Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
Hi :) Yes, i agree that having 2 different methods of communicating would probably fragment the community. I hadn't thought about it. It might be that the community is large enough that it could allow such fragmentation without much ill effect? Sometimes personality clashes happen that would be solved by one person moving to the other part of the group. At the moment we have emailing lists that can be read in a forum(ish) style by using Nabble. Ubuntu has forums (fora? forii?) that send posts by email to those subscribed. Regards from Tom :) From: Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michael...@canonical.com To: Tom Davies tomdavie...@yahoo.co.uk Cc: Florian Monfort florian.monf...@gmail.com; Jean Weber jeanwe...@gmail.com; marketing@global.libreoffice.org marketing@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Friday, 31 August 2012, 14:13 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?) Hi, On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 01:21:41PM +0100, Tom Davies wrote: I think the idea is to have a forum alongside the mailing-lists. mostly. Many people find forums easier to understand or have more experience with them from using them in other projects. Yes, that is a big plus for forums: the lower barrier to entry. Others prefer mailing lists. So, it's good to have both to avoid pushing people away. That depends. I would indeed also consider to close down mailing lists under certain circumstances and only offer the forum. This is because it is very unhelpful if a (sub)project splits up in the marketing-list-guys and the marketing-forum-guys -- just as you said most prefer one medium over the other and thus will not know what is going on over there in the other media. As a forum have a lower barrier to entry, it makes sense to have them for all areas of the project, even if the mail activity is usually on a mailing list. Essentially, such a forum has the only propose to not miss out those guys and lure them on the mailing list in the end. Thats what I assume for development. There are other part of the project (closer to the users of the product), where I assume the majority of posts happening on the forum and not on the mailing list. In those cases, the mailing list would be unhelpful in the end: It has a higher barrier to entry and needlessly fragmentizes communication. In these cases, I would propose to close down the user list. With Closing down, I mean we still need to take care of making the migration as soft and smooth as possible: - announce that the list will be closed in favor of the forum in 3-6(?) month on the list - possibly make the forum send copies of the posts to the mailing list on switchover date (as a mailing list is a nice mirrored archive and google will never forget anything) - make the list readonly on switchover date I imagine that to happen for us...@global.libreoffice.org and disc...@documentfoundation.org from the start. For other lists (design, marketing, documentation, etc.) we have to wait and see if the majority of communication stays on the list or moves to the forum. If the majority moves to the forum for a specific subproject, I would suggest to close the list too, as otherwise it will fragmentize the community. Best, Bjoern -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.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.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.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.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
Hi :) +1 to all of Jean's points. A forum should not replace the existing infrastructure! Imo it should add another strand to encourage people to join in that might otherwise be timid or even scared. Ubuntu's Launchpad also allows people to move seamlessly between very different areas without getting bogged-down with bloated in-boxes. I think i prefer the style of the Gentoo forum. Regards from Tom :) --- On Sat, 1/9/12, Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michael...@canonical.com wrote: From: Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michael...@canonical.com Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?) To: Jean Weber jeanwe...@gmail.com Cc: marketing@global.libreoffice.org Date: Saturday, 1 September, 2012, 3:52 Hi Jean, On Sat, Sep 01, 2012 at 10:37:06AM +1000, Jean Weber wrote: Your view of forums is much broader and quite different from what I was thinking about, which was specifically for user support, similar to what was set up for OOo (now AOO): http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ I find that forum actually rather dangerous in its setup -- although typical of the old Sun/Oracle. By explicitly being users-only, it is actually discriminating against producers and contributors to the project. Indeed I think a forum should contain all subprojects to allow a curious user to be come a contributor by wandering off into the other subforums (and to keep contributors connected to the userbase). The openoffice forum is doing that totally wrong by creating a high barrier between consumer (in the forum) and contributors (elsewhere but rarely on the forum). Perhaps first we should discuss how broad the topics areas covered should be: the whole project or just user support or something in between? The forum should provide options for contributors and for pure consumer (endusers) of the project. The aim of that is to make be transparent and make the transistion from consumer to producer as smooth as possible. In fact, it should feel so