Wallpaper

[Máirín Duffy]

Hi Rodrigo,



----- Original Message ----
> From: Rodrigo Padula de Oliveira <rodrigopadula at projetofedora.org>
> To: Fedora Art List <fedora-art-list at redhat.com>
> Sent: Wednesday, May 6, 2009 3:15:47 PM
> Subject: Re: Wallpaper

> The wallpaper without a symbol is very simple!

Who says a default wallpaper needs to be complicated? The more complex a default wallpaper, the harder it is to see the items on your desktop. This is not a good thing and we receive complaints *regulary* when a wallpaper is perceived to be too complicated/busy for discerning items on the desktop.
> 
> How the group take this decisions ?

In general, how this group handles a decision (and how I think any group would) depends at what level the decision is and the context around the decision. This particular problem needed to be addressed (in short-order to say the least) so I made a call on the list. No one opposed it and several people supported it. If you are curious read back through the list archives.
> 
> I think will be better to use the vote system for next releases, to get
> feedback from all Ambassadors and contributors.
> 
> Can we open this decision process ?

I think voting on every bug and issue that comes up (especially in something as subjective as artwork where user preferences vary widely) is a really bad idea for ANY project. It's supremely inefficient - how can you accomplish anything when you are constantly needing to arrange and manage voting processes? Who gets to vote on the items that get to be on the ballot? Design itself is essentially a continual process of decision-making. If we had a vote on every single decision made for every design this team produced for Fedora, it might take us 10 years to do the artwork for a release and I don't feel I am exaggerating.

This is an extremely open design team. We openly discuss our methods and our decisions, and we make our source artwork available in open formats using open licenses so anyone who wants to participate, extend, or build on our work can easily. If you been participating in the list when we received complaints on this particular issue and when we made the final call on how to handle it, you could have spoken up just as anyone else could have. Even if you were not paying attention to the list at the time, it doesn't mean the issue wasn't discussed openly.

I really want to see more folks participating in the artwork process - creating mockups or alternatives or suggesting solutions to problems such as this one (where the lion was too distracting for some users). So, if you would like to have a say, please join us. Then the next time an issue like this crops up, you'll more easily be able to take the opportunity to speak up and discuss the issue.

Thanks,
~m