Am I really alone in thinking that the Internet Quorum UI isn't really that bad?
Before my startup days I spent years working for the local government, and before that for a large (formerly public) gas pipelining company. I've seen so many horrendous Access/VBA-based frontends, or worse, Excel spreadsheets with macros that this system doesn't seem so bad.
In a way I'm actually surprised that Congress even has system to collate all the emails, letters, phone calls and visits into one single database. That sounds really useful, and I'd love to hear from someone that has actually used it.
"this world of We've Always Done It This Way and You'll Need The Proper Authorization For That."
I don't think this is the product of "We've Always Done It This Way", it's the result of "We Have A Strict Budget For This And User Interface Is Difficult To Quantify". As for "You'll Need The Proper Authorization For That.", well, that's the stuff of government. I agree that it's overly restrictive, but I wouldn't want to see the government tip too far in the opposite direction.
I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.
Am I really alone in thinking that the Internet Quorum UI isn't really that bad?
No, not at all.
My first thought when I saw it was that it's actually pretty clear and straightforward as far as interfaces go, the only real difference between that and the type of Web 2.0 interface that people use today is probably a 100 line style sheet to make it look less 1995 and a conversion to use AJAX requests instead of full page reloads.
Then again, "just" probably means quite a bit of work in the case of converting to AJAX requests, if the code that generates these pages looks anything like I imagine it does...
I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.
>I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.
The only argument against this is a statistical one, akin to how entropy works: One should engage in revolution only when the set of likely worse systems is larger than the set of likely better systems. (I could probably state this better if I knew more mathematical terminology; I suspect matrices are involved.)
Obviously in the US you haven't reached that point. Yet.
You don't really need matrix terminology - just a bit of economic theory and an understanding of basic statistics.
Essentially, you want to measure the 'quality' of each outcome (utility), and the likelihood of each outcome. Then, you calculate the expected utility (which is different from the utility of the expected value - you apply the function before taking the dot product, not afterwards).
I'm blanking on the TeX at the moment, but you basically take the sum of p(i)*U(I), where p(i) is the probability of the i-th outcome occuring, and U(I) is the utility ('benefit') associated with the i-th outcome. Utility is unique to a monotonically increasing function, so that means the individual values are arbitrary, as long as the relative order is preserved.
Then, see if that expected utility is better than the status quo. (Of course, this assumes that you already have a well-defined utility function, which is easy in theory but hard in practice).
Thank you for that. I cannot upvote enough. This subthread, with its heady blend of mathematics, philosophy and violent uprising is why I keep coming back to hacker news.
Before my startup days I spent years working for the local government, and before that for a large (formerly public) gas pipelining company. I've seen so many horrendous Access/VBA-based frontends, or worse, Excel spreadsheets with macros that this system doesn't seem so bad.
In a way I'm actually surprised that Congress even has system to collate all the emails, letters, phone calls and visits into one single database. That sounds really useful, and I'd love to hear from someone that has actually used it.
"this world of We've Always Done It This Way and You'll Need The Proper Authorization For That."
I don't think this is the product of "We've Always Done It This Way", it's the result of "We Have A Strict Budget For This And User Interface Is Difficult To Quantify". As for "You'll Need The Proper Authorization For That.", well, that's the stuff of government. I agree that it's overly restrictive, but I wouldn't want to see the government tip too far in the opposite direction.
I'd be all for donning a Guy Fawkes mask and changing the world if there was even the slightest assurance that the system replacing it would be better. I don't think there is.