Pirut: Edit -> Repositories mock-up -- Part 2.

[Nicolas Mailhot]

BTW, it's probably a cultural thing, but my brain just shuts down
whenever someone posts a usability scenario on the list. Whoever
instituted them probably read a USA usability text-book and tried to
ape it. For the original author, the writing style is neutral and lets
him focus on the use-cases. For me, the user names chosen scream USA
(actually 1970' WASP USA), as does the "casual" use of surnames.

So I delete messages before I get real angry about Fedora being
presented as an effort to please a very small and limited userbase.

Can we have use-cases that reflect the diversity on Fedora forums and
lists? Or even stop the whole ridiculous synthetic use-case writing
and not write about ourselves in the third person like Julius Caesar?

In my experience this stuff can be written for two reasons:

A. someone conducted an actual usability test campaign, collected a
lot of user feedback, and tries to sum them up in a few use-cases to
have a short work document. This is the productive synthetic use-case
writing scenario. Use-cases reflect reality, not the writer bias, who
is just summing up hard data.

B. someone didn't have the resources to conduct a usability campaign,
but read the kind of document produced in A. He decides it can't be so
hard to write use-cases and wipes up a synthetic "professional"
use-case list. The problem is without the user feedback data these
synthetic use cases are totally removed from reality, the weird
writing style actually accentuates the writer bias, while hiding it's
all actually just one guy's opinion. What's worse when these use-cases
clash with actual user feedback the user feedback is rejected as not
being properly formalized when in reality the use-case writers are
just self-satisfied with subjective users that reflect their own
opinions. This is the not-productive synthetic use-case writing
scenario, and I'd rather we avoided it. Or at least be honest and not
disguise some people objectives are actual use-cases.

Somehow the naming makes me suspect we're in case B. In case A, enough
reality always creep-up in the use-case they're not a textbook
caricature.

-- 
Nicolas Mailhot