[Libreoffice-qa] Some ideas about involving people in bug triaging

[Petr Mladek]

Hi Miroslav,

first, thanks a lot for the many great ideas.

Mirosław Zalewski píše v Po 18. 02. 2013 v 18:44 +0100:
> Hi
> 
> I am long-time LibreOffice user who tries to help others on our users mailing 
> list. This caught an eye of Michael Meeks some time ago. He asked me whether I 
> have some ideas about encouraging people to get involved in bug triaging. 
> After exchanging couple of messages, I wrote one rather lengthy. 
> Unfortunately, I have never heard back.

Long mails sometimes discourage busy people from reading. Sometimes it
is better to split it into small tasks and discuss them separately. Heh,
this is theory, I tend to write long mails as well ;-)

> = How to get more people aware of bug triaging? =
> 
> This one is all about marketing and I think answering it is rather easy. 
> 
> The main point here is, that most users are not looking for getting involved 
> in LO development. Yet we must reach them and somehow encourage them to do it.

AFAIK, we currently invite people on two locations:

+ "Get Involved" line on the main page, see
http://www.libreoffice.org/get-involved/qa-testers/

+ at the end of the bugzilla assistant, see
  https://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/bug/

> == Where do we send people? ==
> 
> At this point, we got some person involved. He wants to help. He goes to some 
> page, let's say <http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugTriage>

The bugzilla assistant send people to
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Triage_For_Beginners which is a bit
minimalized and hopefully less scary.

> He click first "query" link he can find and... 200 bugs shows up. Just reading 
> titles would take 10 minutes or something. Reading all bugs and trying to 
> reproduce them would take hours. And we promised it is easy and not time-
> consuming...

AFAIK, someone started to do a clickable banner that would show random
50 bugs. I am not sure how it ended. IMHO, it was great idea and we
should make it alive and update it with your ideas.

> == How do we make people stay with us? ==
> 
> Anyway, users will get bored sooner or later. You can't perform some 
> repetitive, dull task for long without powerful enough motivation. In some 
> situations this motivation is money, but we can't really offer it. Instead, we 
> can offer people other rewards.

We are going to discuss a triage contest on today's QA team meeting. It
would be great to have you there, see
https://wiki.documentfoundation.org/QA_Call_Current_Agenda#Upcoming_Meeting
for details.

> == How do we reach people with our message? ==
> 
> OK, so let's go back to beginning and think for a while: where can we post 
> appeal to users?
> 
> I can think of only one the best place - announcements of new versions.

Great idea.


> = How to create steady team of bug triagers? =
> 
>  So we should focus on providing as smooth learning curve as possible. For anyone 
> willing to be part of QA team, there should be clear message: 
> - WHAT do I do? 
> - HOW can I do that?  
> - WHAT must I read before? 
> - WHERE do I start? 
> - WHO can I ask in doubt? 
> - WHERE can I learn more?
> Perhaps providing good documentation is a key. Sorry to be a bit harsh here, 
> but some of current QA wiki pages look like bunch of unorganized notes 
> (especially <http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/BugReport_Details>). They 
> could really use some cleanup.

I tried to clean up some QA wiki pages more than 1 year ago. I see that
Jored did some nice improvements last week. They surely need more love.
Please join us and help us with your skills.

In each case, it would be great if you could join the team call as
mentioned above. We need also people with your skills.

Also feel free to improve the wiki pages and make them better readable.
Also please send proposals for a better text for the non-wiki pages. We
might discuss it and help to find people who could actually change it on
the server :-)

I am looking forward to see more ideas from you.

Best Regards,
Petr