On 2007-11-07 13:02 michael.dillon@xxxxxx said the following: >> Please be careful about how you set requirements for things >> like Daily Dose, or anything in the tools site, really. The >> developers like Pasi are volunteers who are providing a great >> service at no cost. > >> Where did resumes come up? > > Very often, people who volunteer to do something, don't really > do it for free, but in order to gain useful experience that they > can put on their resume and use to get better (or more interesting) > jobs in the future. Running a usability test along the lines that > Jakob Nielsen has written about, is the kind of thing that would > look good on a web developer's resume. I still haven't seen YOU offering to do anything to help. >> FWIW, I don't think a big volunteer test would have added any >> value for a feature like this. > > I agree, and that is why I provided the URL to an article by someone > who has done experiments and discovered that you get most of the > value by doing a SMALL usability test with 5 users, then fix up > all their issues, and repeat again with 5 more users. When you > get to the point of diminishing returns, stop repeating. If you > consider people's time to be a cost regardless of whether money > changes hands, then you get the maximum cost/benefit ratio by doing > this rather than just flinging it out to the community. The only cost I as a volunteer developer can reasonably consider is the cost of my own time and the decision of whether to spend it on IETF tools at all, or not. It seems you're saying that if I can't find the time to get together a usability test panel before I tell people at large about the new or updated tool I've put together, then I shouldn't bother spending time doing any tools at all. Do you really mean that? >> And even if it did, do we have >> a right to require Pasi to do something like that, given that >> it would consume a lot of his time, delay the introduction of >> the new version to the entire community, etc? > > Nope, we would have no right to require that anybody implement > a good idea or follow best practice. I'd love for you to implement a tool, any tool, for the benefit of the community. Preferably embodying a good idea, following best practice, of course. > But given the number of messages to the list suggesting changes > and fixes, I thought it was reasonable to point out that there is > a better way, and it is documented here > <http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20000319.html> > and it is not expensive to do either in money terms or in terms > of time spent. Let me disagree with you here, and have a different opinion. The time spent to get together the test group and run the test would have been a substantial barrier for me. If you want to offer your time in setting up something like this for every major change we do to the volunteer tools, we'll use it. <snip> Henrik _______________________________________________ Ietf@xxxxxxxx https://www1.ietf.org/mailman/listinfo/ietf