Personas

[Gervase Markham]

Damien Miller wrote:
> I disagree with labelling occasional bug reporters ("Fabio" persona) as
> Unimportant. For our (OpenSSH's) bugzilla, these make a fair proportion
> of bug reports, and some of our most important. I expect other Bugzilla-
> using free software projects are similar in this regard.

We need to be very clear about the definition of "important" we are 
using. It is not "important to the software project using the Bugzilla", 
  it is "important in designing the software".

While Fabio-type people are undoubtedly important to OpenSSH or Mozilla, 
Fabio uses a very limited part of Bugzilla, and exactly what he sees can 
be customised through templates - as we do on b.m.o., as KDE do, and so 
on. Therefore, it doesn't make sense to design the rest of the software 
around his needs - because he never uses it. And it doesn't make much 
sense to design even the default bug entry screen around him, because 
the one he uses is unsuitable for our other core users, as it's too simple.

So what we do is we say "Fabio is of very limited importance in the 
design of the Bugzilla software, and we can meet his needs using the 
template system".

Do you see the distinction I am making? Is that reasonable?

Gerv