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List:       kde-core-devel
Subject:    Re: Introducing LikeBack - Quick Feedback from Beta-Testers
From:       "Robert Knight" <robertknight () gmail ! com>
Date:       2006-08-13 0:53:34
Message-ID: 13ed09c00608121753i12f3e3d8k2bcdbd3a14ae5abd () mail ! gmail ! com
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Hello,

I would like to second Ellen's comments.  Betas of KDE applications
are only available to three groups of people (that I can think of):

a)  People who are running development/testing versions of distributions.
b)  People who are willing and able to compile the source code themselves.
c)  Users of 'experimental' distribution systems such as Klik.

Beta versions of a small number of high profile applications are
available for some stable distributions (eg. amarok on Kubuntu).

In order to be in one of the above three catagories, you have to be a
pretty technical user.  This would definitely bias the feedback
somewhat.

Regarding the number of reports generated by LikeBack, perhaps this
could be made manageable with some smart organisation and filtering on
the server?

Regards,
Robert.

On 12/08/06, Ellen Reitmayr <ellen@kde.org> wrote:
> On Saturday 12 August 2006 21:15, Florian Graessle wrote:
> > Another thing is the bug icon. While its meaning is known to
> > technical-savvy users, the icon may mean nothing to users unfamiliar
> > with the term. In languages other than English the bug icon is totally
> > unrelated to the essence of a program error. But I have to admit that
> > finding a good "report program error" icon is a really tough nut to
> > crack...
>
> Here, I'd really like to know who are the users of beta versions? Is that
> mainly the developers and the community, or also non-technical users?
>
> I wonder if we won't run in trouble if the LikeBack system is sometimes
> available, sometimes not. If beta users are mostly technical users, the
> feedback we get is somehow biased (we will get feedback by developers, less
> by non-technical users). If they are also non-technical users, my guess is
> that they often don't even know whether they use a beta or final version.
> They may become frustrated if they realise that after an update, the cool
> feedback buttons are gone ;-)
>
> At the moment, the barriers to report a bug in KDE are way too high for
> non-technical users. So LikeBack would be a good opportunity to get permanent
> feedback from that user group. On the other hand, the number of bugs in
> bugs.kde.org is already quite high, and opening the bug system to that user
> group might overload it.
>
> All in all I really like the idea, but I don't think it should be tied to beta
> versions. Even a big part of the usability people don't use beta versions -
> it would be a pity if we'd miss that cool way of communication ;-)
>
> Why not making LikeBack-items permanently available in the Help menu? the
> current bug wizard might even be complemented by LikeBack's easy UI, so only
> power users need to go to bugs.kde.org.
>
> My only concern is that the number of reports might grow too fast when
> LikeBack is shipped with final releases. In this case I suggest to provide it
> as a plugin that is shipped by default only with betas but is installable any
> time.
>
> good night...
> /el
>
>
> --
> Ellen Reitmayr
> KDE Usability Project
> usability.kde.org
>
>
>
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