[gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

Hi everyone, 

First, allow me to thank every last one of you for the great welcome you
gave me when I joined. It is an immeasurably great and exciting
challenge to take over as lead of the user relations[1] project and I am
very thankful to Seemant and devrel for the confidence they have shown
in me passing the baton on to me from Daniel (dsd) and I am delighted at
the prospect of working together with all of you; developers and users
alike to make this project the best it can be.

Having been warned that reviving the project would be a difficult task
and one where I'd struggle to create any interest; I am very much
pleased to find that this has not been the case. 

So now we are faced with the challenge of resurrecting the project and
making it the best it can be. We have a blank page to colour in in such
a way it becomes attractive to the majority of our ~200,000 users, and
of course to the developer community. And this is where we would like
your input, whether you are a developer or a user; What do you believe
we should and could do to improve relations between users and
developers? What do you believe could make Gentoo more attractive to new
users and to current users? What would make Gentoo kick even more arse
than it already has proven it can? What do we need to 'fix'? What do we
need to consider introducing? Where do you feel we go horribly wrong?
(Now for that question, I'd strongly suggest we all avoid attacking
eachother, I simply want to know and learn from mistakes made in the
past to avoid repeating them!) And what have we done right? 

If you feel you have useful input we would love to hear it, don't be
afraid that your suggestions or ideas may be dumb or insignificant. We
would like to listen at what you have to say however small or big it may
be. I would like for everyone to feel comfortable stating their opinions
and views and suggestions without fear of being flamed. However, should
you feel uncomfortable replying on-list you are most welcome to drop an
e-mail offlist be it to myself or to user-relations@gentoo.org


It has also been asked that I explain the two roles created especially
with user relations in mind, I will do so here but remember that these
definitions may be tweaked slightly before they reach perfection.

One of the roles created is that of a representative from a other user
focused project within gentoo (such as pr, bugzilla, bugdays, arch
testers, forums, #gentoo ops, documentation etc) and is currently
explained as follows:

> Given the nature of the user-relations project and the number of
> established projects which interact directly with users, we felt it
> would be beneficial to have a defined point of contact with these
> projects, who can provide input on what they would find useful, and
> what could cause them problems. We envision these representatives as
> being able to provide feedback regarding anything user-relations is
> planning to do, and also to provide suggestions for new projects or
> initiatives that could benefit their projects, as well as keeping us
> informed about changes within their projects that could affect users,
> or that would require any action from user-relations to take advantage
> of them. The intention is that these project representatives would be
> a part of the user-relations team, and that each representative would
> be responsible for making sure that his/her project's best interests
> are properly taken into consideration during user-relations' every day
> activities. This way, we hope to keep in touch with other user-focused
> projects, and make sure that all user-facing projects know what is
> going on and can provide the greatest benefit to users and developers
> alike.

Provision has also been made by developer relations for the creation of
the role of 'user representative', which is explained below:


> Since the user relations project is intended to act as a bridge
> between developers and users, it is important that we do not let our
> assumptions as developers get in the way of communications with
> users. Many users may be unfamiliar with concepts or terminology that
> to a developer seems commonplace and easy to understand. The 'user
> representatives' are intended as a way to get feedback from
> non-developers on such things, for example to ensure that a survey is
> written in such a way as to be comprehensible to users before it is
> sent out. The role is intended as a way to get reliable input from
> non-developers in order to ensure that what we do has the maximum
> benefit for users and developers alike.

If you are a developer from a project who would like to be represented
within user relations and we haven't been in touch with your project
already there is a chance that we've overlooked you, in which case I am
terribly sorry and welcome you to contact us and let us know.

For the latter role, user representative, we will be looking for atleast
a couple of more people to welcome more diversity.

One of the things that gets mentioned over and over again as something
people would like us to look at is bugzilla, both users and developers
have been bringing this up on a daily basis for some time. It has also
been suggested we look at working with developer relations on revamping
the recruitment process. It has been suggested we ensure there is female
cut t-shirts in the gentoo store. It has been suggested we take the
initiative for creating a project similar to that of Debian Women[2] and
a host of other interesting things. We do of course welcome your views
on all of the above, as well as anything else you think we should do.

As well as interacting with us by replying to this e-mail you are of
course welcome to join us on irc (irc.freenode.net) in the
#gentoo-userrel channel. And we have a mailinglist[3] for those who wish
to partake on that. 

I hope my e-mail wasn't too vague, I also hope that I will wake up and
find my inbox full of exciting ideas and suggestions from all of you!

¡Viva la revolución!

Christel Dahlskjaer

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/user-relations/
[2] http://women.alioth.debian.org/about/
[3] gentoo-userrel+subscribe@gentoo.org



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Re: [gentoo-dev] How many users? [WAS] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:
> So now we are faced with the challenge of resurrecting the project and
> making it the best it can be. We have a blank page to colour in in such
> a way it becomes attractive to the majority of our ~200,000 users, and

Have we lost 100,000? The last estimate I saw was 50% higher.

Thanks,
Donnie


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Re: [gentoo-dev] How many users? [WAS] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Thu, 2006-04-06 at 19:17 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:
> > So now we are faced with the challenge of resurrecting the project and
> > making it the best it can be. We have a blank page to colour in in such
> > a way it becomes attractive to the majority of our ~200,000 users, and
> 
> Have we lost 100,000? The last estimate I saw was 50% higher.

