Invidious. It’s to be expected for something like that though.

if every word that offended anyone anywhere was banned…

I’m hearing this point a lot, but it just makes clear that people aren’t reading or understanding my other remarks. This isn’t a random word that someone decided was offensive. This is a slur that is well known to large number of disabled people. They have been telling us this for some time. You haven’t heard it used that way? That’s great, but that also doesn’t mean that it isn’t. You know who does know what slurs are used against them? The people who are targeted by them. I’ll bet there are plenty of slurs you haven’t heard of that are, in fact, still slurs regardless.

I was responding to the argument in the previous comment, not making a point about the term “rice.”

Have you got any real arguments for me?

Yea, it’s an acronym that spells out a slur. It should be changed.

Let me get this straight:

In the following scenario, the app developer is in the right?

• App dev: Here’s my new app! It’s called F----T, for FAntastic Gnome Game On Terminal.
• Me: Hey, that word is offensive to me and others like me, it’s a word we hear before being beaten, bullied, killed, or discriminated against. Do you think you could change it?
• App dev: No. My intent was not to discriminate. You’re being unreasonable.
• Me: The fact that you are unwilling to even entertain changing the app name from a well known slur used against people like me makes me feel completely unwelcome.
• App dev: Sounds like your problem, sticks and stones.

The word has been considered a serious slur for years. If, by chance, you wind up naming your project with a tier-1 slur, yes, you should absolutely rename it.

The fact that g–p is a slur is not a new thing. It’s the equivalent of f----t or r----d for a large number of disabled people, and has been for years. The fact that you did not know this doesn’t make it any less true.

Do you honestly believe a name change would vault the project into obscurity? Seems like a quick press release would do it.

Downvotes are cute, rebuttals are better. Do you just not like what I have to say, or can you teach me something? I’m all ears.

I have no idea why I get downvoted every time I say this. If there are a large number of people out there saying ‘I was called this name due to my disability, it makes me feel like shit, and the fact that a popular FOSS project continues to use it despite being told this time and time again makes me feel that the FOSS community sees me as less than human’ how is it remotely complicated to have the common courtesy to apologize, pick a better name, and carry on? This is not hard, it costs nothing, and it’s just basic human respect.

Why is it stupid to discuss whether the language we use could be harming people? If you’re not interested in joining that discussion productively, you could simply scroll on.

There are plenty of articles and comments out there from disabled people recounting how that word has been weaponized against them. When people are telling us this, it seems pretty tasteless to continue using it.

Yea, I get you. That’s why usability research is so important - these interfaces may be simple for you and I, but small issues / contributors to increased cognitive load make a big difference for the large majority of people who do not live and breathe computer interfaces. I get that not everyone can afford to conduct their own studies, but that’s why small orgs (and even modestly funded FLOSS projects) need to be making use of the work of players like the Nielsen Norman group who release their reports very affordably, even if they have an expert on hand. I always try to remember that every interface is contrived, so there is no such thing as an “intuitive” computer or machine interface; interface usability lives or dies with discoverability.

There are many options; it just takes a bit of creativity, and it’s better to involve the designer in the early planning stages to nail down what needs to be immediately accessible, and what can be revealed via progressive disclosure. I did a website for a beverage company a few years back that used a bottom-aligned series of pills for the navigation that scrolled horizontally - a shadow appeared on the side to indicate that it can be scrolled. (We used JS to add shadow to any side which had overflowing elements. See below for a very rough little wireframe.) Twitter, like many sites and apps, also used to have no hamburger menu if you can remember.

Yea, I think they make honest to god bad design decisions that hurt usability. A common thread is hiding features / reducing discoverability while making no attempt at progressive disclosure, requiring memorization to complete certain tasks with the interface. This isn’t only bad UX, it’s an accessibility issue for users with attention and/or memory deficits. Creating a new paradigm is one thing, but with that comes the task of building affordances that help users with the transition, like skeumorphism did back in the day (…and to an extent, skeumorphism should have never been abandoned in the way it was…), something that the GNOME project simply does not do. They also ignore common accessibility recommendations, for example, by using icons without text in their applications, and utilizing mystery-meat navigation methods like hamburger menus, and ignoring long-established patterns for even very basic tasks, like allowing titlebars to become cluttered with interface elements leading to confusion when the user wants to move the window and widgets are in the way. I don’t think it’s bad at all that the GNOME project is trying to build their own paradigm, but they do so without consideration for the most fundamental usability guidelines.

Also, I always have to have a chuckle when I see what clients produce on their own. Like, they’ll cheap out and produce absolute garbage that they’re somehow happy with, but the minute you, a design professional, submit a concept or mockup that is far beyond their ability to produce, the client is absolutely full of feedback: “Make the logo 5x bigger!” “Let’s use this barely visible shade of blue!”

Exactly. I once made a point about excessive indicators of visual / information hierarchy increasing cognitive load without additional benefit on a subreddit and got downvoted to oblivion. That was not my opinion; that’s what industry research indicates!

Got to say though, I think GNOME is pretty, but a usability nightmare.

IDK about Lemmy devs, but point 2 is so, so common. Making a point about UX or accessibility in 99% of FLOSS project discussion spaces is incredibly stressful; you can have user research, industry best practice, and years of experience on your side, but you’re inevitably met with dismissal and argument. Devs often treat designers as though they’re a bunch of artsy crystal-healing crusties, despite the fact that good UX people base their work on actual research and theory grounded in human behavior and psychology. (Calling use of basic design principles “eye candy” for example) Of course, if a dev makes a decision on technical grounds, it must be treated as scripture as far as any remaining designers on the project are concerned. It’s no wonder so many FLOSS projects have abominable UX.