At 21:52 08/12/2000 +0100, Ben Bucksch wrote:
>Simon P. Lucy wrote:
>
>>At 13:08 08/12/2000 +0100, Ben Bucksch wrote:
>>
>>>Simon P. Lucy wrote:
>>>
>>>>For those users that stray into mozilla.org user groups they need to
>>>>be steered correctly into the right channel for their distribution.
>>>As I said, m.users won't help us here. They will either go to
>>>netscape.communicator or m.apps.mailnews. Why should they go to m.users?
>>Why shouldn't they?
>
>In order to make this group keep traffic away from dev groups, it has to
>be very "catchy". m.users isn't.
No argument, I thought it was mozilla.users.general and
mozilla.users.wishlist? Now they aren't particularly catchy either but
catchier ones like mozilla.users.bumperbookoffun or m.u.confessions
or maybe with sex in the title will likely get only a segment of users.
So unless its something bland you'll have to call it mozilla.users.support
or is that a bridge too far?
>If you want to keep Netscape users away, make Netscape add groups in its
>hierarchy with the right names, e.g. netscape.netscape6.mailnews and
>n.n.browser or n.n.navigator.
>If you want to keep Mozilla users away from dev groups, see below.
>
>>If you make the software open to only developers all you've done is to
>>put a nice canvas covered extension on the side of the Cathedral and
>>called it the Bazaar.
>
>It's a Bazaar for developers, people in general.
>
>Sure, contact to users is important, but IMO, we have too much of it
>currently. See all the ranting in bug reports and what it causes for
>developers (e.g. timeless, who is *endlessly* annoyed about people
>complaining about bugs).
I'm ambivalent about this, unless its very annoying content free rants are
just noise and can be avoided, on the other hand letting developers see and
smell the blood up close has its benefits. I don't want Bugzilla cluttered
with 'me too' there needs to be a tone of reply though which steers the
user to the right place.
>>>consume a lot of resources for help. I didn't see many useful bug
>>>reports from Beonex users. But I spent a *ton* (too much) of time
>>>answering FAQs.
>>I understand that, I just think that waving FAQs at users and expecting
>>them to use them is missing the point.
>
>I didn't say to throw FAQs at them - I know it won't help. I am suggesting
>to kepp all users away, from the beginning.
Well you don't want users kept away from Beonex I presume :-)
>>I don't think it matters whether there is a strict policy or not,
>>users will still wander into places that aren't designed for them.
>
>Right, but a non-strict policy worses the problem a lot.
Not really. The best policy is to be consistent, at the moment it
isn't. Some NS6 questions get answered, some don't, the difference between
them is puzzling. Either no NS6 get answered or they all do. Preferably,
none of them because this isn't the right forum for them.
>>unless mozilla.org refrains from producing binaries (which is
>>possible), mozilla.org is de facto a distributor
>
>Right. That's the largest cause for the problem.
>
>Whether it's the right decision to produce Milestone *binary* builds or
>not is not clear. Testers and developers have use for Milestones only for
>a limited time of e.g. a week. After that time, they are only used by
>users, leading hardly to any good bug reports, only feature suggestions
>and priorization of bugs, but then again, there are other means to get
>that, e.g. through distributors. OTOH, those users, together with the
>current organization, cause a lof of problems, like those mentioned in
>this post.
How about mozilla.org refrains from producing milestone builds at all and
instead has a link to a distributors page? The page would only have two
entries right now, Beonex and Netscape, with the relevant milestone next to
them. A milestone in mozilla.org terms is a source code milestone, not a
binary, The binaries were only there in the first place as a convenience
for testers and weeklies (as opposed to nightlies) are more use to those
that actively use and report.
If there is no distribution which is a simple build of a milestone then I'm
sure mirrors will pop up but if they do they should be prepared to support
them.
>>and should support its own builds.
>
>User support is a massive, time-consuming task and also requires a
>completely different website etc.. Is mozilla.org willing to make that change?
>
>Imagine you are a user. What would you think about the website (e.g. click
>on "mozilla0.6" and you get the release-notes, not a description), 3 MB of
>test programs in the binaries, questionable features enabled for testing
>(because some distributors, usually Netscape, need them) etc.? IMO,
>mozilla.org does an extremely poor job of supporting end-users and is only
>used because of its high profile /and/ because it produces binaries. Why
>should we push mozilla.org as distributor further without changing
>mozilla.org completely?
Agreed. I'm not suggesting that.
>>Now I think it should encourage possible users to take an end user
>>distribution, either Netscape 6 or Beonex at the moment, rather than a
>>nightly release, however, I do think it also needs to support
>>distributors properly (as in the security issues you've brought up
>>elsewhere).
>
>Agreed in both points.
>
>The first goal could be achieved by reworking the homepage to an
>introduction to Mozilla and mozilla.org, leading (in part) into a
>redirection to distributors for users. www.mozilla.org, as is, encourages
>to use Milestones.
Its still important though to empower the users, perhaps Beonex can host a
Bugzilla?
Simon
