Feature - Rejected Need a preference for disabling everything that anybody has ever called "annoying".

[Veracity]

Need a preference for disabling everything that anybody has ever called "annoying".

We'll call it "caterToWhiners" with default false. On the Preferences/General pane, the checkbox will be labeled "disable 'annoying' features that whiners say ruin their life".

Any time we spend a lot of effort putting in something nice that most people love, a handful of people make a point of calling it "annoying".

At that point, we put it under control of this property. Job done. You don't like the feature? You don't have to have it. You DO like other things that somebody else called 'annoying'? Oh, well!

 

[roippi]

:-/

 

[Bale]

Awesome idea! Even better, if you check that preference, the entire KoLmafia interface will be replaced with a text box that says, "This program is too annoying for you, so we recommend you play KoL the way Jick designed it." Then if you click "OK" it will shut down KoLmafia.

 

[bordemstirs]

I feel this is a bit of an overreaction regarding the word "annoying".

Yes, the 'rules' say to refrain from using it, but it's an easy-to-forget rule (until you've been spurned because of it) and we all know not -everyone- reads the rules.
Regardless of that, annoying is a perfectly VALID way to describe something. Some things can be described better, others simply can't.

I understand why the coders who put in their time and effort for no gain would hate to hear this describing their work, but instead of freaking out over it, they could simply choose to ignore the request. Or, if they're in a better mood, try to understand why one might think it's annoying and consider changing the behavior.

 

[Theraze]

Since people complaining in unrelated places instead of making feature requests she could actually do something about have now driven Veracity off of these forums, I wouldn't call her last ditch "stop complaining in useless ways" post an overreaction. -_-

 

[roippi]

I didn't really understand before I started developing content for mafia, but now I get it. One of the first things pieces of code I produced for mafia was to replace a long string of buttons in daily deeds with a combobox. That piece of code, all told, probably represented 30-40 hours of my time. Granted, 3/4 of that was orienting myself to the codebase and teaching myself extra bits of java, but that's not really the point. Within a day or two of that getting committed, there were at least two posters on GD complaining that the old way was "objectively better" and the current feature "annoying."

Now, I consider myself a pretty thick-skinned person, so I was mostly restrained in my response. But what really hits you is the entitlement of such people. They have no right to anything; mafia is nothing more than talented people donating their time. I do like the KoL community, but man do they often lose sight of that fact. Calling something "annoying" is saying "well, not only was the time you volunteered to fix my problem wasted, but you managed to make things worse. Fix it again, better this time."

A slight digression, but I think most of V's frustrations stem from off-site issues. My comments above are not directed at any individual on these forums and should not be interpreted that way.

 

[fronobulax]

I should note that the particular features that triggered this were the color coding. Regardless of the complainers use of the word "annoying" and their sense of entitlement the fact remains that this particular change does make KoLmafia more difficult to use for people with certain types of vision problems. Thus I don't see allowing people to opt out as catering to whiners as much as I see it as allowing people who used to be able to use KoLmafia as being able to continue to use it. YMMV.

 

[roippi]

Sure. Hence my disclaimer at the bottom; I certainly think the issues raised on this forum about maintaining accessibility are valid, and accommodations should be made for those people whenever possible.

One other note on touchy topics like this: often the frustration is not entirely with an individual, but a history of individuals doing something. So all of that frustration gets targeted on the one person even though they are but one piece of the whole. i.e. I recently saw this happen with Jick snapping at a guy who "leaked" some content by mining image names. Yeah, what that one guy did wasn't actually that big of a deal, but it was a sore point due to the history involved.

 

[Theraze]

Still... the proper response if you don't like the current change is not to complain about it, but to make a new feature request to be able to control it better. If the way you'd use colour controls is to completely invalidate the change... don't say that! Just say that you'd like the ability to control the colours to improve readability because you have vision issues and it would be greatly appreciated. Said like that, it doesn't offend or pass along the impression that you hate the developer and think they're insensitive vicious jerks just trying to make things harder for people with handicaps of various sorts. Which is sort of the feel I got from that message on the other thread, not that it's what I think he wanted to express, but... wording. It's important.

 

[LuvLuvChef]

I would say that the average user is not savvy enough to use feature requests when it's so much easier to them to fire off a forum post.

 

[Theraze]

Actually, it's the same thing... a Feature Request is just a forum post that asks for a feature. On the board with the description

Report all Bugs/Feature Requests here.

Though what you said is an impressive argument for your point.

 

[Raijinili]

While this is an interesting discussion, and one that may be necessary, this is the Bug Report forum. I want to participate but get distracted by the fact that this is way off topic (not sarcasm).

 

[Theraze]

Bug and feature request forum, actually... and a feature was proposed to disable wide swaths of mafia; that feature is being discussed. Until such time as a developer approves or rejects Veracity's feature request, its merits and drawbacks remain open to discussion...

 

[slyz]

talented people

Hell yeah

We need more Veracity Rocks threads, maybe it would help to put in perspective some negative feedback.

On a more serious note, I think the "caterToWhiners" preference could be addressed somehow.

In the current state of things, changes are committed by developers, new revisions appear on http://builds.kolmafia.us/, and a new "version" of Mafia is spinned from time to time.

- Devs commit changes because of bug reports, feature requests, technical discussions between scripters, or because they have their own projects. This generally involves the kolmafia.us community via discussions prior to a change and feedback (even criticism!) after the change is committed.