300,000 would be even better! 200K was the number I was given after
asking a bunch of people, well, it was the highest number (other
suggestions was 'over ten') and as I understand it the data they had
were rather old, so if your 300K is newer and more accurate then that is
even more fantastic!

C.


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[gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christopher O'Neill]

As a Gentoo user, one thing that I'd very much like to see is improved
communication between the dev teams and the users.  At the moment it
feels pretty much like I am in the dark as regarding to how we are
progressing on certain things.  Let me pick some examples:

. A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x
and it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also
interested in the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first
response was less than helpful! Although he did eventually get a
satisfactory response, wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had
to ask at all? I'm sure many more people are wondering the same and
probably aren't subscribed to this list.

. I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
fear of asking in the wrong place..

. How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.

I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these
out).  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on
how Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed
to this mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep
track of what's happening, but without much success).

Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.

Anyway Christel, I hope this is the sort of response you are looking for.

--

Chris

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
<chris.oneill@gmail.com> wrote:
| Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
| weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
| newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
| information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
| what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.

The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
anything out consistently.

Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit IRC
channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed, and
it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.

I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
development would ever get done...

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Grobian]

On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
> many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
> unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
> alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
> to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
> development would ever get done...

This is ofcourse a purely hypothetical prediction for a hypothetical
example.  Another hypothesis might be that noone would care about the
hypothetical alternative to Portage, hence no developer obstruction
would take place at all.  Yet another hypothesis might be that there
would actually exist a few smart users that give some smart comments on
the, in this case hypothetical, product.

Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
example.

Existing projects, like KDE and GCC probably already deal with questions
from users, and giving a status update once a month would in my opinion
help them to keep users both informed and interested, which is what the
original poster meant I think.  From a user-rel perspective the
information is used to inform the users that they're not waiting in vain
for something not to happen, as well as why they are waiting, for
example.


-- 
Fabian Groffen
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 11:33:12 +0200 Grobian <grobian@gentoo.org> wrote:
| On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
| > I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just
| > how many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code
| > from the unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to
| > having an early alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't
| > require Python? Having to deal with the noise would be more than
| > enough to ensure that no more development would ever get done...
| 
| This is ofcourse a purely hypothetical prediction for a hypothetical
| example.  Another hypothesis might be that noone would care about the
| hypothetical alternative to Portage, hence no developer obstruction
| would take place at all.

That hypothesis looks unlikely, given all the discussions that took
place around portage-ng and the like, all the feature requests for
Portage on bugzilla and the countless zillions of "Portage should do
$x" threads on the forums. From a non-hypothetical perspective, I can
tell you that I received a significant number of really really stupid
suggestions when various developers found out about what's now called
eselect -- and that was with extremely limited internal publicity on a
far lower profile category of project than the one we're
hypothetically discussing.

| Yet another hypothesis might be that there
| would actually exist a few smart users that give some smart comments
| on the, in this case hypothetical, product.

This hypothesis probably holds. However, it ignores two other points:
Firstly, that the hypothetical noise would more than offset any
hypothetical advantage (little point in being given a diamond if it
comes in the middle of ten tonnes of horse manure and you only have
one shovel), and secondly that the hypothetical smart users could be
brought in on the hypothetical project anyway.

| Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by
| keeping the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of
| what kind of things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
| Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
| example.

Yikes, that's even worse than sticking them out with a name on it.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Patrick Lauer]

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On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
> Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
> the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
> things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
> Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
> example.
GWN has a section "Future Zone" where any Gentoo project can announce
new ideas, roadmaps or previews. It is not used that often, but if
anyone wants some testing of a pre-release version or some user feedback
on ideas ... just tell the GWN :-)


Patrick

-- 
Stand still, and let the rest of the universe move

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 13:32 +0200, Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
> > Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
> > the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
> > things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
> > Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
> > example.
> GWN has a section "Future Zone" where any Gentoo project can announce
> new ideas, roadmaps or previews. It is not used that often, but if
> anyone wants some testing of a pre-release version or some user feedback
> on ideas ... just tell the GWN :-)

I'm about to reply to your e-mail in a second, and then I may grab you
to discuss a couple of these things. That cool? 
And from what you're saying it sounds like provisions are already in
place from GWNs side and thus convincing you to work with us on this
shouldn't pose a problem! Excellent!

Christel




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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Tamas Sarga]

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Patrick Lauer wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
>> Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
>> the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
>> things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
>> Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
>> example.
> GWN has a section "Future Zone" where any Gentoo project can announce
> new ideas, roadmaps or previews. It is not used that often, but if
> anyone wants some testing of a pre-release version or some user feedback
> on ideas ... just tell the GWN :-)
> 
> 
> Patrick
> 

Hi,

I'd very like the future zone section. I think it should be used more
frequently.
I think editing of GWN should be a more community project. I mean
tips&tricks should be resurrected (yes, by users). I think if some dev
drop a mail about a new alpha feature to gentoo-users, or -dev, or
somewhere, there will be users who want to try it out. They also can
write a small article about they adventure in the future to the future zone.

If someone think it would be nice, than sent at least me a mail with
possible subjects to tips & tricks. I wrote an article already to tips &
tricks, and I want to write more, but I don't know what would be useful
and interesting to others. I think some subject-ideas could be posted to
gentoo-user by devs, or anyone just like testing requests on -dev list.

