Re: Do we want more choice? (was Bookmark the end of file?)

[Marcin Borkowski <mbork@mbork.pl>]

On 2015-04-13, at 07:35, Drew Adams <drew.adams@oracle.com> wrote:

>> There is a general realization nowadays, that everything being
>> equal, less choice is likely better than more choice:
>
> "A general realization." "Nowadays." Ooooh. Can't argue with that.

This made me laugh.  And I thought of this:
http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html immediately.

> Not to mention that no one proposed forcing users to choose
> anything here.  Define a default behavior.  Provide an easy
> way to get other, optional behavior.  No imposition.  No user
> paralysis before a terrifying and difficult dilemma.  Perfectly
> ignorable choice; zero choosing needed.

+1.  I guess that Gnus users are exactly the ones dissatisfied by the
/lack/ of choices in Thunderbird.  (Though I admit that the difficulty
of setup of Gnus scared me off, and I'm happy with mu4e.)

OTOH, I agree that reasonable defaults is what should be pursued.

BTW, there is at least one community which commonly regards "too few
choices" as something very bad: boardgamers.  And the intersection of
boardgamers and computer geeks is not only nonempty, but rather big,
I would guess.

Best,

-- 
Marcin Borkowski
http://octd.wmi.amu.edu.pl/en/Marcin_Borkowski
Faculty of Mathematics and Computer Science
Adam Mickiewicz University