On Wednesday 14 June 2006 20:16, Mike Hearn wrote: > On 6/14/06, Calum Benson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Indeed... I've often thought that larger OSS projects might benefit > > from a "feedback squad" > > That could prove difficult. One of the unfortunate tendencies within > the open source community - of both users and developers - is to try > and "educate" users as to why they're wrong about something.
From my experience in KDE user support over a couple of years I'd rather say that it is a matter of not knowing any better. At the beginning we were enough "insiders" (developers, translators, documentation writers) to track down problems and offer solutions. Due to the increase of popularity of our platforms, most support is handled by other users and it depends on the knowledge of those what kind of answer the user in need will get. Since the major platform in the desktop space advocates "remove and reinstall" we see a tremendous increase in suggestions along this path and if such a "solution" solves the users immediate problem, it is unlikely the will even consider a response from an insider later on. I once wrote in my blog that we have to consider some efforts to "train" volunteers in support similar to how we "train" new developers by reviewing their patches and giving advice. Cheers, Kevin -- Kevin Krammer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Qt/KDE Developer, Debian User Moderator: www.mrunix.de (German), www.qtcentre.org
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