Cheers,
Tamas Sarga
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:33 +0200, Grobian wrote:
> On 07-04-2006 11:07:28 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
[let's pretend I snipped a bit here, oh wait, I did!]

> Maybe user-rel should, together with GWN bridge this problem by keeping
> the source of news anonymous?  Just to use it as teasers of what kind of
> things are being done in Gentoo's kitchen?
> Of course this only holds for new projects like in your hypothetical
> example.

Yes, that is quite similar to the idea that went through my head after
reading Christophers response. And I quite like it.

> Existing projects, like KDE and GCC probably already deal with questions
> from users, and giving a status update once a month would in my opinion
> help them to keep users both informed and interested, which is what the
> original poster meant I think.  From a user-rel perspective the
> information is used to inform the users that they're not waiting in vain
> for something not to happen, as well as why they are waiting, for
> example.

I'll bring this up at our upcoming userrel meeting and I'll also tease
our GWN liaison with the idea. And of course, I will be welcoming
feedback from developers and users. Ideas are welcome, and if someone
has any thoughts on how they think this could be done without eating
valuable developer time then I'd be more than happy to hear them!

Thank you Grobian!

Christel


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:07 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
> <chris.oneill@gmail.com> wrote:
> | Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> | weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> | newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> | information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
> | what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.
> 
> The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
> they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
> ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
> things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
> and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
> about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
> supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
> half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
> anything out consistently.

So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of your
time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed, would
that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information is kept
to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way that it
doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of direction? 
> 
> Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
> mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit IRC
> channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed, and
> it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
> project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.

In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way maybe.

> I mean, as a purely hypothetical example... Could you imagine just how
> many dumb feature requests, questions and requests for code from the
> unwashed masses someone would get if they admitted to having an early
> alpha of an alternative to Portage that didn't require Python? Having
> to deal with the noise would be more than enough to ensure that no more
> development would ever get done...

Purely hypothetically I suspect you'd be better suited for answering
that question than I am. 


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Martin Ehmsen]

Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:
> On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 10:07 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
> keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of your
> time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed, would
> that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information is kept
> to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way that it
> doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of direction? 

I would use such a service if one is provided and it is very easy to use 
(don't take a lot of time).

How about a website/blog hosted on www.gentoo.org pr. project and a 
little tool for posting on such a website (ala echangelog). I don't have 
the time to set something like that up on my own, but I would use it if 
it was given to me.
I work in text-markup and we don't do much high profile development, but 
  I would like a way to tell users about what we are doing even though 
it would only mean a post pr. month or so.
But if I need to spend time and energy on setting such a thing up, then 
it will never happen.

Just my two cents,

Ehmsen
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 15:35 +0200, Martin Ehmsen wrote:
[snip]

> How about a website/blog hosted on www.gentoo.org pr. project and a 
> little tool for posting on such a website (ala echangelog). I don't have 
> the time to set something like that up on my own, but I would use it if 
> it was given to me.
> I work in text-markup and we don't do much high profile development, but 
>   I would like a way to tell users about what we are doing even though 
> it would only mean a post pr. month or so.
> But if I need to spend time and energy on setting such a thing up, then 
> it will never happen.

Excellent. Thank you Ehmsen.
If it looks like there is a bit more interest from both camps I will
certainly make sure we look into what we as userrel can do to implement
something, and in which ways we can make it easy to use, and non time
consuming.


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:19:35 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
<christel@gentoo.org> wrote:
| So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
| keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of
| your time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed,
| would that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information
| is kept to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way
| that it doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of
| direction? 

If it's information on things that are fine being public but aren't
simply because of lack of time to write them up, then that would be
great. If it's things that're being kept quiet purposefully, however,
then the last thing we want is to start telling people things.

| > Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
| > mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit
| > IRC channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed,
| > and it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
| > project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.
| 
| In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
| sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way
| maybe.

See, that doesn't work. There's this strange notion that because we're
open source, users somehow have a right to a) see the code, b) make
suggestions, c) demand new features, d) get support and e) annoy other
developers or upstream when they break something that has a knock-on
effect of breaking an unrelated package.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 14:43 +0100, Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 15:19:35 +0100 Christel Dahlskjaer
> <christel@gentoo.org> wrote:
> | So, from a developer pov Ciaran; if we could come up with some way of
> | keeping up to date with what you guys do (without eating up any of
> | your time or getting in your way) and then keep the masses informed,
> | would that be more attractive? Obviously making sure that information
> | is kept to a not exactly bare minimum, but presented in such a way
> | that it doesn't in any way halt progress or potential change of
> | direction? 
> 
> If it's information on things that are fine being public but aren't
> simply because of lack of time to write them up, then that would be
> great. If it's things that're being kept quiet purposefully, however,
> then the last thing we want is to start telling people things.

Yes, I agree with that entirely. If things are being kept quiet for a
reason we will have no wish to attempt to push for these to be made
public before the decision to do so is reached by the development teams
in question. 

