tyrannical approach (crush [ignore] the
cries of the masses and force the prince's system on the people without any
lenience [concessions]).

Blog poster basically comes across as a bit of a sociopath.

Gnome 3 is not "all" bad, BTW, but some of the (missing) functionality is a
daily PITA.

~~~
homosaur
"Blog poster basically comes across as a bit of a sociopath."

Seems like it represents the general view by users of the Gnome team. He
points out that the perception of the Gnome team is anti-user, that they are
tone deaf and don't care enough about the community. He doesn't argue against
it, mind you, and then goes on to largely reinforce the correctness of the
called-out viewpoint. He was reading The Prince and now he gets what all those
dumb serfs were rioting about.

~~~
Khaine
The more things change, the more things stay the same.
[http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/04/linux_desktop_failur...](http://www.theregister.co.uk/2012/09/04/linux_desktop_failure_flames/)

------
RyanMcGreal
You know what's a nice feature? Capitalization. Removing it did not make this
essay better.

~~~
noptic
This will burn all my carma:

Can we please talk about _what_ he says?

Is the topic in any way related to good blog design?

There are quite a few blogs without capitalization and if it is really so
important to you feel free to write about it.

IMHO All those comments on design/grammar/font/... in every discussion on HN
are mere distractions and add no value.

~~~
notacoward
In general I have the same reaction as you, but in this specific case I think
there's a connection. Both the cummings-esque lack of capitals and the general
GNOME decision-making process seem to have their roots in a mindset that
values "style" over respect for others - users, quoted authors, whoever is
deemed "outside" with respect to the post author's own small circle. While
comments that focus _only_ on the unfortunate orthography without making that
connection might be a waste of time, I think using the visual representation
as a symbol of the underlying problem has some validity. Maybe if we all
talked about gNOme (as in "NO" to every user request) it would make the point
more clearly.

------
thaumaturgy
Ah, another missive from a software developer who regards users as a mere
annoyance, just discovered Machiavelli, and favors intuition over feedback
from those users (because intuition always trumps evidence, unless you're A/B
testing the color of your "sign up now!" button, in which case evidence always
trumps intuition). Never seen anything like this before.

If you like Gnome, great. If you don't like Gnome, you should use something
else. Arguing this old subject hasn't yet accomplished anything, and there are
plenty of alternatives available now. (I really like KDE4.)

If project developers are genuinely screwing their pooch, then a stampede to
alternatives will convince them far more thoroughly than even the most well-
crafted internet argument. If there's no stampede, then people are just
arguing personal preferences in the face of popular preferences, and they'd
still be better off switching to something else.

Save passionate arguing for situations in which it can do some good.

~~~
wmil
> If you like Gnome, great. If you don't like Gnome, you should use something
> else. Arguing this old subject hasn't yet accomplished anything, and there
> are plenty of alternatives available now. (I really like KDE4.)

The problem is that a lot of people liked Gnome2 but dislike Gnome3. They feel
betrayed because the Gnome team killed their favorite desktop environment on a
whim, and that sort of thing isn't supposed to happen with open source.

Due to Gnome 2 / 3 name conflicts maintaining Gnome 2 is fairly difficult.

Basically the Gnome devs wanted to go in a new direction and are abusing their
powers to kill off the old product. Users have legitimate reason to to upset.

~~~
shadowfox
The take it or fork it mentality is pretty entrenched in many opensource
projects. So that is not really surprising. (Of course this is not always
_practical_ ; but hey, people online argue philosophy over practicality, right
:P)

------
quchen
That's a rather long article for stating the obvious. It worries me a little
that the author seems to have just found out about it though, and what's even
weirder is the conclusion, which says that now he found out where the anger is
from he can enjoy it while working on as usual.

~~~
rachelbythebay
It looks like it's time to break out this one again:

[http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html](http://www.jwz.org/doc/cadt.html)

Be sure to note the date on this.

~~~
Afforess
As a maintainer and volunteer on some open source projects, the reason for
CADT is that popular projects receive significantly more bug reports than
could ever be handled by their volunteers. We're just volunteers and you can't
just throw more developers at the problem. In the end, you get what you pay
for. Nothing.

~~~
chris_wot
If the bug is still valid, then don't close it. It's not a competition for
time to fix! If you don't know if the bug is fixed, don't close it.
_Certainly_ don't ask the reporter to log it again!

------
captainmuon
Or, you know, people are unhappy because they actually _used_ those features.

And it doesn't surprise me at all that Gnome Devs read Machiavelli.

