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On 05/22/2012 01:22 PM, Hannes Hauswedell wrote:
Please join us on the pdf-readers list to discuss this, as we will lose track of different discussions else!
sorry, I will keep on the mailing list now
This is a valid criticism, and we discussed it before. The result was: * we do not advertise one reader, but different readers for different platforms by different people, AND we are not affiliated with the creators, so we are more neutral
I understand this point. But does the administrator from the ministry (the guy I mentioned in the mail before) understand this point? If he clicks on the link and he gets one recommendation, he 1) maybe is not interested in reading, so he thinks this particular program is the general recommendation of pdfreaders.org -> what makes the page an advertisement 2) he cannot be sure that there is no affiliation with the creators. Maybe unofficial? If there are "many" recommendations, you can be more sure that there is no connection between the page and the creators.
- we also only advertise Free Software readers anyway, so were not
completely neutral in "market" sense before either * we could discuss recommending at random one out of two or three if that many are available and equally useful (usually we are happy to be able to recommend one, but for evince and sumatra this might make sense)
sounds funny, but then I wonder: If there are for example three different pdfreaders that are "equally useful", still they have some minor differences (disk space, start-up time, page appearance...) that maybe makes one better than the other. So who is to decide from which level these readers are "equally uselful" or one is better than the other so there can be made a single recommendation? This sounds like a lot of work and discussion for me.
And, on the other hand: Some people put focus on start-up time, other on appearance, for example. So why not let them choose on their own which reader is to recommend, which not? Surely I am not the "normal" user, but when I first saw the page, I was happy to see all pdfreaders stated free by the FSFE. The only thing, I had to do then was to test 3 different ones and chose the one I would like to use.
- in any case the gain in usability will greatly outweigh the
negative effects
I think I cannot see this point, as I do not see the gain in usability with just one recommendation left. But of course, I think you are much more into this campaign so I believe you, this will be a gain in usability.
What do you think? Especially about the third * ?
I think I come late to the party and you already thought a lot about my concerns. So please go ahead, if you think the positive effects of restructuring outweigh the negative ones.
best, Erik
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Erik Albers [ ] Free Software Foundation Europe [ ][ ][ ] Policy Team [ ] Your donation powers our work! [http://fsfe.org/donate/]
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