> 
> | > Hence why some of us don't announce non-trivial projects on public
> | > mailing lists, and instead keep any discussion on -core and sekrit
> | > IRC channels. That's how what's now known as eselect was developed,
> | > and it turned out far nicer than the XML-laden aborted gentoo-config
> | > project precisely because of the lack of end user 'input'.
> | 
> | In more of a informative 'these are the exciting things we're doing'
> | sort of way rather than a 'tell us why you disagree' sort of way
> | maybe.
> 
> See, that doesn't work. There's this strange notion that because we're
> open source, users somehow have a right to a) see the code, b) make
> suggestions, c) demand new features, d) get support and e) annoy other
> developers or upstream when they break something that has a knock-on
> effect of breaking an unrelated package.

I was rather unclear, I think your previous passage had me rather spot
on for what I was wanting to do. 


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[lnxg33k]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100 "Christopher O'Neill"
> <chris.oneill@gmail.com> wrote:
> | Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> | weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> | newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> | information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
> | what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.
> 
> The problem with this is... Once someone says "we're working on $x",
> they're continuously pestered about it by users asking when it will be
> ready. Given how few of us are paid to work specific hours on Gentoo
> things, it's very easy for provisional release dates to be missed --
> and when half of a developer's time is spent responding to questions
> about where $x is and why an early test of $x pulled out of a
> supposedly "not for end users" repo broke their system and the other
> half is spent writing status updates it's pretty much impossible to get
> anything out consistently.
<snip>

Personally, I think this could be lessened by clear documenation. I know it's 
mentioned in the handbook, but a dedicated topic on "why packages disappear and 
how to find out why" would be invaluable. This would also help if meaningful 
notes were added by the dev's on *why* a package was pulled. It isn't a enough 
for some users to hear "it's broke". What if they want to help? Providing more 
info in the changelog/p.mask or in package notes (I believe something like this 
was mentioned some time ago in trying to help facilitate new devs coming up to 
speed on projects). Also, if there was a single place for info about this, devs 
would have a helpful place to link people instead of flaming/ignoring or 
writing out answers to the same old questions.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Donnie Berkholz]

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Christopher O'Neill wrote:
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
> have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
> know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
> with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
> how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
> fear of asking in the wrong place..

Toolchain updates in particular take longer than with most distros,
because of the nature of ours -- we need every user to be able to
compile every keyworded package from source, and we have an extremely
large package database.

I bet there's a bug open for it.

> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.

The gentoo-portage-dev list is the place to follow this.

> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these
> out).  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on
> how Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed
> to this mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep
> track of what's happening, but without much success).

The general case of the above is that if you want information, you need
to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for you.

HTH,
Donnie


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Jakub Moc]

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Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Christopher O'Neill wrote:
>> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
>> have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
>> know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
>> with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
>> how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
>> fear of asking in the wrong place..
> 
> Toolchain updates in particular take longer than with most distros,
> because of the nature of ours -- we need every user to be able to
> compile every keyworded package from source, and we have an extremely
> large package database.
> 
> I bet there's a bug open for it.

http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117482

> 
>> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
> 
> The gentoo-portage-dev list is the place to follow this.

Also, http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115839


-- 

jakub


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Philipp Riegger]

On Apr 7, 2006, at 11:56 AM, Jakub Moc wrote:

>> I bet there's a bug open for it.
>
> http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=117482
>
>>> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent  
>>> updates.
>>
>> The gentoo-portage-dev list is the place to follow this.
>
> Also, http://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=115839

On GWN there are always things "heard on foo-ML", "heard on bar-ML"  
or "heard on te forums. But since many information seems to be in  
bugzilla, wouldn't it be nice to inform the bugzilla team of  
importagt "tracker bugs" and have a section like "heard on bugzilla"?
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Jonathan Coome]

On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 02:33:07 -0700
Donnie Berkholz <spyderous@gentoo.org> wrote:
> The general case of the above is that if you want information, you 
> need to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
> relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for 
> you.

This, I think is exactly the point of what Christopher was saying.
Currently, a lot of information is simply not available unless you know
exactly where to look and who to ask, and that means that you have to
spend a while around Gentoo before you can even ask the questions.

I think planet.gentoo.org helps in this regard, but there could be a
lot more done to keep end users aware of what's going on.

Regards,
Jonathan

--
Jonathan Coome <maedhros@gentoo.org>
Gentoo Forums Moderator
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:37 +0100, Jonathan Coome wrote:
> On Fri, 07 Apr 2006 02:33:07 -0700
> Donnie Berkholz <spyderous@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > The general case of the above is that if you want information, you 
> > need to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
> > relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for 
> > you.
> 
> This, I think is exactly the point of what Christopher was saying.
> Currently, a lot of information is simply not available unless you know
> exactly where to look and who to ask, and that means that you have to
> spend a while around Gentoo before you can even ask the questions.
> 
> I think planet.gentoo.org helps in this regard, but there could be a
> lot more done to keep end users aware of what's going on.

Thank you John, 
that is my view too. We have the resources that could be used for this,
we just need to utilize them! And thats exactly the sort of thing we
(userrel) is all about! 

Christel


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Tom Wesley]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 11:37:01 +0100
Jonathan Coome <maedhros@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I think planet.gentoo.org helps in this regard, but there could be a
> lot more done to keep end users aware of what's going on.
> 

It certainly does, but having some way to further organise this information by package or area of interest rather than developer would be very useful.  Perhaps this information could somehow by used to enhance the previously discussed news reporting features to include progress information for future work as well as information about changes that have already been committed.  It will need more thought and discussion, but it might work quite nicely.