~~~
jkldotio
Yes it's amazingly patronizing to assume that the people were wrong given I
rarely see any statistical evidence or usability studies behind GNOME changes.
It's quite possible they were right and the GNOME devs were wrong. Or, even
more likely, that they are both right for two different groups and that
feature X could perhaps be removed from an icon bar but not from a submenu.

Too often in the past GNOME removed the availability of a feature entirely.
The people using that feature "owned" it, thus following the first quote the
removal impinged on their "property", and then the GNOME devs would insult
people for wanting it because it was "wrong", impinging on their "honour".
It's only through assuming GNOME devs are infallible and the people are wrong
that allows this guy to use the second quote, which boils down to "children
want their toys", to cancel the first and then "smilingly fall back in my
chair and enjoy reading mean comments with a bag of popcorn".

Also I agree with the others regarding the lack of capitalization, but I
suppose we are all "wrong" on this.

------
likeclockwork
Gnome 2 was SO configurable that I couldn't get on with Gnome 3 at all. I
haven't tried it in well over a year at this point.. so I can't speak to
recent changes. There was a lot I actually liked about it--but way too many
features were either missing or narrowly restricted for me to build a fast and
comfortable workflow on. I went to KDE for a while and then went all out, had
a much better time.. then I questioned the need for a DE at all and have been
using xmonad by itself for most of the past year. So.. thank you Gnome
developers for making my question the need for having a DE!

If I wanted a cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all, company-approved UX.. I'd buy
one in a pretty silver box.

This guy just comes across as incredibly smug. Does the ego-trip come free
when you buy a ticket to chase the silver-box UX for your own product and its
completely different userbase with entirely different needs and expectations?

~~~
sampo
> Gnome 2

IMHO Xfce4 has reached the level that now it does the Gnome 2 thing better
than Gnome 2 did. (Just needs some tweaking, if you don't like the default
blue theme.)

------
stevoski
I've found any change in the software I develop and sell can produce a "I
don't like this change" response, whether it is removing features, changing
features, or adding something.

As a software developer and producer, one needs to develop thick skin. If I
make a change and one person complains, I need to remind myself that other
people like it.

However, if many people complain about a specific change, then I should
listen, try to understand their perspective, and consider rolling back and/or
adding an option to have things either the old way or the new way.

With the "add an option" approach, however, one must be careful not to gain
lots and lots of UI-cluttering options in the Preferences.

The "add an option" approach can also result in more complicated customer
support - users inadvertently turn off features/changes in the Preferences.

So there are a number of issues being balanced here: the customer's (or
user's) dislike for change; the potentially real complaint that the change has
worsened the software for some users; keeping the software flexible; but not
drowning the user with too many unnecessary options; nor making customer
support too complicated.

------
iamthepieman
What a disappointing end to a post that started with such great potential. So
you read (and agree with apparently) about why people don't like to have
things taken away from them and then, you just sit back and enjoy the
reaction.

I would think that having understood the reaction, you might have tried to
lessen it, or re-frame taking features away into something else (even if the
end result is the same).

~~~
dsego
I was waiting for the lesson, but there is none. Disappointing end.

------
ivix
I would really like to know where this bizzare attitude has come from. At what
point exactly did the gnome devs decide that they were at war with their
users?

~~~
Khaine
GNOME developers have been well known twats for a long long time. They tinker
and remove things for the better all the time, usually sighting some crap UX
survey or some such nonsense. They also have a passionate hatred of giving
users choice.

~~~
FooBarWidget
UX surveys are crap? How is blindly implementing something any better than
listening to UX surveys?

~~~
chris_wot
He said "some crap UX survey", not "UX surveys are crap".

------
girvo
The GNOME situation frustrates me as a would-be-linux-desktop-app developer.
Thankfully, Qt has been getting better and better, and I hope to see a usable
and powerful DE written in it sometime soon: Unity, while nice, sometimes
feels a bit lacking, and is far too controlled by Canonical.

GNOME used to be the go-to "Community" DE that I relied on, and I tinkered
around with using it as my GUI toolkit as well. Now, it doesn't feel community
run at all, and as a GUI toolkit, Qt is much nicer.

I wonder if this will change in the future?

~~~
cacat
> Thankfully, Qt has been getting better and better, and I hope to see a
> usable and powerful DE written in it sometime soon

You mean like KDE?

~~~
coldtea
No, he said "usable".

Joking aside, he is obviously aware of KDE and didn't mention it for a reason,
presumably because it's not what he wants to see.

~~~
cacat
:)

I know a lot of people hate KDE because of the early 4.x builds. It has gotten
a lot better now, and it's constantly getting even better.

If this is the case, he should take it for a spin. I find that it's the most
customizable and user centric DE around.

There are a lot of settings you can tweak, probably too much for some, but I
know each time I test Gnome/Unity/Xfce/Lxde/Cinnamon etc. I miss a lot of
easily accessible settings.

