[mythtv] MythTV Usability Report

[Steve Hodge]

On 1/9/06, Brad DerManouelian <myth at dermanouelian.com> wrote:
> Again, I need to point out that my 8 year old daughter can work
> nearly all of my mythTV system and never read a word of any manual.
> My 14 year old can do it all and never read the manual. They're below
> the grade-level of the average Mythtv user.

That doesn't mean there aren't problems. The pural of anecdote is not
data. Jono has provided examples of the things he thinks are not
ideal, to simply dismiss them all with a "RTFM!" or "You're wrong" or
"My kids don't have any problems" is incredibly unhelpful. And  for
what it is worth my wife won't try to do much more than watch
recordings because it is not simple. Yet she was the one who
programmed the video when still used that piece of antiquated junk.

> Also, it's pointless to complain about things that have been fixed in SVN.

How is a user running the latest stable release supposed to know what
has been fixed? Do you really want to discourage users reporting
problems by shouting "It's fixed in SVN" at them all the time?

I don't run SVN so I don't know, but I strongly expect that at least
some of the issues raised still exist.

> Developers knew it was an issue and fixed it. What more can you expect them to do??

I can expect them to reply with a lot more politeness than has been
shown in this thread. The tone of this thread has been outright
dismissal that anything is amiss. That's not the way to treat someone
trying to offer constructive criticism.

Steve