-- 
Tom Wesley <tom@tomaw.org>
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 02:33 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
[snip]

> The general case of the above is that if you want information, you need
> to find the right spot for it. That's generally either a specific
> relevant list or Bugzilla. The information doesn't come looking for you.

That may have been the case up until this point, but again, lets keep in
mind that one of userrels main focuses is improving communication and
information flow, so I see no reason why we shouldn't look at other ways
of keeping users somewhat up to date. We have the resources in place for
keeping people updated, we just need to make use of them in a way that
benefits both camps. 

Christel


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Grant Goodyear]

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Christopher O'Neill wrote: [Fri Apr 07 2006, 03:51:58AM CDT]
> As a Gentoo user, one thing that I'd very much like to see is improved
> communication between the dev teams and the users.  At the moment it
> feels pretty much like I am in the dark as regarding to how we are
> progressing on certain things.  Let me pick some examples:

As was already mentioned, bugs.g.o is almost always the place to look.
I realize that it's counterintuitive, but we use bugs to track just
about everything.  Of course, finding stuff in bugs can be a real pain,
but it's still better than searching the mailing lists.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> information).  

I think you (and many others, too) may have a somewhat incorrect
perception of how devs are spread across Gentoo.  The phrase "dev teams"
would seem to suggest that we have well-coordinated groups of people
targeting all of the various areas of Gentoo.  In some cases, of course,
that's quite true, but in some others the "dev team" is predominantly a
one-person show, and taking the time to write a weekly status report
would seriously impact how much developing actually got done.

On the other hand, this problem does have a solution--another level of
indirection.  Anybody who wishes, dev or user, could spend time 
tracking Gentoo development (through bugs and the mailing lists) and
submit status reports to the GWN.  Care to volunteer?  I'd be happy to
provide pointers on how to get started.

-g2boojum-
-- 
Grant Goodyear	
Gentoo Developer
g2boojum@gentoo.org
http://www.gentoo.org/~g2boojum
GPG Fingerprint: D706 9802 1663 DEF5 81B0  9573 A6DC 7152 E0F6 5B76

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 08:20 -0500, Grant Goodyear wrote:
[snip]
> On the other hand, this problem does have a solution--another level of
> indirection.  Anybody who wishes, dev or user, could spend time 
> tracking Gentoo development (through bugs and the mailing lists) and
> submit status reports to the GWN.  Care to volunteer?  I'd be happy to
> provide pointers on how to get started.

I may grab you on IRC later and see if you can tell me your pointers, I
like his idea and I'd like to look into it! 

Thanks Grant.


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Philipp Riegger]

On Apr 7, 2006, at 4:47 PM, Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:

>> On the other hand, this problem does have a solution--another  
>> level of
>> indirection.  Anybody who wishes, dev or user, could spend time
>> tracking Gentoo development (through bugs and the mailing lists) and
>> submit status reports to the GWN.  Care to volunteer?  I'd be  
>> happy to
>> provide pointers on how to get started.
>
> I may grab you on IRC later and see if you can tell me your  
> pointers, I
> like his idea and I'd like to look into it!

I'm very interested in this, it would be very nice if you could write  
some type of document with some of the ideas, hints and pointers in it.

Thanks,
	Philipp
-- 
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[gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Duncan]

Christopher O'Neill posted
<9445dc2b0604070151t68e184fdo3601938bb52d0871@mail.gmail.com>, excerpted
below,  on Fri, 07 Apr 2006 09:51:58 +0100:

> some examples:
> 
> . A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x and
> it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also interested in
> the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first response was less
> than helpful! Although he did eventually get a satisfactory response,
> wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had to ask at all?

As a user and booster of my favorite meta-distribution =8^), that
disturbed me, too, both the one sort of (non)-response, and the fact that
the OP response indicated my own response might not have been as helpful
as intended.
 
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and have
> been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). [snip]
> 
> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
> 
> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these out).

I have a fair knowledge of the status of all three of those (tho not so
much on when something's going stable, or x86 in particular, as I run
~amd64 exclusively), because I have all three merged and running,
unmasking where necessary to do it.  (Xorg-7.0/modular is another example,
again, unmasked and merged early, here, after following the developments
on it here.)  However, getting bogged down in the examples won't further
the discussion, as you say.

>  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on how
> Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed to this
> mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep track of
> what's happening, but without much success).

I've had a bit more success here, as I use this list as an pointer finder,
then follow those pointers to the appropriate lists and/or unmaskings
and/or status bugs to try for myself, if it looks interesting.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a weekly
> status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly newsletter
> (which currently seems to be lacking much useful information).  It would
> be great if we (the users) could find out what's going on behind the
> scenes of our favourite distribution.

I like the idea, but practically speaking, once a week is way to often, as
it will both increase the work load (thereby cutting the actual work done
on the project in question) and the noise factor.

I'd suggest (and maybe it's what you had in mind, but it just didn't come
out that way) a status report from one or two /feature/ projects each
week, not /all/ of them each week.  Rotate them such that all the
interesting ones (and ones with devs that want to participate) get covered
once every month or quarter.

I'd also point out the Gentoo Planet developer blogsite
( http://planet.gentoo.org ). Many devs have blogs that cover the stuff
their doing that users may find interesting, in more or less detail. 
Actually, /this/ needs to be covered a bit better or more frequently in
GWN, and that would pretty much eliminate the need for independent feature
coverage.