The community is also great, there is a saying: KDE is the community, not the
software.

~~~
deepblueq
Last time I tried to use it, it had plenty of options, just not the particular
ones I wanted.

I generally like a very minimal interface along the lines of Openbox. Right
click for menu, middle click for window list, windows minimize to desktop
icons, scroll wheel cycles through virtual desktops. Maximized windows don't
cover a few pixels along an edge, so I always have access to the desktop. The
only taskbar type stuff visible is a clock and the system tray, which on the
computer I'm using right now auto-hide in the upper left. (I optimized for
screen space on a netbook that didn't have any, and found I liked it anyway.)

I'm happy to spend a while wading through settings to get this set up as I
like, but KDE won't let me (not that I really blame them). However, I do find
it annoying when it's billed as the most customizable DE out there. In terms
of the color of any particular thingamabob, absolutely. In terms of major
differences in overall layout, not so much.

Xfce and LXDE have always worked flawlessly for me.

------
seszett
Reading this text with no capitals at all is quite a pain.

It feels like you are just trying to look special by not following a thousand-
year-old standard.

~~~
catenate
I noticed right away that the title had no capital letters. But I didn't
notice that the body had none until I read this comment and looked back over
the text. Neither time did the lack of capitals bother me.

~~~
seszett
I noticed it while trying to make sense of the first sentence which seemed
strangely constructed and syntactically wrong.

Then after reading it again once or twice, I saw there were periods where I
did not expect them.

------
hvs
Translation: "Now that I understand that taking freedoms away is why people
get angry when we remove features, I can sit back and enjoy making my users
angry, secure in the knowledge that I am right and they didn't need those
freedoms in the first place."

With guys like this working on Gnome, it doesn't need enemies.

------
mixmastamyk
The phrase, "Left in a lurch," comes to mind.

What bothered me most was that they destroyed gnome2 when creating gnome3 by
using the same filesystem namespace. Correct me if I'm wrong, but it didn't
seem possible to have both usable on the system. I would have been happy to
stay on gnome2 until 3 became mature.

But that didn't happen. Despite the numbers we were forced from ~2.30 to 0.5
beta. I know there is the MATE fork, but it wasn't available initially and I'm
not keen on learning new names for every single program used.

Still, they've gone too far with nautilus... it is now almost useless and I've
had to move to thunar to get work done. I don't see why nautilus can't use
plugins to add features.

~~~
noisy_boy
I just want to ask this self-indulgent "developer" a single question - what
benefit did they get from removing split panes from Nautilus? If people didn't
use it, they still wouldn't use it. Those who did were benefiting from the
functionality. It wasn't _harming_ anyone!

In pursuit of their utopian airy-fairly idea of simplicity, they simply
screwed up a perfectly working system which catered to practically all its
users just fine.

------
yareally
Aside from GNOME, one can also look at the Opera Browser community. Many of us
were skeptical of the switch to being based on Chromium not because of
browser, but because of the fear Opera would throw out many of the powerful
features its user base has relied on for years.

Heck, Opera wasn't even going to add in normal bookmarking until they received
a huge community backlash against it. Many of us have hundreds of bookmarks
and the alternative they were providing[1] would have made it a burden to find
anything useful when one has more than a few dozen bookmarks.

In short, removing features makes people unhappy when they rely on them being
there in order to be productive. Adding new features or dramatically altering
the way long time ones work, sure go ahead, as long as current users are given
the option to keep using those long time features (ones more than a few years
old) the same way they expect by undoing some option in settings. Some might
scoff at this as being impossible, but that was how Opera actually functioned
from the beginning up until the switchover to Chromium in Opera 15.

[1] [http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2013/07/08/shop-
smarter...](http://my.opera.com/chooseopera/blog/2013/07/08/shop-smarter-with-
stash)

------
spinchange
Perhaps this is the kind of thing GNOME devs talk about among themselves, but
to write it for public consumption and submit to HN, ostensibly looking for
validation (or to troll), is a pretty epic PR fail. Not only is the author not
taking Machiavelli's advice, he's gloating that he isn't.

------
alyandon
I'm looking forward to the eventual day when you log into the GNOME desktop
environment and are presented with a single, full-screen button that says
"Logout" because all other features have been removed.

In all seriousness though, I stopped complaining about GNOME 3 and moved on to
Xfce4. The GNOME project developers aren't going to change and they have the
right to dictate the direction of the project regardless of whether or not I
personally agree with their decisions. Open source is about having choices and
my choice was to move to another desktop environment.

