Re: [gentoo-dev] GLEP 42 "Critical News Reporting" Round Two

[Grobian <grobian@gentoo.org>]

Stuart Herbert wrote:
> On Fri, 2005-11-11 at 18:22 -0500, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
>> It seems to be your own quest to have the news *only*
>> delivered by portage.  
> 
> I thought I'd been very clear in the email that you've replied to that I
> support making the news available via other ways.  It's the timing that
> I'm a bit worried about.

And that worries me.  Because you more or less suggest to postpone 
implementing (just activating) traditional solutions, being used by many 
equivalent others in our field (works for them, more or less) in favour 
of an experimental new thing.
I would just do it the other way around: do your experiment after the 
traditional channels are set up, and let your experiment rely on the 
solid base those traditional solutions give.

> I've managed a few change programmes over the years, and I've had the
> most success when a change happened in stages.  The issues centre on the
> ability of a large body of people to understand the change that has been
> introduced.  People find change itself confusing.  If something isn't
> given time to bed in, people never quite understand the original change,
> and this undermines the benefits of introducing the change.

You are probably right here.  So why not doing the obvious steps?  Just 
activate now the traditional ways of getting news to the users.  In the 
mean-time you work on getting GLEP42 implemented and accepted, and by 
the time it more or less works, you have a wonderful base to announce 
this new feature on, and sell it as "personalised sophisticated news 
delivery".

> We live and breathe Gentoo daily, and we understand this news thing
> because we've invested time and effort to kick it back and forward here
> on -dev.  The vast majority of our users haven't had that luxury, and
> it'll take a while for them to "get it".

Another good reason to start with the 'common' things.  The traditional 
ways some of your 100% of our users will be common with.  Nothing new 
there for them.  The portage way *is* new, and has never been done, 
hence they might have difficulties to "get it".

> If the majority don't agree with me, not a problem; I'm not going to
> stop you (like I could anyway!) from putting out multi-channel from day
> one.  
> 
> But if it was my decision, I'd roll out one channel first, and the
> others later.

See above why I think that is just the wrong order, though I support 
your 'phased' roll out.

> I'm not hoping for a 100% perfect technical solution straight away.
> Release early, release often is the F/OSS way.  Once we've agreed on
> something that's fit for purpose, let's implement it, deploy it, get to
> the tipping point, see how users react, and then improve it.

Please remember that many of your 100% of our users hates software that 
doesn't work.  It wouldn't be the first time a user decides never to use 
a piece of software again, because his/her first experience with it was 
very bad.  You'd lose a few bits of your 100% making it impossible to 
reach your own goal.
I would seriously test this (hence not release early), if you happen to 
make an error and deliver all news messages at once to the user, you 
might end up in having the same as that very user that ignored 
etc-update because it had so much items to update.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
Gentoo for Mac OS X Project -- Interim Lead
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list