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There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

37signals.com

101–110 of 135 posts

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#101

As a basketball player, I'd gladly take any (any, really) critique from Kobe. I won't take any (any, really) shit from Joe Blow. Prove to me you can do better than me. Then, we'll talk.

What about Phil Jackson? You're probably better at basketball than he is.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#102
post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree, but there's a big difference between honest, polite feedback and negativity, meanness, or just good old-fashioned flaming. HN is pretty good in this respect. Reddit is still decent, though it can definitely lean towards mean. YouTube / app store reviews... forget any chance of respect.

Since the net is so wast, people feel they have to shout loud with profanity to get heard. Alot of times they are right.

There's also this:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/03/19/

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#103
post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "But he's not adding any value for anyone the way he points it out." It's a curious community we have. Pointing out problems or reporting visceral reaction is considered not constructive. Yet speculative re-designs to illustrate what the critic might have done differently are also considered not constructive. It seems to me that when nothing short of actually competing against a product is considered useful or vali…

If you think about it carefully the emphasis here is not on if he should complain or not, the emphasis is on the way he should complain.

So the people complaining about complaints over UI being about style instead of substance are themselves complaining about argumentative style instead of substance.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#104
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says the same guy who's frequently quoted as saying "you're doing it wrong!"

Which guy is frequently quoted as saying that? I'm bewildered. Also, is that an Ad Hominem ? If the quoted line is incorrect, it should be possible to refute it directly without discussing the speaker's credentials or other sayings.

Scott says it all the time when making fun of the way people use social media. That being said, you are correct, haters hate. No use trying to convince them to stop.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#105
post #3

I dunno, I worked with one designer who firmly believed that "users like a challenge". He loved little tricks like "hiding" clickable things by making them blend in with decorative elements, he liked unusual fonts, he liked layouts that forced the users to hunt all over the screen for the next thing they wanted. But we weren't making games, we were making corporate Intranets. So my advice is, ignore your designer and…

He must have attended the Kai Power Tools School of Design

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#106

Criticism is good for a creator. If you can't turn criticism into a force to improve your product, you're doing it wrong. (Granted, baseless criticism doesn't count.) And if they're violating Apple's HIG... Seriously, why? That should be the easiest thing to get right. They've outlined it for you.

there's a world of difference though, between criticism and just being nasty

this is not a site for criticism, it's failblog for iOS apps; somewhere for people to gather, point and laugh and some poor sod.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#107
A little off topic, but I had no idea there were so many bad apple apps. Some of it looks like the crap that comes on my motherboard driver CD.

If anything, this is a sign of the mainstreaming of apple. No longer is it an exclusive refuge of self styled artists... the barbarians are at the gates. This probably wasn't how things were supposed to turn out.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#108
post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Says the same guy who's frequently quoted as saying "you're doing it wrong!"

Which guy is frequently quoted as saying that? I'm bewildered. Also, is that an Ad Hominem ? If the quoted line is incorrect, it should be possible to refute it directly without discussing the speaker's credentials or other sayings.

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22Scott+Stratten%2...

The speaker's statement hinges on not being the kind of person that uses those other sayings. I suppose he could take the position that he himself is a professional "Jackass Whisperer" and that you should not aspire to become the same, though that puts the listener in the awkward position of being the aforementioned jackass.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#109
post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He may be right. But he's not adding any value for anyone the way he points it out. I think the biggest problem I have with it is that he's insulting and attacking the people who made these apps. There is no reason for that.

Entertainment has value. Not all time needs to be spent on productive endeavors. And maybe he just might increase the quality of these apps by shaming them into compliance. The devs might even read the HIG!

Maybe even Apple might read the HIG!

I think the bigger point here is that he's complaining about something which may not even be relevant any more. As John Gruber wrote recently, the HIG is dead and Apple is what killed it.

Re: There is no place for just shitting all over other people's work

#110
post #70

37signals is at their worst when they adopt this sanctimonious attitude. Say what you want about their juvenile tone, the criticisms on RTFHIG are mostly valid. What are we going to do next? Pillory literary, film and food critics because their insights are inconvenient to the sensitive feelings of creators in those realms? Come on. Creating things for other people has a long, rich history of criticism. Some valid, s…

Completely agree. I love that site and I think most of the criticisms are on point. There is/was something special about apps on a Mac versus their equivalent shareware versions on Windows. I think it's fair to assume the Mac App Store will bring with it the same kind of UI trash that is in the iPhone app store.

That special something was the $30 you paid for them compared to $0 for an equivalent Win32 application
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