Re: [s-d] Re: [s-b] Nweek 71 Ballot

[Daniel Lepage <dpl33@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Oct 22, 2004, at 12.02 AM, Jeremy Cook wrote:

> On Thu, Oct 21, 2004 at 11:35:40PM -0400, Daniel Lepage wrote:
> > Just out of curiosity, is there any reason why you prefer to vote to
> > spoon-business instead of through the wiki?
>
> <rant>
> So glad you asked. I have noticed a general tendency among 
> organizations
> of all types to do everything through a web interface, regardless of
> whether or not this makes sense, because the web is more popular than
> any other part of the Internet. I still wince when people confuse "the
> Web" with "the Internet".
>
> My main objection to web interfaces in general is basically the same as
> my main objection to graphical user interfaces: there's no easy way to
> automate filling most of them out for use in scripts, just as there's 
> no
> easy way to automate moving a folder when you move it through a GUI
> instead of "mv foo bar". This may be fine for some end users, but it's
> just another example of companies serving only the lowest common
> denominator, typically Windows users.
>
> My rule: "On general principles, never do anything through a web
> interface when there's a decent alternative."
>
> Oh, but you asked about Nomic. Many reasons. There's currently no way 
> of
> adding comments to the vote. With a graphical browser, which is all 
> that
> most computers have, the Wiki requires pointing and clicking, which is
> far more inconvenient than typing 'YES' or 'NO'. There's no way to
> customize votes, e.g., 'yeah', or 'might as well'. And I don't want 
> this
> game to ever move to a point where the only Forum for an action is the
> Wiki, so I am protecting my rights to vote on s-b by using them.
>
> The Wiki is certainly useful for many tasks, and I'm glad we have it.
> But it's far from the ideal. Even if the above problems were all fixed,
> when I email, I'm writing a text document, and I get to use the 
> greatest
> human creation in all history, vi.
> </rant>

Well, adding comments to the votes page wouldn't be too hard, and in 
fact I was thinking of doing that anyway to provide a general interface 
for things that can't be fit into the rigorous form of "YES/NO/SHELVE". 
But I gather that would not be enough to appease you.

The problem is that you have different standards for what constitutes a 
"decent alternative" than I do. For me, a "decent alternative" is 
another such system where I can just click a button or type a line of 
text and something will count all the votes, award points, and give me 
a neatly formatted "nweek XX results" page.

To give you the mild convenience of voting 'yeah' instead of 'YES', I 
have to go to the rather greater inconvenience of either entering all 
votes myself, or writing a fully-fledged natural language processor. My 
feeling here is that it's been taking an hour or so every nweek just to 
update all the rules and cards, and that's been with the players 
submitting only 4 or 5 short props each nweek.

So I guess my feeling here is that if you'd like to become the 
Chairman, then you can have us vote to the forum, and you can tally the 
results and roll the dice if you'd like. But I have far more coursework 
than I'd like, and the fact that I've managed to automate almost the 
entire proposal pipeline is the only reason I didn't quit the game 
weeks ago.




Also, I'm afraid I can't agree that vi is the greatest human creation 
in all history. I'd go with the wheel, and then bubble-wrap. After that 
comes the Apple G5 Laptop, sliced bread, and warm slippers. I'd put vi 
pretty low down, as it ranks almost as poorly as Windows in terms of 
helpful documentation and intuitive commands... vim is pretty good, 
though. I still tend to use emacs for most things, because I have that 
sort of processor power to waste, and it's nice to be able to browse 
files, send email,  recompile my operating system without ever needing 
to suspend my text editor :P

Then again, I do a fair bit of text processing in nano, so perhaps my 
opinions aren't to be trusted...

--
Wonko
The end move in politics is always to pick up a gun.
                -- Buckminster Fuller

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