Honestly I find this quite frustrating. I really dislike when folks like yourself take your product-focused mindset into open source/public domain projects.
These people are NOT BUILDING A PRODUCT. There ARE NO USERS. No customers. No investors. No business considerations. There are just contributors, donating their time and money to a project they feel is worthwhile.
If they don't want to focus on "UX," they don't need to. If a person who believes in the project lends their time toward improving UX, they can. But it's not the job of ANYONE, contributor or maintainer, to do anything that doesn't serve the existing contributors.
And I know that sucks for welcoming new folks. I know it would be better for a project to do outreach. To try to position themselves to bring in new members. Many such projects do that. But it sure is galling to suggest that it's a project's JOB to do something more when they're providing tons of free content to you. If it mattered enough for you to comment, go work on it!
They do it for free. They do whatever they want. If you want more, you can contribute for free (or can't you be bothered to do it?). If you don't like it, don't use it.
> Man, nobody at LibriVox can be bothered to
Did you ever bother to provide something useful for free? I mean other than your complaints (in case you consider them useful).
I built a few open source projects. And too many users are like you. They don't contribute shit but they come with their complaints because it's not enough to give it for free, they want it tailored for themselves. Because of users like you, I stopped caring entirely. My new personal projects are not open source, so that I don't get the complaints.
I have all sorts of open source projects including services I run as a charity for thousands of users.
If I'm going to build something for people to use, then I'm going to also think about consider their user experience. It's the same reason why I polish a README. Why would you drop the ball after all that work?
This is your opinion, and you are free to do whatever the fuck you want, precisely because you do it for free, in your free time.
I don't come telling you that your projects suck or that you apparently can't be bothered to mention them on your profile.
It has a lot to do with the tone you use. Had you said "It's a great project, I wonder if they thought about adding X", I wouldn't have said anything. But you said "Man, nobody at LibriVox can be bothered to", which is disrespectful. The fact that you don't seem to realise suggests that you are part of those people that make open source toxic (often not in purpose).
I have many examples where people came to my open source project and heavily complained because they struggled with something, or pressured me into implementing a feature for them (for free, obviously) or into changing the licence, etc. And when I tell them how toxic their behaviour is, many times they hadn't realise (some apologise, some are jerks). Still their behaviour is toxic.
When people do stuff for free, we should at least be respectful.
No, this is fine for what this is, essentially a library catalogue. I prefer this over the pushy this is what others are reading type of interface as I tend to access these catalogues knowing what I'm looking for. If I want to know what others are reading/listening to I'll go to a book recommendation site or forum and take it from there. Library catalogues should be neutral, just show what is on offer and leave the popularity contest to others.
But you already have a search box and alphabetical list if that's what gets you excited. What about the rest of us?
Building a featured or popular section is basic UX and creates a nice call to action to let the visitor see what they can expect without browsing to see if the site has any books they want.
Even my local library puts more work into their homepage with a featured reads section. So disappointing when nobody cares about UX or holds minority HNer views like "a featured list on the homepage is bad and pushy–I quite like alphabetical lists myself".
Maybe your comments didn't meant to come off like those people who complain about volunteer efforts, and maybe you legitamately meant them in goodwill...but, have you considered submitting this as feedback directly at the project - instead of on HN? What might seem obvious to you, may not seem obvious to the *volunteers* of this effort. (Or, maybe they address this aspect within their forums - i honestly don't know?) Maybe send some feedback and suggestions - in a respectful manner - to the volunteers who manage this effort, so that, they can consider your suggestions?
Doesn't even involve a DB query. Maybe store 10 lists in JS/HTML and randomly pick one on every homepage page load.
For a project that depends on thousands of hours of donated content from strangers, 10 minutes of work on the homepage to promote some high quality donations isn't a big ask. That's a decent thing to remind them of when they resist the suggestion.
Feel free to make or sponsor a recommendation site which provides the features you requested. If you build or sponsor it and enough people agree with the need for such a site they will come flocking to it. If you think Librivox really needs this feature you may be able to convince them by submitting code or funds to produce code to implement it.
I mirror the sentiments: I prefer not having these on their page, and would prefer individuals/other orgs make their own curated list of "good listens on LibriVox".
> What about the rest of us?
His/my suggestion satisfies your need. Just Google "Librivox audiobook recommendations".
> Even my local library puts more work into their homepage with a featured reads section.
They're getting paid. You're asking the folks behind LibriVox to have a good sense of what's good on their site. Do they have that bandwidth (and this is a recurring task forever)?
This thread reminds me why UX is so bad on most services.
Most developers think of MX (My Experience), not UX.
You're okay with going to different websites to find a book you might want to listen to. So everyone else should prefer that experience.
Or, you could write a database query that finds the top 5 reads in 5 genres that runs once a week for the homepage. Or you can copy a few of those book recommendations onto the homepage and give people a nice place to start clicking around (great idea).
All this resistance in the replies to a tiny bit of consideration for the website visitor just reveals another piece to the puzzle of why good UX is so rare.
I've brought this up in the last couple comments, but it really is like listening to people go to war defending why they don't need a README for their Github repo. Except in LibriVox's case, it's a repo that everyone else spent hours of their life contributing to. Just make the dang README. Promote a few volunteer contributions.
> Most developers think of MX (My Experience), not UX.
Yes, yes and yes. I don't know how long you've been around, but in the (earlier) days of open source, this was very explicit: Open source authors are writing to solve their problem, not their users' problems. If they go out of their way to solve other people's problems, that's certainly nice, but not to be expected. This was very explicit, and well understood.
We're not arguing with you that having a well curated list is a bad idea from a user's perspective. We're pointing out that doing it well is work, and doing it poorly does make things worse. We don't want people burnt out, so we don't want to push for this.
> Or, you could write a database query that finds the top 5 reads in 5 genres that runs once a week for the homepage.
This is the opposite of a well curated list. In my experience, such lists based on raw numbers leads to a poorer experience. There's a reason HN doesn't follow this approach.
> Except in LibriVox's case, it's a repo that everyone else spent hours of their life contributing to. Just make the dang README. Promote a few volunteer contributions.
Talk is cheap. Do you want to spend the time making a curated list? If so, go forth and volunteer!
