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List:       koffice-devel
Subject:    Re: Missing ODF features -- bugs or wishes
From:       Jos Poortvliet <jospoortvliet () gmail ! com>
Date:       2010-03-27 8:07:09
Message-ID: 201003270907.23533.jospoortvliet () gmail ! com
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On Friday 26 March 2010 11:35:17 Inge Wallin wrote:
> On Friday 26 March 2010 11:15:33 Pierre Stirnweiss wrote:
> > Let's all try now to stop adding comments like "you said; you did; in
> > this other occasion you...". They don't relate to the problem at hand
> > and only bring stress and frustration on the table.
> 
> You are right, of course.  I should have been more balanced in my reply.
> 
> I have talked with Nightrose and she will come in here this evening and try
> to discuss community building a little.  Unfortunately I can't be here
> because the area where I live have had network problems for some time.

I don't know if Lydia has managed to be there - either way, I'd like to add a 
few cents here.

Lowering barier to entry has pros and cons. Basically it changes the 
distribution of how committed people are, as was suggested before. If you 
start making it easy to add a wish (think of the Likeback system, also 
recently introduced in Amarok) more people will do so, but many of those won't 
want to put in much work. You'd beter be damn sure you can handle a large 
number of wishes! Like bugs, wishes can be duplicated and need managing. Can 
you handle that?

Generally, you'd have to either have a few ppl already available who'd be 
willing to go through these requests and triage them or have to find them.

Can I make a suggestion? While scoring low on searchability, the KDE-forums 
provide an excellent mechanism for getting quality feature requests, triaged 
by their existing community.  ( http://forum.kde.org/brainstorm.php ).  You 
can even generate a RSS feed of the resulting brainstorm items (see [1])

You could actively direct ppl to the brainstorm section.

Of course, brainstorm is not really low-entry, like for example likeback is. 
That would be my second suggestion, as likeback also offers all kinds of 
statistics stuff - have a look at it. Likeback can be integrated in beta's, 
providing more feedback, and can also be in the final version (but I'd go, 
like amarok, with not putting it in the released interface but under help).

So those are two options you have besides bugzilla and building/choosing a new 
solution for easy reporting and tracking of wishes. I think in some ways, 
these can complement each other, btw.

Brainstorm is (meant to be) for a relatively small number of good, original 
and possibly innovative ideas which are first discussed and expanded upon in 
the community there. It's not exactly low-barier and you can expect authors to 
keep track of their pet feature - you can interact with them. When it comes to 
bringing in new contributors it works pretty OK, from what I've seen. Don't 
expect hordes of new devs but one or two might come in this way.

Likeback is the exact opposite: very low-barrier, generally very simple 
feedback, but lots of it. You can use statistics there to figure out what ppl 
like but for the plugins thing it ain't very good.When it comes to bringing in 
new contributors don't expect much, if anything. It does make KOffice seem 
friendlier and more open to input - but whether that results in devs, I doubt 
it. Happier users, yes!

bugzilla - hmmmm. For feature requests, it ain't perfect (but no bugreport 
system ever is). It has neither the big community and nice tools brainstorm 
has but doesn't have the low barrier of likeback either. However, it IS good 
at tracking stuff (duh) so if you want an easy list of PLUGIN IDEAS it's good. 
However you'll have to gather them from various places and put them in 
yourselves, I would expect. Bugzilla - I doubt that it will ever have a 
positive influence on anyone in the direction of joining KDE development...

Other solutions - you can have a custom solution for easy feature request or 
idea tracking. This can be real nice (but introduces another piece of 
infrastructure). You can choose something really low-barrier (but you'd get a 
likeback like system - pray you have good statistics tools or it won't help) 
or have a higher barrier so you get more quality - but I'd go for brainstorm 
in that case. A custom solution, if done right and 'equiped' with the right 
resources (time time time!) could build up its own community and in time be 
very good for KOffice. But you'd need at least 1 but probably more ppl with a 
dedication and good ppl skills to build it up. And Nightrose is taken ;-)

Frankly, guys, I'm wondering if you need something like this at all. I see how 
it is nice to have a list of good ideas somewhere. Well, I'm afraid you can 
best manage that yourself, probably in bugzilla or the KO wiki. That's because 
other solutions generally need MORE management than a simple bugzilla or wiki 
list, and except for brainstorm which already has a community, some ppl need 
to work on it regularly.

But do you NEED ideas from the wider community? Generally, good ideas end up 
with the developers anyway, and let's be frank - is a lack of cool things to 
hack on the problem in KOffice, or is hacking time the issue?

I would go with promoting brainstorm a bit more as KOffice community (link to 
the brainstorm section from KOffice.org and possibly from KO apps, mention it 
in blogposts etc). If you want more userfeedback, implement likeback, but be 
darn sure you have someone interested enough to handle it.

A custom solution - only if one or two of you are bored of hacking and would 
rather do community management. And count on 1-2 or even 3 years before you'll 
begin to see the fruits.

Now this became quite off-topic from the initial mai by Boudewijn, and 
frankly, I did not follow the discussion fully due to a huge problem with 
'lack of time'. Going back to the initial point, I'd use bugzilla for tracking 
those missing ODF features and the other solutions for getting new ideas and 
feedback. Basically, yes, it will need management, but so do the other options 
- and often much more so.

At some point we might have an KDE-wide, good, new, feature request tool - it 
has been discussed. Really, if some of you feel like exploring options and 
implementing it - fine. But don't expect to SAVE time...

Cheers,

Jos

PS sorry for the long email, I felt inspired as community management had my 
interest before Marketing took its place hehe


[1] custom rss feeds of KOffice brainstorm items
http://forum.kde.org/search.php?keywords=koffice&terms=all&author=&tags=&sv=0&fid[]=83 \
&sc=1&sf=titleonly&sr=posts&sk=t&sd=d&st=0&ch=300&feed_type=RSS2.0&feed_style=HTML&countlimit=100&t=0&submit=Search



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