Notifications: uselessness of

[Scott Kitterman]

On Mon, 02 Mar 2009 10:00:28 +0000 Mat Tomaszewski 
<mat.tomaszewski at canonical.com> wrote:
>Scott Kitterman wrote:
>> On Fri, 27 Feb 2009 09:52:01 +0000 Mat Tomaszewski 
>> <mat.tomaszewski at canonical.com> wrote:
>>   
>>> I'd like to reiterate the main point: we have a good reason to 
>>> believe that persistent indicators only work for some very specific 
>>> cases (examples being network connection, volume, etc).
>>>     
>>
>> References please ....
>>
>>   
>There's a strong tendency in some discussions to call upon "hard 
>proofs", whenever convenient. I could do exactly the same thing and ask 
>you to point me to the research that shows the effectiveness of the 
>update-notifier icon.
>
>As Matthew mentioned earlier, some areas are difficult to apply direct, 
>"hard" tests to. Not to mention time and cost. However, there is a vast 
>array of examples which show that whenever the important decision needs 
>to be made it is better to present it to the user directly. It is 
>crucial that people do update their system regularly and we really want 
>to make sure they do. I agree it may not be the most elegant and classy 
>way of doing it, and as soon as we find a better way, we'll implement 
>it. Any suggestions are most welcome. For now though we are determined 
>to see whether and how the new solution works out for Ubuntu users.
>
You are the one that said "we have a good reason to  believe that ...".  
Fine.  What's the basis for this?  If you want to make assertions from 
authority, be prepared to back them up.

Your assertions run completely counter to my experiences, so I think it's 
quite reasonable for me to want something more than "because you say so".

In a related note, I was chatting with a Xubuntu dev who does not follow 
this list closely last night and this topic come up.  He was completely 
boggled that the icon had been removed on purpose.  He had been trying to 
figure out how they had broken it so it didn't show up anymore.

Scott K