natural that it isnt even noticed. You have mentioned in a later note some reasons for having forums for the whole project, but it seems to me that might be a really big change that should perhaps be tackled in smaller steps. Not quite. I think the primary traffic on the forum will be enduser to enduser communication. However, I also think all teams should have a presence there to pick up interested enduser and smoothly transition them from pure consumers to contributors on any of the subprojects. I dont think that will make the scope of the task bigger really: E.g. for development, I think even if we offer a forum for that, we wont suddenly be run over by millions of additional people who want to build and hack on LibreOffice (although that would be awesome) -- but we might pick up an interested guy now and then. The closer to the enduser the topic gets, the more that subforum will see traffic, of course -- but also: the more it will allow to recruit consumers to become contributors. Also, could you explain what you see as the purpose of a forum for Documentation? Do you see it as a place for producers of docs to discuss what's needed, what's being done, etc? Or something else? I would leave that to the documentation team (as for other teams) to decide, as long as the team picks up endusers interested to contribute. If the majority of the documentation team prefers to communicate on a mailing list thats fine for me too: My suggestion about closing mailing lists is only about those subprojects were most of the traffic ends up happening on the forum anyway (for example, I assume design could wind up that way). Specific for documentation, I see a common case that: - in the user forum someone has a problem - discussion between users results in a HowTo document being created - that HowTo gets copied over to the Documentation forum, where is gets edited further - the HowTo ends up in official documentation, the enduser writing it ends up being a contributor in the documentation team If for producers, IMO it should definitely NOT be combined with a forum for users, which I see as covering more than the topics you have listed above. Well, additionally to what I said above: I already separated the User and Document subforum even in the first proposal. As for covering more than the topics: which ones? The suggested start forum covers everything LibreOffice and even not LibreOffice (Off the wall). I suspect that what you really want is more finegrained topics and while I think that would be awesome, I dont think it is a good start as people will feel lost in the emptiness of the subforum if we have too many for too few users. Also: Splitting forum into subtopic once they become overloaded isnt too hard, can be quickly done and is a motivating sign of success. Hoping you can help me get a better idea of what your ideas are... If you want a blueprint of how I imagine a forum to look like, take a look at: http
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
Hi, let me state two opinion frontup for this discussion: - A user forum is important, and something we need to care about in the current state of the project - however, it is not a trivial task at all -- and launching a forum is pretty much a hit or miss, so we would need to get it right the first time. Following from this, I think we should approach this in the following way: == We shouldnt haste it == This is a huge task -- not so much from the technical side (which has its challenges, but nothing too hard), but esp. from the social and communication side. We should take a slow and steady approach until we are really ready to do a launch that kicks off successfully. I would assume a launch in 3-6 month to be the earliest realistic timeframe. == We need a squad == We need a team of minimum ~10 people commiting themselves on this topic for the initial kick-off. If we had full-time employees commiting themselves to this project, half of that would do, but with volunteers there are a lot of valid reasons to drop out (family, job) that have to be respected. We should see that we find moderators being able to cover at least these topics: - Marketing - Documentation - QA - Development - Localization - Design/UX - TDF Infra (including the forum itself) - TDF Orga (that is BoD etc.) - Windows, OSX, Linux (each) The 10 volunteers from the forum squad should be able to commit themselves to take care of ~two of those topics, so that we have ~two people available for each topic. == Where do we find people == We should look for active members on our infra (that is: nabble, ask.libreoffice.org) and related infras (distrobution bugtrackers, ask.ubuntu). Most forums have some 'karma value', e.g. number of posts. If possible technically we should consider giving interested parties some 'startup bonus karma' for their work on other forums and media. As a sideeffect, that is an incentive to join the effort early. We should also consider (I bet this is controversal) to shut down the duplication with mailing list for those areas, where forums are the more suitable medium for most: us...@global.libreoffice.org and disc...