Note that GWN does cover it occasionally, but due to a rather nasty
incident some months ago where a dev thought the GWN article
misrepresented the situation from his blog (and not rehashing that or
pointing the blame at any party), the GWN folks likely avoid it to some
extent.  I don't think that's necessary, however, provided the snafus that
evidently happened there as far as notifying the dev in a timely manner
that his blog was going to be covered, could be avoided.

Thus, perhaps my suggestion should be to find someone that could dedicate
a bit of time each week (or once or twice a month in any case, it doesn't
have to be /every/ week) to such a feature.  Having someone routinely
responsible for it will take the pressure off the regular GWN editors, and
should encourage the necessary research and pre-feature dev contact, to
ensure things go smoothly and there's not a repeat of that earlier
unpleasant incident.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman in
http://www.linuxdevcenter.com/pub/a/linux/2004/12/22/rms_interview.html


-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Re: Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

Heya Chris, 

Thank you for responding!

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 09:51 +0100, Christopher O'Neill wrote:
> As a Gentoo user, one thing that I'd very much like to see is improved
> communication between the dev teams and the users.  At the moment it
> feels pretty much like I am in the dark as regarding to how we are
> progressing on certain things.  Let me pick some examples:


So, if we somehow ensured we kept up to date with projects and where
they were at and maybe worked closely with our GWN liaison to maybe do a
'whats hot' type section of what's brewing? 
Now, as there is constant change I don't think we could make sure that
we could keep you updated on every single detail but we could certainly
entertain the thought of looking into ways of giving a brief update on
various projects progress.

> . A few days ago someone posted on the dev list asking about KDE3.5.x
> and it's current masked status.  As a KDE user myself I was also
> interested in the answer to his question, but to my dismay his first
> response was less than helpful! Although he did eventually get a
> satisfactory response, wouldn't it have been better if he hadn't had
> to ask at all? I'm sure many more people are wondering the same and
> probably aren't subscribed to this list.

I watched that thread with much interest. And yes, we need to improve
developer to user communication/information on other mediums as well.
Mind, a decent number of developers make good use of their planet. blogs
and they are always good to keep an eye on.

> 
> . I notice certain other popular distros are now running GCC4 (and
> have been for some time), yet we are still running 3.4.6 (on ~x86). I
> know it's a lot of work ensuring that all packages compile properly
> with GCC4 and that there are no introduced bugs, but I have no idea
> how we are progressing on this - and wouldn't even like to ask for
> fear of asking in the wrong place..

Yes, I think the fear issue is quite a big one for many users, and for
some developers and prevent them from both asking questions and piping
in with ideas. And we certainly need to work on making people feel more
welcome again. 

> 
> . How's portage 2.1 getting along? I notice it gets frequent updates.
> 
> I am not asking for answers for those questions, they are merely
> examples (I could think of many more, so please don't single these
> out).  The point I am making is how we (the users) are in the dark on
> how Gentoo is progressing. This is the main reason I have subscribed
> to this mailing list (as well as Gentoo-Users) in an attempt to keep
> track of what's happening, but without much success).

We will look at what other ways we have of keeping people informed, and
see how we can make various projects work together on making sure we
reach as many users as possible.

> Ideally, what I'd like is for the various dev teams to compile a
> weekly status report, which could then be compiled into the weekly
> newsletter (which currently seems to be lacking much useful
> information).  It would be great if we (the users) could find out
> what's going on behind the scenes of our favourite distribution.

That is a pretty decent idea, however I suspect many developers already
invest whatever time they have in to the work they currently do and
won't be looking to take on yet another task. We may however look at
ways of keeping updated with various projects and doing something with
GWN to keep you more up to date. It's certainly something we are happy
to toy with to try find a way of doing this that works both for
$rand_project, User Relations, GWN and the target userbase.

> Anyway Christel, I hope this is the sort of response you are looking for.

Again, Thank you very much Chris. It was certainly the sort of response
I was after! If you have anything to add, don't hesitate to grab us!

Christel


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Ciaran McCreesh]

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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.

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.

Three things I can think of that can be drawn from this:

* GLEP 42

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

* 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.

-- 
Ciaran McCreesh : Gentoo Developer (Wearer of the shiny hat)
Mail            : ciaranm at gentoo.org
Web             : http://dev.gentoo.org/~ciaranm


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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

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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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> wrote:

> * 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.

I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.

Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
there is too low.

So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
topic.

Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.

--
TGL.
-- 
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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Alec Warner]

Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> 
> 
>>* 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.
> 
> 
> I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
> intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
> anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
> this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
> to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
> writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
> place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
> discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
> see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
> small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.
> 
> Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
> Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
> only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
> satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
> there is too low.
> 
> So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
> wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
> questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
> the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
> assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
> rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
> single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
> topic.
> 
> Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
> improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
> real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
> point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.
> 
> --
> TGL.

+1, plus the ML is archived unlike IRC, and users can search archives
and we could more easily compile a FAQ about ebuild writing and such.

