Having two kids myself, both using their computers a lot, my main concern is not academic performance (in fact they are both top of their class despite playing counter-strike and other games for hours each day). I am a lot more worried about them not getting enough exercise, which in the long term will have fatal consequences.
The discussion on parental control or kids self-control is uninteresting. What is interesting is making them interested in and getting an understanding of what is good for them. That takes a lot more than just telling them "You cant play any more today".
The article states the problems but no solution. Thinking economically about open source one can hypothesize that comunity members gain a benefit from controbuting either in the form of better software they use themselves or in the form of street cred or some other gain. The author should realize that this is true for end users too.
Even if they dont have the knowledge required to contribute documentation or even reviews thereof (which should be quite easy), they could always provide usability test reports, no matter how bad the gui is. If this is availble I think the programmers will start using these reports for improving the gui and the end users will get better guis. The same thing is probably true for documentation.
Another possible gain is for usability engineers who need something to put in their CV. Having contributed to an open source project is valuable in your CV these days, and this could be an opportunity for new usability testers or designers to show of their skills too. And I guess some of them could start bragging to other usability engineers too, gaining street cred.
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Having two kids myself, both using their computers a lot, my main concern is not academic performance (in fact they are both top of their class despite playing counter-strike and other games for hours each day). I am a lot more worried about them not getting enough exercise, which in the long term will have fatal consequences. The discussion on parental control or kids self-control is uninteresting. What is interesting is making them interested in and getting an understanding of what is good for them. That takes a lot more than just telling them "You cant play any more today".
The article states the problems but no solution. Thinking economically about open source one can hypothesize that comunity members gain a benefit from controbuting either in the form of better software they use themselves or in the form of street cred or some other gain. The author should realize that this is true for end users too.
Even if they dont have the knowledge required to contribute documentation or even reviews thereof (which should be quite easy), they could always provide usability test reports, no matter how bad the gui is. If this is availble I think the programmers will start using these reports for improving the gui and the end users will get better guis. The same thing is probably true for documentation.
Another possible gain is for usability engineers who need something to put in their CV. Having contributed to an open source project is valuable in your CV these days, and this could be an opportunity for new usability testers or designers to show of their skills too. And I guess some of them could start bragging to other usability engineers too, gaining street cred.