On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 10:14 AM, Stefan Sperling <s...@elego.de> wrote: > On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 01:04:01AM +0200, Johan Corveleyn wrote: >> How do other ASF projects do this actually? Forums, presence in other >> online places, more modern website look and feel, ...? > > They use github :)
On Thu, May 11, 2017 at 1:04 AM, Johan Corveleyn <jcor...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Tue, May 9, 2017 at 3:32 PM, Jacek Materna <ja...@assembla.com> wrote: >> Just observing from afar, in my opinion the root of what you are >> trying to achieve here ties more to a lack of 'modern' collaboration. >> If we want to engage the community/users more (expand the >> IB/participation sphere - new - users) I would also explore >> alternative mediums (versus email). One of the reasons Github has been >> so successful in making git an overwhelming force has little to do >> with git itself. They made the process easy, rewarding and exciting to >> contribute as a user. >> >> An approachable UX leads to more engagement - every time. I think it >> would be great if we had an army of excited users wanting to test new >> features. The product would benefit. Users in SaaS for example always >> enjoy being [volunteering] part of a "beta" program - there is >> something satisfying for users in it. On the flip-side "beta" program >> for on-premise "enterprise" products are rarely so. >> >> Adding ontop the beta@ ... If we can make the "beta" collaborative, >> more engaging for users I think its a real step forward towards an >> army. > > I think you've got a point here, Jacek. I can see that our general > UX-impression as a project / community comes across as dated. It would > be great if we could improve that UX, and make it more modern, if that > helps reaching a broader group of users to help us beta-testing etc > ... and increase enthousiasm for our upcoming release. > > Do you (or anyone) have any concrete suggestions (within reach of our > very limited resources, especially regarding volunteer time to spend > on it)? People that want to help with this? > > How do other ASF projects do this actually? Forums, presence in other > online places, more modern website look and feel, ...? > > -- > Johan Thinking out loud here ... Idea here is to change incrementally, so we can: change tools, cannot impact work flow, limit effort and amplify our capabilities as a team. Lets consider the five main work flows: - reviewing a patch submission; - reviewing a (typically recent) commit; - reviewing a back-port nomination (from trunk to branches/1.9.x); - reviewing a patch to a vulnerability (this is done on private@). - beta/feedback release Focusing on #5 for this thread and knowing that apache projects cannot have mandatory infrastructure dependencies on third parties, in order to ensure the projects' long-term independence; projects may use third-party-hosted tools, but they may not rely on such tools - the projects always have to have a Plan B for in case the third party service goes down. If we wanted to try the "github" model - Assembla is more than happy to support the community with native SVN support for "collab". For the case of beta@ we've done this successfully before where we create a public area for users to discuss, comment on features, code, ideas for an upcoming release. It would be extremely simple to put 1.10 into a repo with blame/compare/pull request/protected directories capabilities along side ticket tracking for feedback. If the test is successful and we improve quality/feedback, it's a great win. I can also help get resources to move other channels such as the forums, public discussion around 1.10 - once we close on a date. Getting good engagement is not as easy as a forum - marketing is a very important axis to get results, especially if we want to reach audiences typically not involved, such as for example game artists who use SVN every day - plenty of persona's out there that are using SVN for its power, are non-technical but would love the opportunity to help shape the "latest" SVN release with feedback. I think a modern subversion website is a great idea. I could look at getting resources to help with that as well. Even a simple re-surfacing may be a great step. If nobody is allergic to it I could setup a hosted 1.10-beta and see what everyone has to say with a concrete dartboard to throw darts at - worst case we burn it down and/or get the idea train going.