ForumAmbassadors

Differences between revisions 24 and 25
Revision 24 as of 2006-11-09 16:42:54
Size: 18363
Editor: 207
Comment:
Revision 25 as of 2006-11-09 19:02:19
Size: 18354
Editor: 207
Comment:
Deletions are marked like this. Additions are marked like this.
Line 167: Line 167:
 * I, UbuntuDemon, have been doing some talking with some devs and stuff. I would like to speak at least to Jono,Mako,mdz,Michael Vogt about this Forum Ambassadors stuff. I have been getting good feedback.  * I, UbuntuDemon, have been doing some talking with some devs and stuff. I'm going to do some informal talking about this Forum Ambassadors stuff to developers. I have been getting good feedback.

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.

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.
  • Many of the current comments are things that should actually be bullets, as they're valid points and ideas, not just comments. Before the next drafting, this should be amended. I'll work on it, so help me Smile :)

Summary

This document specifies 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.

This idea originated on the forums. It was originally by Aysiu but many people have contributed. The current discussion is here : the forum thread : http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?p=1708930

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

  • Summary - Subforum on the forums where people have opinions and ideas. Make a team that connects to the developers to facilitate communication.
  • Use ambassadors to collect ideas,bugs and feedback from users.

TODO: improve the spec and make it more clear

Rationale

Currently there's little communication between the forum users and the developers. The forums can be a great resource for developers that are looking for bugs, testers, or improvement of useablity -- but not in a way that they have to spend too much time browsing the forums. The idea is to bring the forums to the developers with this team.

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

It's not practical for the developers to spend much time monitoring the forums. The amount selected by the ambassadors team for the developers should be a lot easier to handle than the huge amount of posts on the forums. Instead of waiting for developers to come to the forums let's take a more active approach and create this team.

It also provides a sense of entitlement to the users at Ubuntu Forums. They will feel represented, involved, and perhaps be able to take a larger part in making Ubuntu better. True this is definetely good for improving the integration and communication of the forums with the rest of the community.

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 are unknown to the devs and encourages and assists forum users to report these problems as bugs.
  • Joe, a forum user, posts with annoyance at how a certain package is not compiled with options to perform something he wants, for example ipod support for a music app. The ambassador informs Joe he will pass on his request by filing a bug to the right package.
  • Traci, a Forums Ambassador, creates a thread asking for suggestions regarding ideas for improved usability, new things that don't ring very true with the users. Traci summarizes the discussion, filters out trivia and senseless complaints, and forwards the good ideas and suggestions to the developers in the following way : first create specs for these ideas, secondly send an e-mail to ubuntu-devel for discussion and thirdly attend the next UDS to discuss these specs.

Scope

This spec is focused on creating a Forum Ambassadors team which will provide a bi-directional communication interface between the forum users and the developers.

The focus of this team should not be to try to educate every new user, although the team would assist communication between forums users and developers.

  • The Forum Ambassadors will also not be responsible for resolving inter-user and user/staff grievances. We have a resolution centre for that (Also FC and CC in the future).
  • The only purpose of this project is to gather feedback and input from the users and convey it directly to the developers, and to convey the intentions/thoughts of the developers back to the users. The Ambassadors team's responsibilities will not extend beyond that.

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.

  • One method may be by producing documentation on the forums to easily introduce users to launchpad.
    • -ManiacMusician : Good idea. This is something that users can do without any super-skills. and launchpad is definitely a strange creature to most; even me.

      • -PriceChild : Yeah, I don't like it some times. There are specs to help integrate it into the forums. :S

        • -Hobbsee : That wont mean that everything moves to the forums though, as much as some users seem to want it. Jono was looking to write an easy guide on "how to file bugs" - probably not one on the rest of launchpad, though

          • - UbuntuDemon : Yeah, we can use their work. They are thinking about something like reportingbugs.ubuntu.com. See the reporting bugs spec for more info.

            • - ManiacMusician : That could be a good long-term gobby project. We do need one big guide for launchpad

            • -Hobbsee : i would assume there would be space so we can do that. That's probably less scary than bzr, which the devs tend to use.

