[tdf-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice-qa] Forums Proposal
Hi, On Sat, Oct 06, 2012 at 06:42:42PM -0400, Marc Paré wrote: Le 2012-10-06 17:20, Bjoern Michaelsen a écrit : On Sat, Oct 06, 2012 at 04:26:18PM -0400, Marc Paré wrote: No sure if we were talking about empty hall, I am hoping to help fill them. :-) Yes, just like a night club opening with fewer floors in the early evening, so that they are not that empty -- and open more floors later. ;) Sorry, doesn't work for me. If the place is too full with noise, I can't hear myself think and I go elsewhere where people like me congregate ... in this case the AOO forums. _If_ the place is too full with noise, we will quickly be able to split out forums. My suggestion is just not to do that earlier. ;) Do you think we will have some 3-5 regulars in a templates forum? If not, I would postpone separating those out until such a group condesates and asks for it. Well, I would rather give it a try, we do have a template site that we should be supporting with a forums. This would give us a chance to get more traction right from the start. I dont believe that a separate forum gives you more traction, if you do not have 3-5 regulars in it -- rather the opposite. As both closing forums and underpopulated/abandoned forums are demotivational and unhelpful, I am stand by my opinion that not having one at the start is better. Once 3-5 regulars for that topic are around and ask for it, we can add that forum -- which is motivating as it suggests growth and gives the forum a better kickstart (esp. since we can make an announcement for the start of that forum on its own then). All in all I can't say I agree on your approach to forums. You seem to expect the brunt of all activity on a forums to come from the participants. More of a let's wait for them to come approach. Hence, the lets start with few categories and break out later. This is more of a passive approach to running a forums I, however, think that a good categorization of a forums will have a better appeal to our users and with good moderation will fill. I also think that we should not only moderate, but also create buzz on our forums. Moderators are not only there to help direct traffic (un-obtrusively) but also create buzz and discussion. If moderators sign up for the job, then they should commit to grow their forums and make them attractive for user appeal. If a forum has become silent, then it would be up to the forums admins to sit and determine the actions to market and help popularize it. This is more of an aggressive approach to growing a forums. You currently have 5 forum coordinators, which is a very good size to start off (a bigger group will only lead to more communication overhead). If you want to actively vitalize the forums, you should not start with much more than ~2 forums per coordinator, otherwise you stretch yourself too thin. As you grow the team, win more regulars, admins and coordinators, you can easily add categories. You will do anyway -- no matter what initial categorization you setup. Thus the _initial_ categorization is important to be optimized to generate growth in the first 2-3 month, it should not be the 'final' or 'perfect' categorization for a huge board system (because the first is the precondition for the second). You should also make sure to empower those joining you as forum regulars and coordinators and there is no easier way to archive that than by letting them take part of the growth by creating 'their' additional forum. Linus Torvalds said on 2004-10-25: Nobody should start to undertake a large project. You start with a small trivial project, and you should never expect it to get large. If you do, you'll just overdesign and generally think it is more important than it likely is at that stage. Or worse, you might be scared away by the sheer size of the work you envision. So start small, and think about the details. Don't think about some big picture and fancy design. If it doesn't solve some fairly immediate need, it's almost certainly over-designed. And don't expect people to jump in and help you. That's not how these things work. You need to get something half-way useful first, and then others will say hey, that almost works for me, and they'll get involved in the project. ^- THAT is critical advise here. We should also keep in mind that some of our long-time users are on the AOO forums being helped and the categorization there seems to work quite well. You only need to look at their numbers to realize that common sense categorization works[1] and where new forums appear these are more of a targeted and deliberate choice (as in the case of the US marketing forums, this is more of a concerted group effort from the part of the whole TDF/LibreOffice team). The best way to involve them then is to invite them to take part in the organic growth of the forums. The best way to do that, is to start with a small and minimal set of forums, be open to change and
[tdf-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice-qa] Forums Proposal
Le 2012-10-06 17:20, Bjoern Michaelsen a écrit : On Sat, Oct 06, 2012 at 04:26:18PM -0400, Marc Paré wrote: No sure if we were talking about empty hall, I am hoping to help fill them. :-) Yes, just like a night club opening with fewer floors in the early evening, so that they are not that empty -- and open more floors later. ;) Sorry, doesn't work for me. If the place is too full with noise, I can't hear myself think and I go elsewhere where people like me congregate ... in this case the AOO forums. Not sure about this. We were given the mandate to concentrate on the US market specifically. You may have noticed that there are already few mails on the US mailing list (of which I am part), but I believe that we are set to re-buid post-LibOCon. From what I can see, the largest problem with the US is the lack of marcons for the group, which has always been front-and-centre of all serious discussions. I would favour keeping the US separate and closing the mailing list. How does keeping the US separate help kicking off a US marketing community? Better to hatch it in the marketing forum until it can fly on its own. It has already been hatched and given its own life. It would drown in any other list. Otherwise, un-mandate and refocus on another sector. I would still favour a list on its own. We are trying to get a market of around 320 million users on-board and I think its worth being a little more focused in this one. We need a re-boot on this one. not sure if I like that idea. I would rather see what most users looking for help are looking for on arrival on our forums -- a breakdown in forums where they can locate their application section and leave a message. Sending our users in need of help to a soup-bowl mix of messages will only confuse them and add more stress. I would rather have the obvious breakdown on our forums site. If there are alpha-beta problems with any of the modules, then it would seem to me better for our users to see them already in their own categories. 