common knowledge about changes, emotions, balance, decisions
To those who haven't voted yet or those who voted already but on
wrong premises like Gary Johnson and all who "I agree"'d with him:
Please read the whole message before answering.
When you want to improve, you must change.
When you change, always some people will suffer, some will
benefit, some will do both, some will neither.
Every pain naturally provokes negative feelings and intuitive
rejection to avoid the pain.
If all decisions were governed by emotional considerations alone,
nothing would ever improve because there will always be some
people in the way.
You have to balance future benefit vs. immediate cost (= crying).
Those who cry do so now, those who benefit in the future can't do
so now. So naturally the number of criers is perceived as bigger.
Therefore a decision about whether to apply such a change or not
should base on rational reason rather than alone on emotional
affection for oneself and speculation about others.
For a ruler to make a rational decision based on acceptance by the
masses, it requires to replace _speculation_ about potential
impact by a _reliable_ poll.
This in turn requires voters to vote from their appropriate
perspective: as members of the masses, but not assume the role of
the ruler and subject the own vote to speculations that are meant
to be gotten rid of by the very poll. Such speculation is contra-
productive.
This includes any consideration about how _others_ can cope with
the required efforts to survive a potential change.
Anything beyond just your personal impact is off-limits, like 3rd
party docs or the difficulty it means for others but not you.
So, be fair and make it a useful poll: be honest to yourself,
respect (=read) _all_ given facts and arguments, ask what is not
clear after reading, and leave speculations about others aside.
Then decide for yourself about this change and let everybody else
vote for themselves with the given (your) arguments.
Do not vote on their behalf.
Because not all who'd be affected resist despite their personal
impact.
It's fact that it hurts, it's fact that it helps. That's not what
the vote is about, but about whether you yourself can deal with it
for the sake of those who need the help (all those using the
manual, mostly newbies but also oldies).
It is also fact that the manual _is_ being used: pointing to other
ways for configuring mutt (like gui, muttrcbuilder or examples) is
missing the point of a useful manual. That's what this is all
about!
Having other means to improve the manual doesn't reduce the
benefit of meaningful varnames. Other improvements will follow, too!
Given the exceptional situation that a) config breaking changes
are already being applied for the end users (stable) and b) the
number of changes doesn't matter with a given script, this is
_the_ opportunity to gain more from the cost which is already
being raised due to a) by introducing more meaningful varnames to
make them more useful as a whole in an overall reworked manual.
To the "Gary faction" in particular:
There are ~600 mutt-users + exclusive ~300 mutt-dev and unknown
comp.mail.mutt, why not let them vote for themselves?
They are not voiceless, they choose to be, so why vote for them?
Since the mass is actually silent (as it is so often with polls),
meaning they are not caring enough to even vote against it, why do
you pretend to protect them by your vote instead of assuming that
they understand that the change to "apply a script one-time and
all is done" means sustainable impact for them and that they don't
care and would roll with it either way?
Imagine a majority would act over-protective: it could mean that
the result says "no", while in fact everyone for himself would say
"yes" because he can handle it for himself. This produces only
"fake" results and unnecessarily prevents improvement that would
have been supported.
There is no reason to be over-protective for this case anyway:
either users use the defaults and no personal config, or the user
or somebody who helps him is capable enough to get _simple_ things
done on his own. With the script it is simple, and for simple
configs it works 100%. Anybody who has complicated stuff where the
script would leave _exceptional_ cases for manual correction is
capable to fix those rare cases easily.
A poll in a subset of an entirety of mutt users can't represent
_each individual_, but it can give a direction, which is more than
just pure speculation, what you have without a poll.
As outlined in the previous paragraph, this change will not
overchallenge any "average" or below user that might not be within
the reach to vote for themselves, and there are users subscribed
to the list of the whole skill range, even beginners.
Why worry _in place_ of those who could worry for themselves but
choose not to?
Why not worry _in place_ of those who can _not_ worry for
themselves?
Now think about it ... and be honest to yourself.
Wouldn't you want to have more mutt users by making it easier for
them to use it by an improved manual?
Can _you alone_ deal with a simple one-time change for this?
=> http://WIKI.mutt.org/?ManualVarNames
--
© Rado S. -- You must provide YOUR effort for your goal!
Even if it seems insignificant, in fact EVERY effort counts
for a shared task, at least to show your deserving attitude.