An Analysis of Matt's Response on the Now-Closed Thread
"Howdy guys, thanks for the feedback."
Friendly enough. A little late in the day. But fine.
"The initial usage stats from infinite scroll look really good -- people are reading more posts which means they're spending more time on your site."
Hard for me to say, but I suspect that the initial usage stats have been skewed by people going on their and other blogs and riffling through the pages to see when and if the scrolling will stop.
"As you might guess, people are way more likely to just scroll down than they were to click the "next page" button -- it's faster and better."
I don't think so. They are scrolling only because when they get down to the bottom, WP automatically scroll for them.
"It's the future of all web pages with more than one page of content."
On what basis is this statement made? And even if it is "the future", why can't people be allowed to opt out?
"We're still working out some bugs, and as some of you noted your footer widgets are temporarily inaccessible, and figuring out the best way to deal with that and other edge cases."
I'll be curious to see what they do because infinite scrolling and footer seem pretty much incompatible to me. Unless you have very few posts. And by the way, what is an "edge issue"?
"A few people have asked if "everyone" is against this why we're just not turning it off."
Correction: The majority have asked why not make it an option instead of mandatory.
"Well, there's a thread like this which seems overly negative for pretty much everything we launch. People don't come to the forums to say they like something they usually come when they have a problem."
Excuse me, but you asked for feedback.
"That's why we ask for feedback on the forums, to find the problems, not to gauge popularity."
But the problem is that it's not popular! People don't want to be obliged to put up with it.
"For that we've learned to look at stats, what people do versus what they say. This is better because it allows us to get feedback from millions of people in addition to the few thousand who frequent the forums. Both voices are important."
But you have to take into account the comments of those who have taken the time to do so. You are looking at stats and that is fine. But you have also heard from the majority of people that they spent a lot of time scrolling and scrolling and reloading and then scrolling some more in an effort to find the problem. You have to extrapolate those comments onto the mass of stats that you have. At the very least, I would think that they would call into question what the numbers are supposedly saying.
"Thanks for your patience, and as we fix these issues up ..."
You're welcome. We anxiously await the fixes. Please announce them in a news release, not forum post.
"... we'll continue rolling out infinite scrolling to the rest of the themes that work with it."
[Shakes head and sighs.]
"Also thank you to the people on the thread who provided calm, rational feedback without attacks or hyperbole. The team is always here for you."
I appreciate all that you do. Really. But not allowing people the simple expedient of opting out (as you do, for example, with the Twenty-Ten background, which can be fixed or scrolling), is a very bad idea. Please reconsider.
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