There are no words in the English language I could scream to drown you out

[sovay]

So I got home to discover the latest code push from Dreamwidth has effectively broken the site for me. I left a comment to that effect. It does not look as though my comment will make a difference.

I understand accessibility is complicated. This journal and DW in general was one of the few things in my life right now that did not cause me active pain. It was in fact rather sustaining. That has just sharply ceased to be the case. I have no idea what to do. I left LJ for DW. I had planned to stay here until they turned out the lights because I trusted them not to hurt me. Now my eyes hurt. I am a text-oriented person who cannot comfortably interact with the text-based form of social media which is very nearly the whole of my life online. There's nowhere to go from here. (I can't even think about the effects on my Patreon.) I am tired of being a person whose needs are disposable. I am very, very, very not happy.

[edit 2020-07-26 1:21:00] I have temporarily reverted to the old style because the alternative appears to be verging on a migraine. And perhaps in a year the horse will learn to sing.

Comments

[sporky_rat]

Because doing so, when all of our developers are volunteers, means that something will get left behind.

I assure you Mark and Denise are 'counting votes'.

We're working with code over twenty years old, finding bugs that don't work with modern web and modern browsers. Things are not being done for shiggles and gits.

[asakiyume]

You sound frustrated. It must feel like (or actually be) a thankless job to try to be improving things for people and to still have people making complaints like mine, which are ignorant of the difficulties of coding.

I understand that Dreamwidth is trying to make things more convenient for a large number of users; I also know that no change pleases everyone, and that some things (like preserving legacy stuff) that seem to someone like me like it ought to be possible may not be. But it seems to me that I ought to be able to make a generalized complaint without provoking a response like you've just given to me. I wasn't talking to you. I didn't send a complaint to Dreamwidth--I was just condoling with a friend who's having serious difficulties with the new layout.

[sporky_rat]

I am a little frustrated, yeah. I feel like a lot of people are biting us because of Ravelry's lack of response and warning. There's been over two months of testing on this in dw_beta and everything seemed to be okay, then we get hit with the 'omgwtheck why did you do this make it go back'.

It's disheartening and really really upsetting. This has been a thing repeatedly and it drives off the developers we have.

(TL;DR, The dw_beta is a thing, we aren't doing this for no reason, please please give feedback on the betas.)

[sporky_rat]

(I am random support vol, and it feels like we never get anything but complaints about things being broken and it's just so. Why do I bother? Nobody's going to be happy, I might as well quit and wash my hands of the whole thing.)

[asakiyume]

Understood. I've also just read through the recent post from DW maintenance, which goes into more detail about the issues you're describing, including the burnout. I'm sorry to have contributed to that for you.

[muccamukk]

The messaging I (and I'm a seed user who's main site is DW) got about DW beta was that it was for people who knew about code, and more recently was about mobile functionality. As I don't understand about code and don't use DW on my phone, I ignored it. I've heard the exact same from many, many people. If you folks wanted to get more people on dw_beta, you really, really, really needed to make clear what was going on, not just say it was about mobile improvements.

I'm sorry you folks are getting flack, and there's not excuse for bad language, etc, but this genuinely blindsided the majority of the userbase, and it did that because dw_beta was incredibly poorly advertised and prior to 'Splosion time yesterday.

[sovay]

As I don't understand about code and don't use DW on my phone, I ignored it. I've heard the exact same from many, many people.

I would be one of those people. I saw the dw_maintenance announcement in May about improving the mobile experience. I assumed they were looking for feedback from mobile users. As a person who interacts with DW via an eleven-year-old MacBook Pro, I didn't see what I could contribute. It did not occur to me that the laptop/desktop experience would be so drastically affected.

[muccamukk]

Yeah, and the one time I clicked through to something on DW beta it was long and technical about html parsing, and I was just *shrug emoji* and carried on with my day.

[kore]

Big yes to all this. I know nearly nothing about code, and I had the impression the beta comm was for people who could offer technical suggestions and coding help. I also never use DW on a phone, and I don't use my phone for text based social networks in general.

I'm also getting annoyed with the "people are just really upset after Ravelry" brushoff, because I never visited Ravelry in my life and barely heard about the redesign fallout. Like sovay points out, this isn't some kind of immediate Old Internet User Yelling at Redesign knee-jerk thing; it's a health issue.

[sovay]

I assure you Mark and Denise are 'counting votes'.

I am glad to know that. I appreciate the inside view and I appreciate the volunteer work. I don't say that ironically; if you are a volunteer, you must have been part of previous changes that either gave me no trouble or improved my experience of the site. The rest of this comment is a sort of generalized response, since I just woke up.

I don't assume that changes are made for no reason or that no deliberation or care goes into their design. I am not being facetious when I say that I know accessibility is complicated; I understand that many people interact with the internet through their phones and their ability to do so should be supported. I am not on Ravelry and had not heard about their recent issues until julian mentioned them below. I gather that the percentage of users who provide feedback on dw_beta turns out not to be a representative sample of the user base and that does sound maddening.

I got a migraine from the code push. It did not upset me because it looked different from what I was used to; it physically hurt me. Light sensitivity, noise sensitivity, nausea, the works. I've never gotten a migraine from anything other than accidental caffeine exposure and, once, the Jordan's IMAX movie experience which I am never doing again. I had to leave the computer for the rest of the night when I had planned on doing writing work. I did not expect that from a site redesign and I don't think it was strictly a factor of the font size, since I am accustomed to zooming in or zooming out on other sites without worsening eyestrain that all of a sudden flashes over to intolerable overload. This is not a problem I can fix by just reminding myself to be flexible of others' needs. If I am going to be able to continue to use this site at all once the temporary reversion wears off, it looks as though I will have to (or have to ask rosefox to) customize myself a journal style indistinguishable from the old site skin, otherwise I will be off DW and therefore for all intents and purposes off social media. That upsets me.

(Also, I am well aware it is not the responsibility of the dev team to deal with my history of trauma—seriously, it would be inappropriate—but the wording of the signoff stomped extremely hard on some of mine and there is nothing I can do about that except recognize the trigger and try to remind myself it's not 2006, it's not 2015, it's not personal, etc. The bomb went off and I had fewer resources for containing the shrapnel, being in unexpected pain.)

I am sorry that being a volunteer for DW feels like nothing but unending flak from all sides. I don't know what else to say. This journal is where I talk to people about things, partly so that people in comments will have useful suggestions, not just commiseration. I would like you not to feel personally attacked by my response any more than I know I should feel personally attacked by the code push. What with the world in the state it is in, no one has very much skin to spare.

[kore]

Eloquently said!