From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org ([69.77.167.62] helo=lists.gentoo.org) by finch.gentoo.org with esmtp (Exim 4.60) (envelope-from ) id 1JH1DI-0003gL-IG for garchives@archives.gentoo.org; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:17:40 +0000 Received: from pigeon.gentoo.org (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with SMTP id C8CEBE04D3; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:17:39 +0000 (UTC) Received: from smtp.gentoo.org (smtp.gentoo.org [140.211.166.183]) by pigeon.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 7A9FCE04D3 for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:17:39 +0000 (UTC) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8119665016 for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:17:38 +0000 (UTC) X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at gentoo.org X-Spam-Score: 1.279 X-Spam-Level: * X-Spam-Status: No, score=1.279 required=5.5 tests=[AWL=-0.789, BAYES_50=0.001, RCVD_NUMERIC_HELO=2.067] Received: from smtp.gentoo.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (smtp.gentoo.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id ZpO1Plh2d0-K for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:17:28 +0000 (UTC) Received: from ciao.gmane.org (main.gmane.org [80.91.229.2]) (using TLSv1 with cipher AES256-SHA (256/256 bits)) (No client certificate requested) by smtp.gentoo.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 555E965766 for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:12:37 +0000 (UTC) Received: from list by ciao.gmane.org with local (Exim 4.43) id 1JH18F-0002Kg-IV for gentoo-project@gentoo.org; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:12:27 +0000 Received: from 91.84.71.162 ([91.84.71.162]) by main.gmane.org with esmtp (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:12:27 +0000 Received: from slong by 91.84.71.162 with local (Gmexim 0.1 (Debian)) id 1AlnuQ-0007hv-00 for ; Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:12:27 +0000 X-Injected-Via-Gmane: http://gmane.org/ To: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org From: Steve Long Subject: [gentoo-project] Re: Plan, then communicate (no-list) Date: Mon, 21 Jan 2008 18:19:12 +0000 Message-ID: References: <20080120215706.GA16357@redwoodscientific.com> <20080120233809.GA18052@redwoodscientific.com> <200801201908.07265.vapier@gentoo.org> <20080121015439.GA18636@redwoodscientific.com> Precedence: bulk List-Post: List-Help: List-Unsubscribe: List-Subscribe: List-Id: Gentoo Project discussion list X-BeenThere: gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7Bit X-Complaints-To: usenet@ger.gmane.org X-Gmane-NNTP-Posting-Host: 91.84.71.162 User-Agent: KNode/0.10.4 Sender: news X-Archives-Salt: 894c9854-b129-4c79-aae6-ff2dda42cea9 X-Archives-Hash: 0f2dbddc431d99999805310a3acbb599 Alec Warner wrote: > The community currently has no good means to rank problems in the view > of users other than the forums; which currently have their own issues. > > User Coverage: Not everyone has a forums account. Not everyone uses > their forums account. We have no idea how many users we have > (ancidotal numbers suggest ~200000; see > http://dev.gentoo.org/~antarus/bouncer-stats.txt). It is difficult to > know what percentage of users responded and thus becomes difficult to > judge how important something is (we have only the respondants data to > use). > > Arguably you could say that anyone who didn't vote doesn't care; but > you have to factor in people who didn't learn of the vote during the > voting period. > I could and I would; forum users see their accounts similarly to how gentoo devs view their @g.org badges. Spammers are soon dealt with, so that anyone who has posted more than 50 posts (not counting OTW) and been a member for more than 3 months is not a bot. Let's say there's 100,000 active users. In a poll say 5% of votes are fraudulent. It can be factored into the calculation of significance. And when 90% say they don't like the way they get treated by Gentoo devs, there is a real issue. Call it communicaton, call it what you want, it's a real and valid concern. And IMO it holds Gentoo back. > User Education: This is that whole Cathedral thing. Below I'll talk > about Daniel's goal of maximizing developer impact and this plays a > big part. Many developers don't talk to users because its draining > and they want to work on projects that they have a high impact on. I > could sit in #gentoo and field questions all day (I've done it before) > but I have things I could spend my time on that are more worthwhile to > the project (and we are lucky enough to have a crack team of awesome > contributors that staff that channel). > There's also developer education. A junior dev (aka code-monkey) who comes in at the start of their career is not expected to show the same level of maturity as a 40 year-old. > Talking to users is exhausting when the user really has a > misconception about a given problem, program, or feature. Yeah it's called requirements analysis (whichever model you use.) That's why it's such a source of problems. > It takes > time to educate people why something works the day it does and > documentation only helps so much. Give bad service and the user is > off to the forums to complain about how he was mistreated by that > Antarus guy on #gentoo-portage and how much Gentoo sucks. > So allow more advanced users to help the less knowledgeable. All your doing is formalising what happens on irc. > That being said; talking to users who know what they are doing (doubly > so when they know more than me) is a delight and I'm generally happy > to take the time to respond. If there was some way to aggregate user > complaints into concrete problem sets I'm all ears. > Votes. Require 75% majority from users if you want. > User Validation: Most systems that users can use to respond on a large > scale don't have a means to validate whether they use your software or > not. This is more of a trend game; needing to look at the aftermath > of any given aggregate data and look for areas where people may have > given feedback that we should throw out (like automated voting). I > don't think this problem is necessarily solvable or that big a deal > but it is something to consider/ > Yeah see above about statistical significance. We're not looking for a 5% end of the normal here (which is what could perhaps be used to identify a minority.) -- gentoo-project@lists.gentoo.org mailing list