              • -UbuntuDemon : IMHO let Jono's spec do this. But it would be nice to provide input on it. <--ManiacMusician : oh, yes. I would never suggest that the ambassadors take it on. Just commenting.

        -PriceChild : Btw i think that there is a bit of documentation on ubuntuforums by one of the staff on how to file a bug *searches*

        • -Hobbsee : There's also some for mozilla, but I've got no idea where it is anymore. However, that's probably a moot point, seeing as we don't have jono here.

  • Purposes of ambassadors:
    • Communicating ideas to developers (gists and zeitgeists)

      - PriceChild : what are gists and zeitgeists?

      • - ManiacMusician : zeitgeists are trend-trackings...they track the change of trends over time. Or just show popularity of certain things. ie; google trends

      - UbuntuDemon : some fancy words of Mako ;).

    • 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.) (see [:LoCoTeamsUDSMVSpecs/CommunityBugReporting:CommunityBugReporting])

    • 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).

      • -ManiacMusician : This can be taken care of eventually, as the ambassador project grows bigger and can accomodate more mediums. Should we make a priority list of where to deploy our teams to first?

        • - Hobbsee : Have you been able to link in with various developers on how you can help out?

          • - ManicMusician : ...Not yet.

            • - Hobbsee : Better get to it. Wink ;) People at MTV will probably find this easiest

              • - ManiacMusician : problem is getting the word out and getting them all to listen.

        • - UbuntuDemon : the devs seem to be most interested in bugs and regressions (that is high priority bugs and bugs around feature freeze)

          • - PriceChild : Could we get them in the next gobby if there is one?

            • - UbuntuDemon : We'll put this spec into drafting and improve it a little bit. Move it back into discussion with medium priority after that ( we don't want t it to block essential BOFs). I hope to have at least another BOF about this. But I will do at least a lot of informal talking with people.

    • Ambassadors from other forums?
      • - Hobbsee : As in, the kubuntu forums? (not official)

        • -ManiacMusician : ...something like that would be very hard. Maybe if we ever have enough manpower. As an alternative, I suggest delegating this task to the users at their seperate, unofficial forums. They can report back to "Ambassadors HQ" for the sake of organization -Hobbsee : I haven't seen many others wanting to participate, so that sounds fine.

        -UbuntuDemon : My take on this is that this team could be an example to other Ambassadors Teams on other forums for example different languages or derivatives.

        • -ManiacMusician : Yes, absolutely...but we can't have 50 teams interacting with the developers. It would be a hassle. It's more ideal to have a centralized Ambassadors Panel that can take in information from various teams and send it all out together, in an organized fashion

    • Launchpad team for Ambassadors
      • - Hobbsee : - It would be just for reference on who they are. That requires them to have LP accounts though. Also, you probably want to have something on the forums about that as well - seeing as most users wont look at LP

        • - ManiacMusician : We plan to get a subsection on the forums...most users should be aware of our existence, at the very least (UbuntuDemon : and we will get a Forum Ambassadors Team enstated as part of the staff)

        - PriceChild : I think that's more for dev's reference than normal users?

        • -Hobbsee : I think so too, but it will be necessary

    • Report on the team's work and achievements over a timeframe... monthly?

Implementation

  • Document HOWTO be an ambassador
    • -PriceChild : How about a separate document to start this?

  • create ambassador team leaders
  • set criteria that we want to see from members
  • How to file a good bug report
  • Asking good questions
  • Submit submittor to bug report.
  • Create special forum section dedicated to make it easy for forum users to contact Forum Ambassadors
  • Two way street. Developers and forum users.
  • Central point of contact? Or distributed by team? How do you get decent coverage?
    • -ManiacMusician: I feel it should be a combination. A central team that coordinates the movements of all the teams, and then separate teams of 3 to 5 people that cover special areas or branch out in some way

  • Existing staff too busy to be ambassadors? -ManiacMusician : For the most part, yes

  • Don't need to be staff, but if they're contributors, then do it.
  • How toons (one or two), then elections. (Coleadership) -ManiacMusician : What does this mean? Can the writer clarify? Or remove if it's no longer a concern?