-Alec Warner

-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 11:42 -0400, Alec Warner wrote:
> Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> > Ciaran McCreesh <ciaranm@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > 
> > 
> >>* 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.
> > 
> > 
> > I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> > Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> > people who don't like IRC.  Maybe i'm wrong and that's not the
> > intention, but after 4 years of reading on gentoo-dev@ (yeah, today is
> > anniversary of my subscription - yik, that's more than 36K emails in
> > this maildir) , my feeling is that it's not the right place for users
> > to ask technical questions about development/contributing (ebuilds
> > writing, etc.).  It's not that i fear this ML, but i see it mainly as a
> > place for dev-to-dev communication on general/important topics (gleps
> > discussion, common sense reminders, random flamewars, etc.), and thus i
> > see the occasional "How {c,sh}ould i do something?" messages about
> > small details as somehow off-topic, and i tend to avoid posting some.
> > 
> > Seeing how more numerous this kind of messages are on "Portage &
> > Programming" forums, or on gentoo-user*@ lists, i guess i'm not the
> > only user with such feeling.  But forums or users MLs are not really
> > satisfactory for non-obvious questions, because the devs/users rate
> > there is too low.
> > 
> > So, what i usualy do when i'm not sure about something, in an ebuild i
> > wrote for instance, is to post  it as-is on bugs.g.o, with the
> > questions left open in my report. But they will stay unanswered if
> > the bug falls in the "maintainer-wanted@" oubliettes, or if the
> > assignee is too short in time to explain me why he choosed one solution
> > rather than an other. And even if i get my answer, it will be from a
> > single dev, whereas others might have had a different views on the
> > topic.
> > 
> > Finally, i think such a mainling list could give good hints on what to
> > improve in the documentation. Some legitimate questions may point to
> > real lacks in the documentation, and some answers could be starting
> > point for new chunks to add to the official or unofficial handbooks.
> > 
> > --
> > TGL.
> 
> +1, plus the ML is archived unlike IRC, and users can search archives
> and we could more easily compile a FAQ about ebuild writing and such.

What Alec said, however, this would require that we have interested
developers who would subscribe and be active when they can, to avoid it
becoming another -user. 

But yes, I like that idea too! Thank you.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Alexandre Buisse]

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On Fri, Apr  7, 2006 at 18:07:14 +0200, Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:

> What Alec said, however, this would require that we have interested
> developers who would subscribe and be active when they can, to avoid it
> becoming another -user. 

Well, even if it's a small percentage of the devs, #gentoo-dev-help is
usually well populated and it is very rare that people don't get
answers to their question. I also think that a lot of people who will
subsribe will be power users who already wrote ebuilds and have some
experience, so should be able to address at least some of the questions.

I add my vote for the creation of this mailing-list.

/Alexandre
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Hi, I'm a .signature virus! Please copy me in your ~/.signature.

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Paul de Vrieze]

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On Friday 07 April 2006 17:47, Christel Dahlskjaer wrote:
> What Alec said, however, this would require that we have interested
> developers who would subscribe and be active when they can, to avoid it
> becoming another -user.
>
> But yes, I like that idea too! Thank you.

Actually -user used to have that function, until it became very very high 
trafic, and I and others dedided unsubscribing was better for my 
productivity. It seems indeed a good idea.

Paul

-- 
Paul de Vrieze
Gentoo Developer
Mail: pauldv@gentoo.org
Homepage: http://www.devrieze.net

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[lnxg33k]

Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> Something similar to what, i guess, the homonym IRC chan is, but for
> people who don't like IRC.
<snip>
I like this idea as well and agree with the reasoning snip'ed out. As for other 
mail about -user, that list seems more general where as this (hopefully) would 
fill in as the forums "Portage and Programming" category -- meaning stuff that 
ordinary users aren't typically going to know.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Michael Cummings]

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On Friday 07 April 2006 11:15, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
>
> I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.

Not to be a wet blanket (I'm all for making current users happier and 
encouraging new folks to take the bold step) but isn't that what the gentoo 
mailing list is for (not -dev, but the real gentoo@lists.g.o). Granted, not 
all devs are on there (I know I'm not), but when I was on there I remember it 
being the kind of place you could ask those questions.

just my two pieces of copper,

~mcummings

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Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas de Grenier de Latour]

On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 12:48:12 -0400,
Michael Cummings <mcummings@gentoo.org> wrote:

> On Friday 07 April 2006 11:15, Thomas de Grenier de Latour wrote:
> > On Fri, 7 Apr 2006 10:21:54 +0100,
> >
> > I would also suggest creation of a gentoo-dev-help@ mailing-list.
> 
> isn't that what the gentoo mailing list is for (not -dev, but the
> real gentoo@lists.g.o). 

No idea.  I can't find any archive on gmane or marc, and it's not
listed on www.g.o/main/en/lists.xml, so i really don't have a clue
about this ML.  And gentoo+subscribe@ gives SMTP error, so i'm not 
even sure it still exists at all (and is public).

--
TGL.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[lnxg33k]

Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
<snip>
> * 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.

I'm a little late jumping into this and I haven't read all the threads yet, 
however I agree with Ciaran here. From a user who wishes to progress, this 
particular point is something I can relate to. Consolidating docs into a single 
place, getting rid of stale stuff, and updating the old would do a lot to bring 
users up-to-speed. By providing docs, users who wish to take the initiative can 
do so. Once they learn the lingo and system, they can better offer their 
services and it would decrease frustration on the devs part concerning ignorant 
(not demeaning, but fact) users.

