Re: My usability experience - Asa Dotzler should be fired

On Aug 17, 1:28 am, Asa Dotzler <[email protected]> wrote:
> Petter Andersson wrote:
> > On Aug 16, 8:19 am, Asa Dotzler<[email protected]>  wrote:
> >> [email protected] wrote:
> >>>  From all I have read now it appears to me that all of these decisions
> >>> that I regard as completely stupid and wrong come from one person: Asa
> >>> Dotzler.
> >> While I'm flattered that you credit me with everything Mozilla's done
> >> from moving to a rapid release cadence to the interface changes in
> >> Firefox 4, to our increasingly silent updates, I'm afraid I can't take
> >> credit for any of those things. I support them, and I was tangentially
> >> involved in them, but those were decisions made by groups of people and
> >> not individuals, myself or others. Those were also changes that happened
> >> well before I became the Firefox Product Manager. Again, I'm flattered
> >> that you think one person, especially me, could do all those things, but
> >> it would be unfair for me to take all the credit.
>
> >> Cheers,
> >> - A
>
> > Why don't you stop being part of the problem? ...UX/UI team
> > may think whatever they want, but you, having heard our comments,
> > SHOULD have the obligation to tell them: NO, people do not want this,
> > so just forget it already.
>
> If you think that Mozilla should make decisions about how it develops
> software based on a tiny self-selecting sample of people who know how to
> participate in online discussion forums, you've got a very different
> view than I do about how to develop software that is growing from half a
> billion to a billion users.
>
> I'm not dismissing your concerns or your feedback, but the proposal that
> we should design a product based on such a small sliver of feedback is
> basically a non-starter.
>
> Even if you represented a majority of users, that's still not how we
> design software. We are not a democracy and have never been a democracy.
> Mozilla is a meritocracy with an decision-making system that dates back
> more than a decade and which places final authority in the hands of
> individuals who have earned it through good works on the project.
>
> Again, that is not to dismiss feedback, yours or anyone else's. I
> appreciate almost all of this feedback (I actually read it all) -- with
> maybe the exception of the people calling for me to be murdered or
> otherwise physically harmed.
>
> Mozilla listens to all of the feedback that it possibly can. But we
> don't design by votes.
>
> Let me say it one more time so there's no mistake. I read and consider
> all feedback. I respond to some of it but not all or I wouldn't have
> time to do anything else. I care about feedback and believe that the
> huge community of people who take the time to offer feedback is one of
> the things that distinguishes Mozilla in the industry.  I appreciate
> your feedback. I've read it, and I've taken the time to respond to what
> of it I have the time to respond to. The same goes for all of the other
> feedback here, in the bug report, on slashdot, on other tech sites, with
> the press, with my colleagues and my co-workers.  I do not dismiss any
> but the most gregarious forms of participation (my rule is attack things
> not people, when that's violated I walk away.)
>
> But successful design rarely, if ever, comes from only changing things
> when you get a majority to agree. As the old but probably not precisely
> true anecdote claims, if Henry Ford would have asked his customers what
> they wanted most, they'd have told him "faster horses".
>
> - A

I won't try to tell you what to do. I am just sad that I will have to
switch browsers if you don't regain sanity before dropping 3.6
completely. It was a nice browser while it lasted, for that I am
grateful.

/M