Comment 444 for bug 532633

Mark:

Even when you crowdsource information you still need a framework. Frameworks like Ideastorm or Brainstorm are crowdsourcing frameworks...frameworks you aren't using for your design decisions. It's just a weebit inconsistent to come back after-the-fact and claim you were diligently waiting for someone to have a crowdsourcing epiphany. If the goal was to crowdsource data...start using Brainstorm or another crowdsourcing tool as a framework and stated that is what you want the crowd to register their ideas over the design.

And no, if you had communicated a need for questions to be asked, there would be no need for you to state your questions that interest you. Hell man, if you had actually used the crowdsourcing tools that you already have available to you, your questions could be slipped to be considered fairly with anyone elses. You could have seeded the crowdsource framework with your questions..under a pseudonym.

Lets roll back the clock and lets say that on the day you introduced this particular "experiment" the design team opened up a ticket in Brainstorm that requested people to add and vote on questions that should be answered with data about the design change being introduced. And then every single member of the design team communicates that mechanism via blogs or twitter or bat signal or whatever. The Design takes X amount of days to let questions come in. They then choose Y number of questions (not the top Y) they deem are important design considerations and communicate those questions of interest widely again and state they seeking people to come up with how to generate data then you move on to crowdsourcing a data methodology for answering each of those Y questions. That is a coherent process for crowdsourcing data driven design. Anyone who really believes that crowdsourcing data methodology is a good idea would be following something similar as a process.

And such a process does not exclude considering a totally left-field idea not driven through the process. Such a process does not take a way decision making at any step from the design team. But what that process does is proactively engage with externals in a time appropriate fashion and lets them know what feedback is desirable.

Coming back 400 comments deep into a heated bug ticket and finally stating that you want the questions to be crowdsourced is, well, its something I don't have polite words for, but it certainly is not going to lead to data driven design nor is it a sincere effort to crowdsource anything. The crowd isn't in this bug ticket. The crowd is on brainstorm.

And no Mark, this isn't about me. You stated flatly, belatedly, that _you_ wanted externals to provide data. I'm just the only one with enough experience pulling your teeth to get you to clarify that statement into something people can actually do something constructive with. You need to do better communicating in a timely manner how you want externals to provide feedback. If you continue to run design experiments this way your just going to burn up goodwill and you aren't going to get quality data.