Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer <christel@gentoo.org>]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:21 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 03:30:10 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
> <christel@gentoo.org> wrote:
> | What do you believe could make Gentoo more attractive
> | to new users and to current users?
> 
> Something that's often missed in these discussions... The only serious
> interaction between Gentoo and nearly all of our end users is through
> the tree, package manager and related tools and our documentation. Most
> of our users don't regularly read mailing lists, use IRC or the forums,
> so the only thing they really see is what happens when they emerge
> --sync and install things.

Nod, I may have dreamt this, but I believe I saw mention of some sort of
implemented news reader-esque idea. Is that something you know if people
have given any thought? Discussed? Is it an idea that could be worth
looking at again? 


> I'm not entirely sure how bugzilla fits into all this. I suspect that
> it's nowhere near as widely used by end users as it could be.

As for using bugzilla for information, I am not entire sure. As for the
sort of stuff that has been brought up bugzilla wise are things like
'Better how-to's" to ensure it's easier for users to write good bug
reports and less time demanding for devs to respond to them (This is
already being worked on by cwp et al)

Other ideas are things such as introducing bugzillas voting system.

> Three things I can think of that can be drawn from this:
> 
> * GLEP 42

Ding! The 'news reader esque' idea I thought I had dreamt may very well
have been just that, I read through all the GLEPs the other day, and I
suspect that may be where I got it from. Thank you.

> * All the pretty pink unicorns in the world aren't going to make a
> scrap of difference if the tree keeps breaking.

Ack, however much I love pretty pink unicorns (and pretty pink portage,
and pretty pink baselayout and most other things that are well, pretty
and pink) I agree with you there. 

Personally, I like the idea of such things as higher standards, more
direction, code reviews, developing coding standards, document
functions, getting the proper comments in place in code (I'm quite
astonished by the dearth of comments and how it looks like it hasn't
been reviewd for quite some time in places). However, this may be better
off in a different discussion and not on a userrel thread.

> * If we're looking to increase the flow of end users -> super users ->
> developers, perhaps we should focus more upon improving development
> tools or development documentation.

Perhaps that is somewhere else we need to look.


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