------
jwpe
I enjoyed this article right up until the end, when I expected the author to
use his new-found knowledge to suggest a method for removing features that
caused less friction. Instead, his response was more "Now that I know why
people behave this way, I don't need to care about it." Doesn't seem at all
constructive to me.

------
sebnukem2
Cute essay.

Now I still miss my features, and I still think that you think your users are
dumb, and that you obviously know better than them now that you've read a
book, which prompted you to decide that capitalization needs to be removed as
well. Hilarious.

------
DanBC
People loved Gnome 2. I don't know if they loved it enough to pay for all the
devs needed to keep it going.

I really don't understand the "do not let people customise anything" attitude.
I agree that supporting users who have made customisations is annoying and
hard; just force people to return to a default config before they make any
support requests. I agree that sane defaults are nice, and that option screens
are ugly; offer sane defaults, and hide all the config stuff in a text file.

------
forgottenpaswrd
"they are fundamentally telling us that they are disgruntled that we took away
something that they had before. the sapid fact is that it does not matter if
it was replaced by something better or if it was wrong to have it in the first
place."

It DOES matter when it is replaced by something better for them, not better
for the GNOME guys.

The GNOME guys consider removing features "better" because it makes their
lives easier, less combinatorial bugs, less work designing, less work fixing,
more centralization and why not to say it, ego boost and power(users do
exactly what I design, how important I am).

So the fact that something is "better" for them does not mean that the user is
going to consider it "better". The fact that you are already forcing your
users to learn something new is worse by default, so it has to be really much
much better for them to have to change their own routines.

Humans are routine animals. Don't break the routines.

------
JulianMorrison
Yeah great, you go stay over there with your dwindling band of Gnome 3
supplicants, I'll be over here with the people who've simply walked away.
Ubuntu Studio, XFCE, no worries.

------
spupy
latest feature removed: capital letters.

~~~
Anderkent
WONTFIX: users do not need capital letters.

Any users pretending to have had need for capital letters are just expressing
their disgruntlement over losing something they felt they possessed. That
doesn't mean we think users are stupid, just that they have no idea what they
actually need or use.

~~~
ivix
furthermore in the upcoming release we will complete the process by
eliminating clutter such as punctuation and paragraphs we welcome comments on
this but we will merely read them smilingly with a bag of popcorn

------
pessimizer
I always thought that The Prince was about how to maintain an amoral
dictatorship.

~~~
chris_wot
It is. Why else do you think that a gnome developer quotes from it?

------
andrelaszlo
I was pissed when they "improved" the alt-tab behavior so that I needed to use
two hands to switch between two browser windows, for example.

Now I'm happy again, having found this:
[https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/15/alternatetab/)

It seems like Gnome is actually allowing MORE freedom now, with this js
extension api. If you don't like how it works - just write a small extension.

------
chris_wot
Removing features that people use makes them unhappy because they can no
longer use them. That goes for hiding features, like (for example) hiding
icons on the desktop, een when in classic mode.

Or the up button in Nautilus. Or any one of the dozens of useful things they
removed. I was quite a fan of Gnome 2.x, but the "remove features people use
because we are right and they are wrong" mentality means I switched back to
Windows, and run VirtualBix for my coding, debugging, etc.

------
adjwilli
My uncaffeinated early-morning mind read the headline as why removing feautes
makes people HAPPY. I think that would be a much more interesting article.

------
davidroetzel
This is of course total off topic, but since a lot of GNOME-bashing is already
happening in the comments here, I would just like to state that I am very,
very happy with GNOME3.

It perfectly fits my use case (running a few apps fully maximised) and gets
out of my way. Also, it is rock solid and has never crashed on me.

~~~
noisy_boy
There are several WMs which were specifically developed from the perspective
of being minimal and getting out of the way (Awesome WM comes to mind).

One of the main causes behind the bashing is that a perfectly stable Gnome 2
(which was a more mainstream/"full featured" WM) was butchered to create
something which took out a lot of functionality people _actually_ use.

Obviously your use case, being a much simpler subset of what people typically
do with their WMs, would fit in with most of the WMs so maybe the hoopla
surprises you.

------
pattisapu
I wonder if this principle also applies to how legislatures and agencies
monotonically expand the total body of laws and regulations. It's often too
politically dangerous to deprecate a law.

------
_sabe_
I don't think removing features is a problem in it self but the Gnome product
has been run like Facebook or any fucking website the last couple of years.
Features come and go between releases, half implemented changes trough out the
desktop and so on.

Normally when you make a products you decide the features and when those are
stable, they are set in stone trough out the history of that whole/stable
version. If the Gnome team was serious about their product in anyway they
would not even pretend to have a stable product, but kept 2x as the stable
release until the whole feature set was coherent between all applications.