  • Set of criteria of contributions.
  • List of volunteers.

    -UbuntuDemon : Mark just told us he would like to highlight some specs on the forums for discussion and get developers relevant to that spec into that -UbuntuDemon : We'll start small and slowly grow to a big team of Forum Ambassadors. We want to try to cover everything that is really important to the users.

    • It's important that people know that they don't have to be developers to talk on a developer level - it's not like the developers are unapproachable, nor that they need to be talked to in a weird language - they do understand day to day English. I suspect there are a lot of people who think "I cant do this, I'm not skilled enough to." If you have a reasonable knowledge of what is feasible and isn't, we need you!
  • We have to make sure we can post to ubuntu-devel , edubuntu-devel and kubuntu-devel. There is a spec for closing down ubuntu-devel for non-users. Let's not forget to contact Matt Zimmerman / James Troup about this.
    • - Hobbsee : I've not seen the result of that, but we'd probably want this to be on the non-locked down list, if there are two lists

  • The issue of electing forum ambassadors is still open. We can't accept every volunteer...it's a demanding job, and we can't afford to have people that may quit after a little while of doing it. it's a team-based effort. We have to formulate a way to accept members without being too elitist
    • - PriceChild : Who has final say on Ambassadors? - Forums Staff? Admins or FC?

      • - Hobbsee : Forum council, i guess. Which will mostly be the forums staff, i thought?

        • - PriceChild : Nope, starts with 3 admins, will change. How about the entire staff team with final decision by FC? - Hobbsee : Sounds sane to me. That's what we do for kubuntu, but it's not my decision"

          • -ManiacMusician : Not sure how I feel about external influences in this. I was kind of hoping to keep it inside the forums, because that's where the community is...those are the people that will have to be represented and they'll probably want to know or have a say in what's going on. What would the FC know about users on the forum?

            • - PriceChild: Forums Staff & FC are all in forums. FC HAVE to be a good member of the forums to be selected. i.e. admins to start with, maybe with the most experienced staff. - Hobbsee : Seeing as the FC is made up of all/mostly staff - a lot. No one's out to get anyone else.

              • -ManiacMusician : Didn't mean to imply that. Just wondering about the what the reaction will be at the forums.

                • - Hobbsee : Presumably it'll be made very clear on the forums who the members of the FC are, and so users can easily see that they're well known forum people.

Evaluation

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

Unresolved issues

  • It's not possible to create a bug in the name of someone else.
    • -MikeBasinger But you can subsubscribe other people to the bug

      • - Hobbsee : Only if they have a LP account

        • -ManiacMusician : I think that if they're not going to file their own bugs, they might not need (or deserve) to take the credit for it. So, does it really matter whose name the bug is created in?

          • - Hobbsee : No, karma doesnt really apply to forum people anyway*de

  • Need feedback from developers on what they would like to see in this spec.
    • - Hobbsee : Devs probably need to wait for the forum half to get more organised before we can say much about it. However, we can try to help point out what is feasible and what isn't

      • -ManiacMusician : I think everything in this spec is pretty reasonable; especially since most of the work is not being done by the developers. They basically just need to agree that they want to hear users' opinions. On the forums themselves, it'll be the job of the ambassadors to weed out the unfeasible.

        • "-Hobbsee - Yes, and figure out how the communication will happen. -Hobbsee

          • "-ManiacMusician : I think an Ambassadors mailing list would be reasonable. People who care or are integral can subscribe, and the rest don't have to.

  • need feedback from Forum users
  • Centralized team leader or should each team member have a point of contact.
  • I, UbuntuDemon, have been doing some talking with some devs and stuff. I'm going to do some informal talking about this Forum Ambassadors stuff to developers. I have been getting good feedback.

Brain Dump

  • 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

  • I think this is a great Idea. From a forums perspective at least the English one it will be really simple to allow this to be setup as a team with the option of users to request to join etc. I would like to see this implemented for sure. Ryan Troy
  • I think its a great idea to really well thought out. if its implemented right will work out great. zenrox
  • 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.


CategorySpec

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