Comment 226 for bug 532633

Scaine:

The problem here is that people are talking past each other. What's primarily missing is a definition and explanation of the data and data collection methodology that Shuttleworth and the rest of the design team are interested in seeing collected and will respect as being good enough to form the basis of addressing design deficiencies. Without the precise details of what the form of the data is that the design team is interested in reviewing, the external group of people who are interested in seeing this reverted are casting about making a best effort to provide the input they feel qualifies as "data."

So far Shuttleworth has disregarded everything people have pointed to as not meeting his definition of "data." This can go on forever, further causing frustration and leading people to assume others in the conversation are acting in bad faith, until Shuttleworth puts his neck out and makes an emphatic statement as to what actually constitutes data. The ball is in Shuttleworth's court. If he wants to play ball with the community over the design process...he'll define what the community needs to do to impact it. If he doesn't want to play ball...he should just leave it at "trust me" and not talk about wanting "data" and getting everyone's hopes up. The more good faith effort people put into trying to convince him otherwise and being rebuffed as inadequate, the more emotional its going to get.

The problem is... the design team hasn't set forth a workable process by which deficiencies in their decision-making can be addressed by externals. If Shuttleworth is sincere about desiring data that will influence decision-making, then he needs to communicate what that means to the layuser sitting outside the design team and who is sincerely endeavoring to provide the necessary feedback to impact design decisions. Not just this one decision...but a standing process that applies to quantifiable deficiencies in all the closed door design decisions.

It also doesn't help that Shuttleworth and the design team are keeping future plans for the titlebar so private instead of sharing mock-ups as to what the open space on the right of the title could actually be used for in 10.10 and beyond. Withholding that sort of information makes it harder for others to correctly contextualize the short-term pain for long-term gain of this change.