I spend time in these forums out of a honest desire to help people and, to a slightly lesser degree, influence and promote what I think is a truly excellent piece of software (OmniFocus) developed not just by smart people, but by
good people (the Omni folks).
I like that Omni is so open with their development plans and receptive to new ideas and suggestions. It really gives me the sense that they genuinely care about the product and their customers, and that I can have some impact, however small, on the app's evolution.
But as Curt pointed out, sometimes feature requests don't look like requests at all, but rather more like demands or just complaining.
I'll admit, those posts annoy me. Maybe I get defensive and argumentative when I should just ignore them and move on.
But what I find particularly irritating is when arguments
against a feature request are labeled as being disruptive, inane, or lacking in substance. If you're not in favor of the feature request, you're expected to just shut up and get out of the way.
Quote:
Originally Posted by JohnJ80
Don't need it? Then don't use it...
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I'm sorry, but that's simply not good enough. As good as OmniFocus is, there are a lot of things I'd like to see improved. So please don't tell me to "just not use" some feature when I think its development resources could be better spent elsewhere.
You know, the funny thing is, I'm not even particularly against the proposed reminders feature. Heck, I might even use it at some point. But I'd still rather see Omni work on some other things first. Not because your proposal is necessarily bad, but because I think there are other things that are
more important and
more people have asked for.
Quote:
Originally Posted by paulduv
So at best, it's inane to read through those countervailing comments, because because they're an obvious generic consideration about any particular feature. It's particularly frustrating to see so many people go out of their way to comment about this need, and end up having a vacuous discussion.
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So you're telling me you've got the patience to read through arguments
for the feature you want but not
against the feature you want?
Quote:
Originally Posted by paulduv
About the tone of this thread, here's my answer to your question, "So why the animosity?".
You write: "But when pressed for details, you've been intractable and defensive, flaunt your credentials..."
This was your comment at the beginning of the thread:
"Maybe. But unless you've got the source code, it's hard to be certain. Either way, I'd still rather see the resources invested elsewhere. But that's just my personal opinion."
You should be aware that your post looks a heck of a lot like credentials flaunting to those who don't feel compelled to write posts like yours. To give you an idea of why they're so vexing, they read something like this:
"Even though I'm saying I don't personally need the thing that you think you need, I'm going to insert comments into this discussion whose subtext signal my pretty impressive insight into "source code", and into "the investment of resources" of a complex product, and the successful organization that designed it."
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How did I suggest any kind of "impressive insight" into the source code or the investment of resources of a complex product?
My whole point here is:
we don't know! I have no special insight into Omni development and, assuming he doesn't work for them, neither does JohnJ80.
The only ones that truly know are the people at Omni. So why not let
them judge the difficulty?
Setting aside all speculation on difficulty, it might still be interesting to discuss how such a feature might work, right?
But when I tell JohnJ80 I don't understand his idea, I get nothing but a patronizing response: "Think about it a bit, it'll come to you." How is that constructive? Are you telling me that
you wouldn't be put off by such a comment?
My question was a sincere attempt to learn more about his idea. Without a constructive dialog, I can only assume that either JohnJ80 thinks I'm not worthy of his 20+ years of engineering experience or all he wanted to do was complain. At this point, either way is fine by me.
-Dennis