@documentfoundation.org. We should consider to do the same if one community (e.g. design or marketing) moves most (~90%) of its communication to forums to prevent fragmentation. Development will not move to the forums as mailing list are better suited for it (I find it highly unlikely that the dev topics on the forum ever reach the activity of the mailing list). == Dont overextend == We shouldnt overextend ourselves with the number of forums, that will fragmentize the userbase. Instead we should start off with the minimum number of forums and join topics at the start, e.g. with only these subforums: - News, Events and Announcements (aka Marketing) - Users (Setup and Troubleshooting, StarBasic, Extensions, Configuration, Customization) - Documentation (HowTos, FAQs), Localization and Design - LibreOffice QA and Development (Building LibreOffice, Debugging, - TDF Infra and Orga - Off the wall (which is a place for socializing unrelated to LibreOffice or TDF) Possibly even Users and Documentation... should be joined in the beginning. Only once a subforum became a buzzing hub, we should consider splitting up. We should _not_ offer subforum for languages other than english, unless there is a trusted team of at least three trusted moderators committing themselves on it. == Who wants to champion this? == So right now we need someone to push this topic forward -- that is: collects the team, and runs some regular meetings on IRC or elsewhere with it to keep them on track and keeps everyone motivated and onboard. I can help out with this, but I dont think I can lead this, so the question is: Who will? Best, Bjoern -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.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.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
Hi :) I think the idea is to have a forum alongside the mailing-lists. Forums generally have sub-sections such as Marketing, Accessibility, Base, Noobs and so on, in a fairly flexible way. Many people find forums easier to understand or have more experience with them from using them in other projects. Others prefer mailing lists. So, it's good to have both to avoid pushing people away. Regards from Tom :) From: Florian Monfort florian.monf...@gmail.com To: Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michael...@canonical.com Cc: Jean Weber jeanwe...@gmail.com; marketing@global.libreoffice.org Sent: Friday, 31 August 2012, 12:45 Subject: Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?) HI Bjoern, May I ask if what you explicitely consider is actually moving the whole marketing conversation in the mailing list to a forum ? Or would you just imagine it as a catalizor for ideas that we could inspire from ? On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 1:38 PM, Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michael...@canonical.com wrote: Hi, let me state two opinion frontup for this discussion: - A user forum is important, and something we need to care about in the current state of the project - however, it is not a trivial task at all -- and launching a forum is pretty much a hit or miss, so we would need to get it right the first time. Following from this, I think we should approach this in the following way: == We shouldnt haste it == This is a huge task -- not so much from the technical side (which has its challenges, but nothing too hard), but esp. from the social and communication side. We should take a slow and steady approach until we are really ready to do a launch that kicks off successfully. I would assume a launch in 3-6 month to be the earliest realistic timeframe. == We need a squad == We need a team of minimum ~10 people commiting themselves on this topic for the initial kick-off. If we had full-time employees commiting themselves to this project, half of that would do, but with volunteers there are a lot of valid reasons to drop out (family, job) that have to be respected. We should see that we find moderators being able to cover at least these topics: - Marketing - Documentation - QA - Development - Localization - Design/UX - TDF Infra (including the forum itself) - TDF Orga (that is BoD etc.) - Windows, OSX, Linux (each) The 10 volunteers from the forum squad should be able to commit themselves to take care of ~two of those topics, so that we have ~two people available for each topic. == Where do we find people == We should look for active members on our infra (that is: nabble, ask.libreoffice.org) and related infras (distrobution bugtrackers, ask.ubuntu). Most forums have some 'karma value', e.g. number of posts. If possible technically we should consider giving interested parties some 'startup bonus karma' for their work on other forums and media. As a sideeffect, that is an incentive to join the effort early. We should also consider (I bet this is controversal) to shut down the duplication with mailing list for those areas, where forums are the more suitable medium for most: us...@global.libreoffice.org and disc...@documentfoundation.org. We should consider to do the same if one community (e.g. design or marketing) moves most (~90%) of its communication to forums to prevent fragmentation. Development will not move to the forums as mailing list are better suited for it (I find it highly unlikely that the dev topics on the forum ever reach the activity of the mailing list). == Dont overextend == We shouldnt overextend ourselves with the number of forums, that will fragmentize the userbase. Instead we should start off with the minimum number of forums and join topics at the start, e.g. with only these subforums: - News, Events and Announcements (aka Marketing) - Users (Setup and Troubleshooting, StarBasic, Extensions, Configuration, Customization) - Documentation (HowTos, FAQs), Localization and Design - LibreOffice QA and Development (Building LibreOffice, Debugging, - TDF Infra and Orga - Off the wall (which is a place for socializing unrelated to LibreOffice or TDF) Possibly even Users and Documentation... should be joined in the beginning. Only once a subforum became a buzzing hub, we should consider splitting up. We should _not_ offer subforum for languages other than english, unless there is a trusted team of at least three trusted moderators committing themselves on it. == Who wants to champion this? == So right now we need someone to push this topic forward -- that is: collects the team, and runs some regular meetings on IRC or elsewhere with it to keep them on track and keeps everyone motivated and onboard. I can help out with this, but I dont think I can lead this, so the question is: Who will? Best, Bjoern -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
