That's the "don't listen to real people. Imagine people instead" defense.
It allows people to justify whatever they want without any confirmation or feedback on reality. They can always imagine some future user that permits them to ignore every single existing one.
It's a closed loop justification to do whatever they want without listening to anyone while pretending they're making it better for everyone.
> That's the "don't listen to real people. Imagine people instead" defense.
It's not a defense. I'm invalidating the argument that the vocal users are always right. I'm not claiming that this automatically means that what the project owners think instead is correct.
Figuring out how best to make everyone happy is more complicated than this. Claiming it is simple ("just listen to the vocal users!") is a fallacy.
It really depends. If you're running a passion project where you depend on the dedication and commitment of others to move the project forward, heeding to the vocal users is integral to a successful strategy.
Outside of that case it's also really hard to say. I think the best advice I can give are "vocal users who aren't crazy" with all of those words doing magical handwaving and lifting.
For instance, certain features have a lot of vocal normal, reasonable users but seem to be ignored. On youtube, disabling the "recommended for you" videos. On facebook, whenever you have a capital letter, an annoying name selector popup happens. There's essentially armies of complaints for an option to disable it, make it only @ etc ... all ignored.
Another example is Firefox's ctrl+q issue (finally addressed) or the GTK-3 file selector. There's plenty of things where there's a substantial number of vocal non-crazy users requesting reasonable things And there's a very popular philosophy that strongly advocates for completely ignoring them.
I mean open source is partially about addressing the tyranny of decision in closed source. Not through combative forks and team splitting but through open community dialog. Some of these larger projects seem to lift their projects away from that, probably to avoid the aforementioned wackos who overreach their welcome.
There's really better amelioration than justifying the restriction of the many by the trespass of the few.
This is supposed to be what A/B testing with KPIs is for.
There are plenty of times when stated preference contradicts actual behavior (e.g. more search results per page resulting in less successful searches on Google) due to other countervailing factors (additional latency causing abandonment before the page finishes loading)
You have a very fair point, but I have a different read on the situation. I would characterize the situation a bit more charitably - "Mozilla is implementing a larger UI change, for X, Y, Z reasons, and will benefit the users in A, B, C ways. Unfortunately, one casualty of that is feature e will be discontinued".
What's their actual goal? At one time it was an open source alternative to IE 6, then they were the ones with the best debug tools, that was 10 years ago, now what?
The modern evolutionary descendent of Netscape Communications needs a crisper purpose then just amorphous open source vibes. Blink and Webkit are in that game as well and they have the most profitable tech companies in the world behind them. Even Microsoft's current browser works in Linux. The world has changed.
At least Eichs post Mozilla project Brave has some patreon-style crowdfunding with crypto in exchange for revenue sharing ad dollars, it's a reason for existing. Say what you will about it but it's got a reason for being around.
I can only infer what their goal is, to me, their goal is to help steer the web towards more privacy, less dark UIs, and help reduce general web 'badness', while trying to matching other browsers for ease of use and features.
You can't even fairly describe Brave, why should anyone believe you on a purported "non-chrome based browser that actually values user's freedom"? Mozilla is riding Firefox down to maximize Google search revenue in the bank. At some point this means they find the savings more attractive than the remaining tail of the deal, and collapse back into only a non-profit. Yes, Firefox is currently developed by the for-profit, arms-length subsidiary of the foundation. Both boards controlled by the $3M/year CEO overseeing the downward spiral.
I wish there were another engine well-funded enough to take web tech to the next level, while matching Google and Apple on de-facto WebKit + Chromium/Blink compatibility. There isn't, so that's not the hill to die on. Better to fight a level up for privacy and user sovereignty against Google's business conflict of interest with its users.
It allows people to justify whatever they want without any confirmation or feedback on reality. They can always imagine some future user that permits them to ignore every single existing one.
It's a closed loop justification to do whatever they want without listening to anyone while pretending they're making it better for everyone.