On 10 July 2014 11:10, Jos Poortvliet <jospoortvl...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So, let me be bold and give a suggestion (that isn't new at all [2]): > lets use our *software* to reach out to our users and tell them how they > could help us. > > Right now, we depend on users actively reaching out to us, to read planet > KDE, our dot and kde.org, to find out how to help. Let's make it easier. > Let's reach out to them. > > I'm not suggesting a irremovable flashing banner on the panel and pink fluffy > bunnies running over the window decoration, carrying signs "donate to KDE". > Perhaps unicorns. Certainly no bunnies ;-) > > No, goal is to INFORM our users that they could participate, help us, in > various ways. In a decent way. With the simple option to ignore us. > > And yes, there are some technical difficulties, and we'd have to work with > the distributions. I'm sure we can have a conversation about that - but I'd > like to know first: do we *want* this in the first place? Because if we > *want* it, I am certain we can *do* it. We're KDE ;-) Not unexpectedly, I do have a few ideas of varying degrees of evil-ness and unicorn-potential :-) As I mentioned in the thread you linked to we currently have a "donate" link in the "About KDE" dialog under the "Support KDE" tab where absolutely no-one will see it. We need to put any donate links or buttons in places where the users are more likely to see it in as part of their regular workflow. Annoying as it may have been, being confronted with Jimmy Wales' pleading face at the top of every Wikipedia page for a month was surprisingly effective :-) There's several places we could insert a Donate link or text, each with varying degrees of visibility and annoyance. We'll probably want to try more than one of them so we could probably have a small library or group of classes to provide a consistent interaction model, i.e. provide a KDonateButton and KDonateDialog for use in gui's, etc. We could make this configurable so independent apps can run their own fund-raising campaigns, and have a single config option to turn all marketing messages off. Having a generic "Donate" link or text will be less effective than having targeted text and images, for example for Randa or for new servers or Join the Game. People are more likely to donate if there is a clear target with tangible benefits. We could have a method where-by the donate code can check a server to see what the current campaigns are, perhaps using an rss feed or json file. Whenever an app starts it could trigger a delayed check of this. If they cannot connect then a generic text and image is used. Such an update method could also be used to trigger the more annoying notification methods on a low-volume schedule. Of course, these marketing messages we're pushing out don't have to all be of the "give us money" type, they could also be more generic "Attend Akademy", "Try Krita" , "Oppose Software Patents" or "Magical Unicorns" type messages. Where we do put donate links in the software, we need to make sure that each channel and campaign has a different link or parameter to identify it so we can track which campaign the money is intended for and which channels are the most effective. So where to put these marketing messages? The simplest would be to add a "Donate to KDE..." item in the Help menu which would pop-up the donate dialog, which would display the latest campaigns. This is quick and easy and highly unlikely to annoy users or distros or app authors, but would still be easy for them to turn off if it did. However, it doesn't put the new campaigns under the users immediate attention. We could insert messages into the KTipsDatabase so that the tips dialog randomly shows the latest campaigns. On the first-run of an app we could show the generic donate text, and when new campaigns are launched we can make that the next tip to be shown. Again, this is a fairly low-annoyance method that can easily be disabled, and increases visibility, but only if the user keeps showing tips at start-up. Boud has mentioned that Krita donations increased when he put a donate button in the splash screen. We could automatically place a button in all KSplashScreen instances, or even have the normal splash replaced with newly launched campaigns. Again, easily disabled if unwanted, and with guaranteed visibility, but not all apps use it, and the annoyance factor is higher. Somewhere that people regularly look at is the configure settings dialog. We could insert a default panel in every config dialog that gives some of the generic "About KDE" or "About App" style info, like where to get help on UserBase, etc, with the marketing messages included in the layout. This would have the potential for high user exposure, but also high user annoyance at seeing it when all they want is to configure something. In the more annoying category, there are many apps that could have marketing messages subtly displayed on start-up, the non-modal notifications in apps like Kate or Dolphin could easily show a marketing message on start-up that fades away after a little bit. Something like Rekonq offers a lot of options for displaying messages, as Firefox makes clear. Konqueror, KMyMoney and other apps that start up with a nice intro or summary screen could easily include a subtle marketing pitch. These have a high annoyance potential so would need to be carefully designed or rarely used, depending on the app, but providing some common library tools would enable the apps to decide the best way for themselves. We could insert banner style messages into the KDE Help Centre, either just as non-modal notifications that fade away, or as full-on banner ads permanently in the header layout. It could be a bad place for it though as users looking for help with a problem may not be in a receptive mood. KCrash could also be a bad option for the same reason. It's been suggested before to have a donate plasmoid that gets installed on the default desktop. A more generic version for "KDE Konnect" could scroll through the various campaigns and other useful info. Even if the distros disable this by default, it could still appear in the list of available plasmoids for people to stumble across. More usefully, it could also include an RSS feed from the Dot and Planet, commit stats, etc, to make it more appealing for users to leave enabled. The Windows installer could easily have a donate message page inserted into it, or perhaps show the latest campaigns while software is downloading or installing (beats just watching the boring 0-100% bars). This is commonly done in many commercial and distro installers, and is a channel we exclusively control so would be uncontroversial. Getting really evil, we could insert campaign messages into the Plasma Notifications. Or we could have a separate notifier icon in the system tray. Or insert a "Donate" option into the Kicker menu in the Favourites or Leave tab. Or add an iCalendar feed to the Plasma calendar. Or put a "$" windeco button in every KWin title bar. Or have a Donate icon in System Settings. Or have KRunner display ads interspersed with search results. Or Amarok could play ads in-between tracks. Or... Obviously, we could adopt some of the worst spammy practices of the commercial software world and really really really annoy our users and distributors. We don't want that so we'll have to be more subtle, and always allow people to easily opt-out from all future marketing. Done right though we could raise the profile subtly, especially if we make the communication channel useful enough. Where do people see that line being? What of the above do people see as being completely unacceptable? Do we prefer opt-in or opt-out? How much choice do we give app maintainers in deciding to participate? If we do any of this, we will need a clear set of ethical guidelines on what is acceptable and what isn't, with full visibility and accountability, and total control for our users. Cheers! John. [P.S. Dear media peeps following this list, a number of the suggestions above are firmly tongue-in-cheek to help explore where the limits might lie, so please don't report this as "OMG KDE to spam users!". We are talking fluffy unicorns here :-) ] _______________________________________________ kde-community mailing list kde-community@kde.org https://mail.kde.org/mailman/listinfo/kde-community