Hi, On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 01:21:41PM +0100, Tom Davies wrote: I think the idea is to have a forum alongside the mailing-lists. mostly. Many people find forums easier to understand or have more experience with them from using them in other projects. Yes, that is a big plus for forums: the lower barrier to entry. Others prefer mailing lists. So, it's good to have both to avoid pushing people away. That depends. I would indeed also consider to close down mailing lists under certain circumstances and only offer the forum. This is because it is very unhelpful if a (sub)project splits up in the marketing-list-guys and the marketing-forum-guys -- just as you said most prefer one medium over the other and thus will not know what is going on over there in the other media. As a forum have a lower barrier to entry, it makes sense to have them for all areas of the project, even if the mail activity is usually on a mailing list. Essentially, such a forum has the only propose to not miss out those guys and lure them on the mailing list in the end. Thats what I assume for development. There are other part of the project (closer to the users of the product), where I assume the majority of posts happening on the forum and not on the mailing list. In those cases, the mailing list would be unhelpful in the end: It has a higher barrier to entry and needlessly fragmentizes communication. In these cases, I would propose to close down the user list. With Closing down, I mean we still need to take care of making the migration as soft and smooth as possible: - announce that the list will be closed in favor of the forum in 3-6(?) month on the list - possibly make the forum send copies of the posts to the mailing list on switchover date (as a mailing list is a nice mirrored archive and google will never forget anything) - make the list readonly on switchover date I imagine that to happen for us...@global.libreoffice.org and disc...@documentfoundation.org from the start. For other lists (design, marketing, documentation, etc.) we have to wait and see if the majority of communication stays on the list or moves to the forum. If the majority moves to the forum for a specific subproject, I would suggest to close the list too, as otherwise it will fragmentize the community. Best, Bjoern -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.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.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 9:38 PM, Bjoern Michaelsen bjoern.michael...@canonical.com wrote: We should see that we find moderators being able to cover at least these topics: - Marketing - Documentation - QA - Development - Localization - Design/UX - TDF Infra (including the forum itself) - TDF Orga (that is BoD etc.) - Windows, OSX, Linux (each) [...] We shouldnt overextend ourselves with the number of forums, that will fragmentize the userbase. Instead we should start off with the minimum number of forums and join topics at the start, e.g. with only these subforums: - News, Events and Announcements (aka Marketing) - Users (Setup and Troubleshooting, StarBasic, Extensions, Configuration, Customization) - Documentation (HowTos, FAQs), Localization and Design - LibreOffice QA and Development (Building LibreOffice, Debugging, - TDF Infra and Orga - Off the wall (which is a place for socializing unrelated to LibreOffice or TDF) Possibly even Users and Documentation... should be joined in the beginning. Only once a subforum became a buzzing hub, we should consider splitting up. We should _not_ offer subforum for languages other than english, unless there is a trusted team of at least three trusted moderators committing themselves on it. Your view of forums is much broader and quite different from what I was thinking about, which was specifically for user support, similar to what was set up for OOo (now AOO): http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ Perhaps first we should discuss how broad the topics areas covered should be: the whole project or just user support or something in between? You have mentioned in a later note some reasons for having forums for the whole project, but it seems to me that might be a really big change that should perhaps be tackled in smaller steps. Also, could you explain what you see as the purpose of a forum for Documentation? Do you see it as a place for producers of docs to discuss what's needed, what's being done, etc? Or something else? If for producers, IMO it should definitely NOT be combined with a forum for users, which I see as covering more than the topics you have listed above. Hoping you can help me get a better idea of what your ideas are... --Jean -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.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.libreoffice.org/global/marketing/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
Re: [libreoffice-marketing] Forums? (was: Nabble: friend or foe?)
