[Libreoffice-qa] Forums Proposal

Sat Oct 6 13:26:18 PDT 2012

Le 2012-10-06 12:26, Bjoern Michaelsen a écrit :
> Hi Marc,
>
> On Sat, Oct 06, 2012 at 08:23:03AM -0400, Marc Paré wrote:
>> We are hoping to hear from a lead in this list (after discussion
>> with your members) as to whether you would like to:
>
> Not claiming to be a leader of this list, but providing the following opinions to consider.
>
>> * not use the forums at all (at which point the forum would be
>> deleted from the forums site).  OR
>
> I expect both development and QA to rarely use the forum and most work to
> continue on the lists. However, I would not want to see development and QA
> being without a forum as it is a valueable entry point we should not miss. I
> expect us to do basic "do your first build"/"do your first triage" help there
> and then pick people up to the mailing lists. As such I propose to have a join
> "QA and development" forum (they wont have too many posts esp. in the
> beginnning and we want to prevent a 'empty hall' effect there)>
>
> While we are talking about 'empty hall':

No sure if we were talking about "empty hall", I am hoping to help fill 
them. :-)

>   - Marketing and Marketing US should be joined (unless we have a 20 head US
>     marketing team that I dont know about and that would overwhelm the rest with
>     their posts)

Not sure about this. We were given the mandate to concentrate on the US 
market specifically. You may have noticed that there are already few 
mails on the US mailing list (of which I am part), but I believe that we 
are set to re-buid post-LibOCon. From what I can see, the largest 
problem with the US is the lack of marcons for the group, which has 
always been front-and-centre of all serious discussions. I would favour 
keeping the US separate and closing the mailing list. The US-forums will 
get better exposure on the forums and be able to get more participation 
from the general user-population.

>   - 'Installation and Configuration' for all non-Windows users should be joined.
>     While we have enough Linux talent to warrent an own forum,
>     on OSX the userbase is thinner and the linux users can often help out on OSX too

no problem with this.

>   - LibreOffice Applications should start as _one_ buzzing forum when we do
>     'open beta'-testing of the forum. Once we announce the forum as 'official',
>     we can split out forums from there _if_ they warrant that by their traffic.

not sure if I like that idea. I would rather see what most users looking 
for help are looking for on arrival on our forums -- a breakdown in 
forums where they can locate their application section and leave a 
message. Sending our users in need of help to a soup-bowl mix of 
messages will only confuse them and add more stress. I would rather have 
the obvious breakdown on our forums site. If there are alpha-beta 
problems with any of the modules, then it would seem to me better for 
our users to see them already in their own categories.

This will also help devs who are monitoring the forums to zoom in on 
their own particular interests.

I would rather see the bulk of our philosophy with regards to the user 
forums to be that of helping out users. From there, the contributors can 
extrapolate the data they need to bug report and to trouble-shoot or to 
even contribute.

>   - Templates are unlikely to support a forum on their own from the start.

Yup, but on the other hand, it is a good collection point where we can 
encourage ideas on templates and hope some devs will pick up on it. Its 
a two-way street. If we hope to attract users to our contributor 
forums/mailing lists, then we should also hope to attract devs to our 
user forums. Let's give this one a shot. I am interested in this one, 
particularly considering the lack of template ideas on the lists. It 
will be a good collection point for ideas.

>     I would suggest to split 'Extensions LibreOffice' into 'Extension Users and
>     Support' and 'Extension developement (incl. macro and UNO)'.

No problem with the name change. I think users would have an easy time 
reading into it.

>
> Also we have way too many meta- and announcement forums in the proposal. That
> will lead to cross-posting and people missing out on announcements because they
> only check one forum etc.
> Everything we say 'officially' to our users should be relevant to our
> contributors. And since we want our users to become contributors, we shouldnt
> exclude them from 'contributor announcements'. Thus join those forums.

No argument with this. Sure, sounds reasonable to join both 
Announcement/News forums into one. I would suggest leaving this at the 
top of the list, so that it is the first forums for all to see.

> Discuss should be joined into 'projects' (the third forum with announcements in
> the description). If you 'discuss matters affecting the LibreOffice project' it
> should better be relevant to the projects too.

I have no problems with this either. Although, I can see others having 
problems with it. I was never too clear on what the "projects" mailing 
list was all about as it seems we are all advertising on it and 
discussions are happening more and more on it. It may be better to have 
a "Discuss" forum with a sub-forum "Projects" where only decided 
projects are announced. The discuss list is very active and it is hard 
to pull projects from any of the threads.

BTW, both of these threads are quite active.

>
> Finally, 'LibreOffice goes social/Lounge/Off the wall/whatever' can have any
> name that wins the competition, but it should _not_ have LibreOffice or TDF in
> the title as it is specifically intended to be for offtopic stuff. And yes,
> having that forum is essential, if only to be able to move irrelevant or
> offtopic posts from other forums there without offending the author too much
> (compared to deleting).

Not sure about this. I would prefer the marketing punch of a LibOLounge 
(where some of the characters look like :-b) or any other clever stuff 
that our user-base can come up in a competition. and, we should have a 
disclaimer sticky on it as well as the rules for off-topic 
conversations. We should not be afraid to stick our name in on the "fun 
room" rather than have it only associated with the serious part of the 
project. Life is too short.

>
> My two eurocents.
>
> Best,
>
> Bjoern

Thanks for your comments. I'll copy/paste your comments to the user 
forums (part of your message past your QA-Dev suggestion) to the discuss 
list where the discussion on the user portion is taking place and where 
the discuss team can also read your comments.

We decided to place a note on each mailing list that was mentioned on 
the forums proposal in the hopes of getting some feedback from the teams.

Cheers,

Marc

-- 
Marc Paré
Marc at MarcPare.com
http://www.parEntreprise.com
parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF)
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