'Open beta' has nothing to do with our releases. Its just as long as we test and explore the forum. But yes, I think we should start with a general 'applications' forum and am uncertain if a Math forum would really be helpful, if it does not attach regulars. - Templates are unlikely to support a forum on their own from the start. Yup, but on the other hand, it is a good collection point where we can encourage ideas on templates and hope some devs will pick up on it. Its a two-way street. If we hope to attract users to our contributor forums/mailing lists, then we should also hope to attract devs to our user forums. Let's give this one a shot. I am interested in this one, particularly considering the lack of template ideas on the lists. It will be a good collection point for ideas. Do you think we will have some 3-5 regulars in a templates forum? If not, I would postpone separating those out until such a group condesates and asks for it. Well, I would rather give it a try, we do have a template site that we should be supporting with a forums. This would give us a chance to get more traction right from the start. I have no problems with this either. Although, I can see others having problems with it. I was never too clear on what the projects mailing list was all about as it seems we are all advertising on it and discussions are happening more and more on it. It may be better to have a Discuss forum with a sub-forum Projects where only decided projects are announced. The discuss list is very active and it is hard to pull projects from any of the threads. Well, on the mailing lists, there is a benefit of separating the projects list for important 'semi-official' stuff like minutes of calls from the noise and volume of unrestrained brainstorming. However, a forum does not pollute an inbox as a mailing list does and an it is possible to move off topic threads out of it, before they create trouble. Not really sure what you mean. Not sure about this. I would prefer the marketing punch of a LibOLounge (where some of the characters look like :-b) or any other clever stuff that our user-base can come up in a competition. and, we should have a disclaimer sticky on it as well as the rules for off-topic conversations. We should not be afraid to stick our name in on the fun room rather than have it only associated with the serious part of the project. Life is too short. Well, take it as a personal opinion and something for people to keep in mind when voting on the proposals in the competition. ;) I don't really think this is a big concern from my end. Not sure if it should be. If it is it would come from the BoD I guess. Best, Bjoern All in all I can't say I agree on your approach to forums. You seem to expect the brunt of all activity on a forums to come from the participants. More of a let's wait for them to come approach. Hence,
Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice-qa] Forums Proposal
I, however, think that a good categorization of a forums will have a better appeal to our users and with good moderation will fill. I also think that we should not only moderate, but also create buzz on our forums. Moderators are not only there to help direct traffic (un-obtrusively) but also create buzz and discussion. If moderators sign up for the job, then they should commit to grow their forums and make them attractive for user appeal. If a forum has become silent, then it would be up to the forums admins to sit and determine the actions to market and help popularize it. This is more of an aggressive approach to growing a forums. I've thought a lot about how much we should shrink the category list and I have talked to Bjoern a bit about it. At this point I'm heavily leaning towards the approach above by Marc. I read through all the previous threads and I can see combining a few things that were mentioned (such as OS X and Linux) but, I like the idea of keeping the components separate. I think if this is our biggest concern, we're in good shape as it's a minor disagreement. Worst case if a section is never being touched, we can do one of two things: a) aggressively start promoting it by moving relevant posts to the section that were previously in general or some other section b) delete it I'd prefer this approach over expanding to include new sections as we see the demand for them. This will result in a ton of users getting used to using the general section or some other similar section and then confusion when we grow the list and start telling them to post in the new section. Furthermore, for helpers, they'll get used to just going to the general category and it may be a mess to get them to start individually going to sections (I could see open contempt, saying it was so much easier when it was just grouped). The idea is to make it practical, efficient, and helpful, keeping them separate I think accomplishes this. Regards, Joel -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
[tdf-discuss] Re: [Libreoffice-qa] Forums Proposal
On 2012-10-06 9:43 PM Joel Madero wrote: I read through all the previous threads and I can see combining a few things that were mentioned (such as OS X and Linux) Why would you even think of combining Linux and OS X? They are completely different operating systems. Installation on each is completely different. Advice for troubleshooting one is different than the other. Having both together would confuse users. -- _ Larry I. Gusaas Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan Canada Website: http://larry-gusaas.com An artist is never ahead of his time but most people are far behind theirs. - Edgard Varese -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