- Regular mafia users will use a recent build, either because they use an auto-updater, because the read the commit logs and see a change they would like to benefit from, or because they simply got into the habit of updating every few days/weeks.

- Then there are users who only update when they see a pop-up from Mafia saying that a new version is available. I think these are mostly people that are new to Mafia, or use it very rarely.

I guess the regular users are more or less up to date with what is being changed in Mafia because they use it to play KoL, but only post here to ask for specific advice or to report an unexpected behavior. Those users discover changes when they launch mafia and do not take part in the development process. Maybe this is part of the problem.

In the case of a commit that breaks a part of Mafia, the devs are expected to pay attention to the feedback and issues are always fixed quickly. Regular users, even if they have lost a few adventures or a bit of meat, generally understand that using a recent revision implicitly means that they are running this kind of risk. In a sense, they are beta-testing, since they are using the latest revision.

Maybe using a recent revision should also mean that you want to be part of the development process, and not simply that you are running the latest Mafia. I don't know anything about software engineering, but it feels like Mafia is lacking something between the moment a change is committed to the code and the moment this change is propagated to regular users: the beta-testing is implicit and not always acknowledged.

I try to test my changes as much as possible, but I mostly tweak little bits of code that are simple to check. Some things, like wandering monsters overriding Ultrahydrated, are more complicated to test. Since I want to try a couple of changes before making sure I will commit something that will work, it would be great to have a group of kolmafia.us regulars who run a Mafia branch with my change and report what happens.

Of course, it wouldn't remove entirely the need for a "caterToWhiners" preference, but if a smaller, more involved group of users give feedback before regular users, it would surely be more constructive than some GD posts. The current workaround is to post patches, but not enough people download, build and report on changes that are not committed to the source.

I would like to have a way to commit to an experimental branch of Mafia, and wait until I am satisfied with the feedback to commit to the main source. Maybe others could chime in here - I know those who had the patience to read this all of this long and poorly written post are probably the ones I am turning to for ideas.

 

[Winterbay]

I try to test my changes as much as possible, but I mostly tweak little bits of code that are simple to check. Some things, like wandering monsters overriding Ultrahydrated, are more complicated to test. Since I want to try a couple of changes before making sure I will commit something that will work, it would be great to have a group of kolmafia.us regulars who run a Mafia branch with my change and report what happens.

Of course, it wouldn't remove entirely the need for a "caterToWhiners" preference, but if a smaller, more involved group of users give feedback before regular users, it would surely be more constructive than some GD posts. The current workaround is to post patches, but not enough people download, build and report on changes that are not committed to the source.

As I have set up my computer to be able to build from source (and add patches) I would be willing to enter into such a testing group.
I am also a very suboptimal player and would not mind losing a bit of meat here or a few turns there due to unforeseen consequences

Playing KoL through Mafia is always a risk anyway since it is not the native interface, an error in the code could do strange things with my character and I would be on my own because I am after all using an unsupported 3rd party software (albeit one that has withstood vast amount of testing over the last few years)...

 

[roippi]

It's generally a good idea to have a little buffer between the devs and the user base.

Plus, that would be a great entry point for people looking to maybe dabble in developing for mafia who are too intimidated by the monolithic entry requirements. If you're just in charge of finding bugs in other peoples' patches, that's a really quick way to learn mafia subsystems and ease yourself into the program.

 

[Veracity]

I want to participate but get distracted by the fact that this is way off topic.

Uh huh. And you "reported" my post as "trolling".

As I told you via e-mail, when I got the report - being one of those who receives "reported posts" - I don't appreciate that. Welcome to my "ignore" list. When I eventually return, I will be blissfully unaware of anything that you have to say.

Don't worry. I am sure others will step up to "service" you in my absence.

 

[bordemstirs]

Since people complaining in unrelated places instead of making feature requests she could actually do something about have now driven Veracity off of these forums, I wouldn't call her last ditch "stop complaining in useless ways" post an overreaction. -_-

Ah yes, but I've been condemned for casual use of the word in an otherwise detail-oriented thread, and that's more where I was coming from.


More to the point: Getting upset because someone said you were trolling, because they took the proper measures to report it? That's bull. This thread is clearly trolling, but people here are too quick to overlook that, thinking that someone so high in the system would -never- troll, based solely on their status. Everyone is capable of trolling, and even if you were dead serious about implementing a feature to disable -any- feature that's ever been called annoying (a rather useless button, considering the vast areas in the program that would affect), this is still an act of trolling. Man up, don't just ignore people for calling you out on it.
This whole thing has blown way out of proportion; St. Doodle (and others) have a hard time seeing the colors the way they are(were?) and because he didn't word it to your liking, you did this. This is trolling, through and through, and I'm glad Raijinili (I hope I didn't butcher that spelling too badly) was man enough to step forward.

 

[roippi]

Can we, as adults, move on from the emotionally charged ad hominem portion of the discussion? We were just getting somewhere constructive.

A little perspective is in order. We all enjoy using this cool program that interfaces with a funny stick figure game. It's really not worth all this bickering and meanness.

 

[jwylot]

I don't think the option of removing added features makes much sense really unless it is in response to a feature request or the dev anticipates that such a new feature may be undesirable in certain cases and an option to disable can be easily incorporated.

On a more general note, I can understand the frustration you wonderful devs must feel at times but lashing out at posters reporting perceived bugs or making feature requests can be counter-productive. Remember that we simple-minded users often report a bug or make a feature request because we actually care and want to help make mafia even better. It would be just as easy to roll back to an older and more stable version and say nothing.