Hi Jean, On Sat, Sep 01, 2012 at 10:37:06AM +1000, Jean Weber wrote: Your view of forums is much broader and quite different from what I was thinking about, which was specifically for user support, similar to what was set up for OOo (now AOO): http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ I find that forum actually rather dangerous in its setup -- although typical of the old Sun/Oracle. By explicitly being users-only, it is actually discriminating against producers and contributors to the project. Indeed I think a forum should contain all subprojects to allow a curious user to be come a contributor by wandering off into the other subforums (and to keep contributors connected to the userbase). The openoffice forum is doing that totally wrong by creating a high barrier between consumer (in the forum) and contributors (elsewhere but rarely on the forum). Perhaps first we should discuss how broad the topics areas covered should be: the whole project or just user support or something in between? The forum should provide options for contributors and for pure consumer (endusers) of the project. The aim of that is to make be transparent and make the transistion from consumer to producer as smooth as possible. In fact, it should feel so natural that it isnt even noticed. You have mentioned in a later note some reasons for having forums for the whole project, but it seems to me that might be a really big change that should perhaps be tackled in smaller steps. Not quite. I think the primary traffic on the forum will be enduser to enduser communication. However, I also think all teams should have a presence there to pick up interested enduser and smoothly transition them from pure consumers to contributors on any of the subprojects. I dont think that will make the scope of the task bigger really: E.g. for development, I think even if we offer a forum for that, we wont suddenly be run over by millions of additional people who want to build and hack on LibreOffice (although that would be awesome) -- but we might pick up an interested guy now and then. The closer to the enduser the topic gets, the more that subforum will see traffic, of course -- but also: the more it will allow to recruit consumers to become contributors. Also, could you explain what you see as the purpose of a forum for Documentation? Do you see it as a place for producers of docs to discuss what's needed, what's being done, etc? Or something else? I would leave that to the documentation team (as for other teams) to decide, as long as the team picks up endusers interested to contribute. If the majority of the documentation team prefers to communicate on a mailing list thats fine for me too: My suggestion about closing mailing lists is only about those subprojects were most of the traffic ends up happening on the forum anyway (for example, I assume design could wind up that way). Specific for documentation, I see a common case that: - in the user forum someone has a problem - discussion between users results in a HowTo document being created - that HowTo gets copied over to the Documentation forum, where is gets edited further - the HowTo ends up in official documentation, the enduser writing it ends up being a contributor in the documentation team If for producers, IMO it should definitely NOT be combined with a forum for users, which I see as covering more than the topics you have listed above. Well, additionally to what I said above: I already separated the User and Document subforum even in the first proposal. As for covering more than the topics: which ones? The suggested start forum covers everything LibreOffice and even not LibreOffice (Off the wall). I suspect that what you really want is more finegrained topics and while I think that would be awesome, I dont think it is a good start as people will feel lost in the emptiness of the subforum if we have too many for too few users. Also: Splitting forum into subtopic once they become overloaded isnt too hard, can be quickly done and is a motivating sign of success. Hoping you can help me get a better idea of what your ideas are... If you want a blueprint of how I imagine a forum to look like, take a look at: http://forums.gentoo.org/ (*) which I think was one of the keys to gentoos success as a late and noncorporate linux distro. All I described above can be seen there: E.g. most of the subforums are user-centric, but Kernel Hardware and Portage Programming are nicely embedded allowing users to migrate to contributors. HowTos often started in one user forum, then become an unofficial HowTo in Documentation, Tips Tricks and finally where integrated into official documentation. Best, Bjoern (*) but note it not always looked like such a big 5.5 million post forum. Take a look at http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-2.html to get an idea of how it all started. -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to marketing+h...@global.libreoffice.org
