One thing I've noticed recently is that when someone complains about how a certain issue "just keeps happening" or they "keep having to deal with it", it often seems to indicate an unsolved problem that people may not be aware of. Some examples:
Players of a game repeatedly ask the same rules questions to the judges at an event. This doesn't mean everyone is bad at reading -- it likely indicates an area of the rules that is unclear or misleadingly written.
People keep trying to open a door the wrong way, either pulling on a door that's supposed to be pushed or pushing a door that's supposed to be pulled -- it's quite possible the handle has been designed poorly in a way that gives people the wrong idea of how to use it. (The Design of Everyday Things has more examples of this sort of issue.)
Someone keeps hearing the same type of complaint or having the same conversation about a particular policy at work -- this might be a sign that that policy might have issues. [1]
Every time someone tries to moderate a forum they run, lots of users protest against their actions and call it unjust; this might be a sign that they're making bad moderation decisions.
I'm not going to say that all such cases are ones where things should change -- it's certainly possible that one might have to take unpopular but necessary measures under some circumstances -- but I do think that this sort of thing should be a pretty clear warning sign that things might be going wrong.
Thus, I suspect you should consider these sorts of patterns not just as "some funny thing that keeps happening" or whatever, but rather as potential indicators of "bugs" to be corrected!
[1] This post was primarily inspired by a situation in which I saw someone write "This is the fifth time I've had this conversation in the last 24 hours and I'm sick of it" or words to that effect -- the reason they had kept having that conversation, at least in my view, was because they were implementing a bad policy and people kept questioning them on it (with perhaps varying degrees of politeness).
With respect to situations where people are complaining or being critical of a policy or a behavior, one should bear in mind that a compliant is more likely to be voiced than a neutral or positive attitude about the same thing. As a TV writer, I can tell you that the amount of critical 'hate-mail' I receive about an episode often conflicts with the audience polling results for the episode. My 'hate-mail' might outpace other messages by two to one for an episode which polls in the overwhelmingly positive range. I suspect that this comes down to how much more likely a person is to act on a negative opinion than on a positive one.
A point I think others missed here is that in the TV example, there's more data than the situations the OP talks about, so mscottveach can say there's a disparity instead of just having the hatemail. Maybe more situations should involve anonymous polling.
Oh, yes, that's a good point, and I have updated in your direction. I was thinking more along the lines of things like product reviews and survey feedback, where the user is much more likely to take the time to complete the feedback form if they've had a negative experience than if they've had a positive one.
Edited to add: I wonder if there's a distinction between unsolicited feedback and requesting feedback, or giving feedback to an individual vs. feedback to a corporate entity.
1Pattern
Sounds like they're being used as bug reports. Is there usually another way of making bug reports?
One thing I've noticed recently is that when someone complains about how a certain issue "just keeps happening" or they "keep having to deal with it", it often seems to indicate an unsolved problem that people may not be aware of. Some examples:
I'm not going to say that all such cases are ones where things should change -- it's certainly possible that one might have to take unpopular but necessary measures under some circumstances -- but I do think that this sort of thing should be a pretty clear warning sign that things might be going wrong.
Thus, I suspect you should consider these sorts of patterns not just as "some funny thing that keeps happening" or whatever, but rather as potential indicators of "bugs" to be corrected!
[1] This post was primarily inspired by a situation in which I saw someone write "This is the fifth time I've had this conversation in the last 24 hours and I'm sick of it" or words to that effect -- the reason they had kept having that conversation, at least in my view, was because they were implementing a bad policy and people kept questioning them on it (with perhaps varying degrees of politeness).