ForumAmbassadors

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TODO: improve the summary once the rest of the spec is finished
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To encourage bi-directional information flow between the different Ubuntu Forums and the developers. To encourage and assist forum users in bug reporting, wiki usage and other community tools. Currently there's little communication between the forum users and the developers. We should try to improve this.
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Types of relevant information : bugs, specs and ideas, priority of specs as felt by the forum users. The proposed Forum Ambassadors Team should try to improve the information flow between the forums and the developers. This information flow should be bi-directional.

It's undoable for the developers to spend too much time hanging out at the forums. The amount of information between the ambassadors team and the developers should be a lot more easy to handle than the huge amount of posts on the forums.
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 * Karel, a forum user, creates a new thread with some nice workarounds for certain problems. Paul, a forum ambassador, discovers that a couple of these problems weren't know and encourages and assists forum users to report these problems as bugs.
 * Karel, a forum user, creates a new thread with some nice workarounds for certain problems. Paul, a forum ambassador, discovers that a couple of these problems weren't known to the devs and encourages and assists forum users to report these problems as bugs.
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The focus of this team should not be to try to educate every new user about stuff. We shouldn't make the scope of this spec to broad. (For example there is a new team on ubuntuforums.org for helping absolute beginners.)

We have to discuss whether this is useful or whether developers should contact forum staff directly (to make stickies) :
 * Assist developers post urgent announements to the the Announcement section of the foums.

todo : define the scope of this better

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Possible tasks for the Ambassadors Team :
 
 *
 *

To encourage and assist forum users in bug reporting, wiki usage and other community tools.

Types of relevant information : bugs, specs and ideas, priority of specs as felt by the forum users.
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 * Currently this spec is in drafting.
 * There will be another BOF about this on thursday or friday. Interested forum members should try to attend.

Please check the status of this specification in Launchpad before editing it. If it is Approved, contact the Assignee or another knowledgeable person before making changes.

Summary

This is a placeholder for a discussion about how to improve communication (bugs,ideas,forum users feedback) between the forums and the developers. The idea is to elect Forum Ambassadors and/or have a special forum for this to help to improve communication. There is a brainstorming discussion on ubuntuforums about this.

the forum thread : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1708930

Forum Ambassadors might become a team like : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=289810

TODO: improve the summary once the rest of the spec is finished

Rationale

Currently there's little communication between the forum users and the developers. We should try to improve this.

The proposed Forum Ambassadors Team should try to improve the information flow between the forums and the developers. This information flow should be bi-directional.

It's undoable for the developers to spend too much time hanging out at the forums. The amount of information between the ambassadors team and the developers should be a lot more easy to handle than the huge amount of posts on the forums.

Use cases

  • Right after Feisty's release there's a big thread on the forums about the breakage of a certain important package. Paul, a forum ambassador, contacts the maintainer of this package to let him know about this.
  • Karel, a forum user, creates a new thread with some nice workarounds for certain problems. Paul, a forum ambassador, discovers that a couple of these problems weren't known to the devs and encourages and assists forum users to report these problems as bugs.

Scope

The focus of this team should not be to try to educate every new user about stuff. We shouldn't make the scope of this spec to broad. (For example there is a new team on ubuntuforums.org for helping absolute beginners.)

We have to discuss whether this is useful or whether developers should contact forum staff directly (to make stickies) :

  • Assist developers post urgent announements to the the Announcement section of the foums.

todo : define the scope of this better

Design

Possible tasks for the Ambassadors Team :

To encourage and assist forum users in bug reporting, wiki usage and other community tools.

Types of relevant information : bugs, specs and ideas, priority of specs as felt by the forum users.

Implementation

  • document HOWTO be an ambassador
  • create ambassador team leaders
  • set criteria that we want to see from members
  • howto file a good bug report
  • asking good questions
  • submit submittor to bug report

Evaluation

  • ambassadors + dev teams should know each other
  • ambassadors should know what's going on (#ubuntu-devel, ubuntu-devel, mailinglist, developer forum section)

Code

Data preservation and migration

Unresolved issues

BoF agenda and discussion

  • Currently this spec is in drafting.
  • There will be another BOF about this on thursday or friday. Interested forum members should try to attend.

Brain Dump

  • Introductions
  • Summary - Thread on the forums where people have opinions and ideas. Make a team of like, 10 people or something, and then have team leaders that connect to the developers to facilitate communication.
  • Use ambassadors to collect ideas and feedback from users.
  • Centralized team leader or should each team member have a point of contact.
  • Use Cases
    • Bug Reporting:
      • "Someone on the forums find a bug, want a way to quickly get that information to developers."
        • Mako: It would be nice if people who represent others know how to file good detailed bug reports.
      • Someone needs to collect information from the forums, it's unreasonable to expect all users to register with launchpad, etc. etc.
      • Very often forum users post their opinions (requests, problems, desires, etc.) in the "Ubuntu Development" section of the forum thinking that the developers would see their posts there.
  • Purposes of ambassadors:
    • Communicating ideas to developers (gists and zeitgeists)
    • Some people are comfortable collecting information. (Collector)
    • Some people are comfortable diseminating information. (Disseminators)
    • Two way communication. (Bidirectional)

    • Triaging people and volunteers (being in touch with the interests of users)
    • File bugs (Good bugs, not just follow either, is it a feature or a bug? They need to be able to contact people who are willing to contribute.)
      • Integration of projects that start on the forums into the distribution. (Inviting people into the greater community.)
      • Involve other active members of the forums that don't yet contribute to the organization. (Get the active members to join the project)
      • "I've stopped using Ubuntu because XXX is, or works better, in Some Other Distro" <-- high priority

      • Recognition of forums contributions
      • Integration of other forums (all the LoCo forums and other languages). How do we get their feedback integrated? (Tough, this will be another spec).

      • Ambassadors from other forums?
      • Launchpad team for Ambassadors

* Implementation

  • Two way street. Developers and forum users.
  • Central point of contact? Or distributed by team? How do you get decent coverage?
  • Existing staff too busy to do be ambassadors?
  • Don't need to be staff, but if they're contributors, then do it.
  • "How to be an ambassador"
  • Nominations (one or two), then elections. (Coleadership)
    • Set of criteria of contributions.
    • List of volunteers.

more drafting :

  • expand to other forums
  • offtopic : all ubuntu forums linking to eachother (for example forums for different languages)
  • bi-directional
  • communicate / relay ideas : gisting + zeitgeist??)
  • prioritization of specs,etc
  • What do other distros do regarding ambassadors ?
  • Communicate what users like in other distros
  • file + follow up good bugs / inital triage / judgement calls
  • integration of code into community + core distro/repos
  • invite forum members into Ubuntu project + recognition of forums contributions
  • use launchpad

Comments


CategorySpec

ForumAmbassadors (last edited 2008-08-06 17:01:37 by localhost)