Improving development tools helps, but also making them available where 
applicable. I'm thinking more along the lines of scripts located on dev spaces 
as applications like catalyst are already available. Stuff that normally is 
considered "developer only" should be opened up so that users can get a better 
sense of what is actually going on; this would lessen the degree of naiveness.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Sat, 2006-04-08 at 14:07 -0500, lnxg33k wrote:
> Ciaran McCreesh wrote:
> <snip>
> > * 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.
> 
> I'm a little late jumping into this and I haven't read all the threads yet, 
> however I agree with Ciaran here. From a user who wishes to progress, this 
> particular point is something I can relate to. Consolidating docs into a single 
> place, getting rid of stale stuff, and updating the old would do a lot to bring 
> users up-to-speed. By providing docs, users who wish to take the initiative can 
> do so. Once they learn the lingo and system, they can better offer their 
> services and it would decrease frustration on the devs part concerning ignorant 
> (not demeaning, but fact) users.
> 
> Improving development tools helps, but also making them available where 
> applicable. I'm thinking more along the lines of scripts located on dev spaces 
> as applications like catalyst are already available. Stuff that normally is 
> considered "developer only" should be opened up so that users can get a better 
> sense of what is actually going on; this would lessen the degree of naiveness.

Yes, making information (such as documentation etc) more accessible,
easier to find and centralized is certainly something that would be
beneficial. As is making sure that it is all up to date. 

Thank you for pointing it out. 


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Thomas Cort]

Perhaps we should have a page explaining all of the ways someone can 
help / contribute to Gentoo. There is no central place (that I know of) 
for finding out what you can do as a user to make your favorite 
distribution become even better. The Free Software Foundation has a nice 
page here: http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html I was thinking we could 
have something similar to that for Gentoo. The list would include stuff 
like becoming an AT/HT, becoming a dev, writing documentation, 
translating docs, linking to Gentoo.org from your blog/website, telling 
your friends, starting a Gentoo user group, fixing bugs, writing good 
bug reports, answering questions on the forums/irc/ml, giving away 
Gentoo CDs, buying t-shirts from the Gentoo store, etc, etc.

-tcort
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

On Fri, 2006-04-07 at 07:32 -0400, Thomas Cort wrote:
> Perhaps we should have a page explaining all of the ways someone can 
> help / contribute to Gentoo. There is no central place (that I know of) 
> for finding out what you can do as a user to make your favorite 
> distribution become even better. The Free Software Foundation has a nice 
> page here: http://www.gnu.org/help/help.html I was thinking we could 
> have something similar to that for Gentoo. The list would include stuff 
> like becoming an AT/HT, becoming a dev, writing documentation, 
> translating docs, linking to Gentoo.org from your blog/website, telling 
> your friends, starting a Gentoo user group, fixing bugs, writing good 
> bug reports, answering questions on the forums/irc/ml, giving away 
> Gentoo CDs, buying t-shirts from the Gentoo store, etc, etc.

That is certainly an idea, we do have a small 'Getting involved' section
on the userrel page, but the section certainly could be improved on and
maybe even linked to or copied to somewhere where it is easier to find.

We'll have a good look at the link you provided and see if they have any
ideas we may be able to steal! Thank you.


-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Volkov Peter]

Hello.

IMO the very important element of gentoo user relations that is absent 
at w.g.o is search field! Gentoo does not have good searching point.

Each time I encounter bug/problem before asking for help if I'm a good 
boy I have to search for solution in different places: forums, mailing 
lists, bugzilla. If I heard that gentoo has some feature and I'd like to 
find some relevant information, I have to search forums, mailing lists, 
wiki, google. That is really uncomfortable. I have to open many 
different search pages in my browser and cut and paste my search pattern 
there, wait many times for results... And now pretend first day user..!

This omission really disturbs. So just some notes, on what IMO shall be 
done. Search should spread among all gentoo projects, subprojects, ml, 
blogs and etc. Search should be customized (fex, I'd like to search only 
-user mailing list, Assistance forums, and bugs.g.o). It's good idea to 
save searches (like save searches in bugzilla). BTW. There were already 
suggestions with working implementations:
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/33296

Peter.
-- 
gentoo-dev@gentoo.org mailing list

Re: [gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Curtis Napier]

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Volkov Peter wrote:
> Hello.
> 
> IMO the very important element of gentoo user relations that is absent
> at w.g.o is search field! Gentoo does not have good searching point.
> 
> Each time I encounter bug/problem before asking for help if I'm a good
> boy I have to search for solution in different places: forums, mailing
> lists, bugzilla. If I heard that gentoo has some feature and I'd like to
> find some relevant information, I have to search forums, mailing lists,
> wiki, google. That is really uncomfortable. I have to open many
> different search pages in my browser and cut and paste my search pattern
> there, wait many times for results... And now pretend first day user..!
> 
> This omission really disturbs. So just some notes, on what IMO shall be
> done. Search should spread among all gentoo projects, subprojects, ml,
> blogs and etc. Search should be customized (fex, I'd like to search only
> -user mailing list, Assistance forums, and bugs.g.o). It's good idea to
> save searches (like save searches in bugzilla). BTW. There were already
> suggestions with working implementations:
> http://article.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.devel/33296
> 
> Peter.

Thanks for your interest. A comprehensive search is on our ToDo list.
There is no ETA for when this will go live.

--curtis


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