Re: How can we decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?

[Josselin Poiret]

Hi Lily,

Liliana Marie Prikler <liliana.prikler@gmail.com> writes:

> Instead, we have seen in this thread appeals to age, appeals to
> perceived lack of personal benefit, and now appeals to typing effort,
> none of which really make that great of an argument against the
> ChangeLog style, especially when they come in combination with a
> refusal to make use of already provided tools.  I think we're starting
> to see the moving of the goal post as the actual game here. 

This seems to me like an unwarranted accusation.  The OP and numerous
other users/contributors have reported that they have actual
frustrations with the process here, and I don't think this is an healthy
interaction.

> Maybe it's time to take a step back and instead of asking “How can we
> decrease the cognitive overhead for contributors?”, we should perhaps
> ask “For which contributors do we want to/can we decrease the cognitive
> overhead?”  We have drifted much from the original post that discussed
> moms with full-time jobs, who struggle to do “difficult” tasks
> (simplified wording; may change the meaning of the OP a little).  Now,
> I personally struggle to see how your personal preference for
> communication media, commit message style, and other things that were
> discussed in any of the preceding threads actually correlate with being
> a parent.  However, I do know that with its 150 million users, most
> people of the world don't have a Github account.  Being one of the 4
> billion email users out there is a comparably low barrier of entry
> imho.  So, whose cognitive overhead do you want to reduce (besides the
> obvious "my own", which everyone always tries)?

We could try to time how long it takes to set up the email vs. forge
workflow and do a first contribution, I can bet the former is much
longer than the latter.  Especially if your email host has funky
authentication systems.  I don't think the number of users of each
system is a compelling argument either: you're not going to say that
mowing your lawn with a knife is inherently better because more people
have knives compared to lawnmowers.

Regarding the “mom argument”, I would disagree and say that this is
completely related: interruptions are more costly, you're more likely to
have less attention span, and overall you probably don't want to commit
to 20 steps just to send a contribution.

Best,
-- 
Josselin Poiret

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