Dealing with users
By Jonathan Protzenko on Thursday, August 18 2011, 19:59 - mozilla - Permalink
Thunderbird Conversations now has more than 50000 users, and with users, comes a lot of feedback. Right now, too much of the feedback goes like this:
Hi, I installed Thunderbird Conversations, but it doesn't take into account option X, which is really vital (usually all caps here) for any sane user / which sucks and I'm going to uninstall this piece of shit / which makes your addon useless / etc. etc. Optional: what in your right mind did you think? Frequent: if you don't fix this, I'm going to uninstall the addon!
Option X is usually one very, very specific option that I believe is used by a minority of users: detach or delete attachment, download headers only (allegedly for “security reasons"), put sent messages in the folder of the message being replied to. I wasn't even aware of the existence of such options. Even if these were heavily used, I'm not trying to replicate every single option Thunderbird has. If I did, I would end up... reimplementing Thunderbird, except there would be a conversation view. What's the point? If I were to offer all these options, Thunderbird Conversations would become a bloated mess of options with a UI that's cluttered with all these extra actions that seem to be so vital. These users would be happy, but that's not the Thunderbird I'm dreaming of.
I'm trying to offer a new, more efficient, simpler, leaner way to read and reply to your emails. I'm already reimplementing a significant chunk of Thunderbird (I'm just re-doing entirely message display and message composition, mind you), and there's no way I can take into account all these options without becoming crazy. And I'm the only person working on this, to boot.
How can I make it clearer that my goal is not and never will be to reimplement every single Thunderbird feature? How can I tell people that yes, their favorite option that apparently their life depends on will not be implemented and that's just the way it is, they don't have to spam every other communication channel to insult me, write a super negative review on AMO, and encourage other users not to touch, and I'm quoting “this piece of $*§$%#”?
They just have to uninstall the addon.
Comments
I put them on the Wall of Fame. :)
It's sometimes hard to remember that you won't hear a thing from the people who are happy - we're too busy happily using your Conversations extension with to write and tell you about it - so, on behalf of the silent majority - THANKYOU! (And I would think that when you've completed all of the development you are working on, Thunderbird will integrate the addon as a 'standard' option, all of the integration will take care of itself!)
Steady Jonathan! I'm one of the 50,000 and I think it's great. Not perfect mind, Nothing is!!
Conversations has saved me a lot of time and does exactly what I want from the add-on - add conversations - and I didn't even have to ask for it. It was just given to me as part of the already free package that makes my life much easier. So, in direct spite of the issues you've presented: *hug* Thank you.
salut, j'ai installé Thunderbird Conversations, mais je ne trouve pas l'option "Ne pas lire les messages marqués comme lus tant que le dossier des favoris n'est pas ouvert dans la prévisualisation des onglets", qui est une fonctionnalité VITALE pour moi lorsque je déplie les mails de ma mère sinon elle me prive de dessert. Bref ton extension c'est de la merde et je conseille à tout le monde de ne même pas la toucher avec du papier hygiénique tellement sapu. Et puis tu pourrais au poins tenir compte des demandes de tes usagers espèce de feignasse, c'est avec l'argent que je ne te donnerai jamais que tu manges tes pizzas en carton et bois tes bières tièdes.
Don't let a vocal minority bring you down, your focused/lean/simple approach is the way to go, and whiners gotta whine.
But I'm just repeating your words :P . Thanks for your work! Long live Conversations! (or not, hint: I'd love to see (parts of) it get integrated into Thunderbird)
Don't take it personally.
These people obviously like the addon, and would like to use it, but doing so would mean changing the way they work. They find that difficult and instead of realising that it's their problem and dealing with it themselves, they pass the blame on to you.
I'm sure you would like everyone to be happy with the way Conversations works, but you can't please everybody, and that's okay.
It's kind of the price of popularity :-)
I'm one of the users, so let me say:
We really like your work, we love what conversations does, and we'd like it to be even better. That means, unfortunately, respecting the various little configuration options that various people find necessary.
Now I understand that you're not interested in implementing these things - in which case, IMO the correct response is "Nice idea, I don't have enough time to implement it, patches welcome".
Keep up the good work.