On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Michael Scherer wrote:
Le samedi 23 octobre 2010 à 22:13 -0500, Dale Huckeby a écrit :
On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Michael Scherer wrote:
. . . .
And I think that most of use naively think "if something is wrong, at
least 1 person will say it". yet, it doesn't happen.
Yes, you are being naive. Other packagers aren't going to say anything
because it's not their package and because, like you, they don't really
notice the missing descriptions. And ordinary users aren't part of that
world, so it doesn't occur to them to say anything, or to contribute
in any way, because it would seem presumptuous. I think Mageia should
make a special effort to recruit, to make to feel comfortable, users
who might want to contribute but don't know how, who feel kind of lost
at sea when it comes to knowing where to begin.
Well, we could organize some days on the forum/ml/irc/whatever where
people collectively review packages descriptions. Some people could
review current packages, some other could write proper description, a
third set will review it, and the last part of the group will organize
this with packagers and push the description to cauldron.
And we could also have people who dedicate them self to read packages
description in changelog to notice such problems in time.
All this sounds good, although you have an even better and simpler idea
below.
Debian also has a set of guideline about description, that we could
reuse to improve ours :
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/best-pkging-practices.html#bpp-pkg-synopsis
Nice.
So if we want to scale and make it work, then we need to find how to
make people who are directly concerned contribute. And so, the best way
to find why something didn't happen is to simply ask to people who are
directly concerned.
Exactly. There needs to be some way new users can be informed, either in
the install process itself or via, say, an icon on the desktop which,
when clicked, explains briefly what Mageia is, how users can contribute,
where they can go to get more information, etc.
Maybe a entry "report problem" in the menu that would send them either
to bugzilla ( but I feel this would not be ideal to new users ) or to a
forum/ml/irc ( which would be nice, but I feel that I putting the
problem on someone else shoulder and that's not nice ) ?
I like the idea of pointing users to a forum. Perhaps there could be a
forum or forum section dedicated specifically to problem reports. It
would also help if one or more individuals with expertise monitored the
forum, asked follow-up questions, or even educated the users in that
forum on how to use the bug report system. But I don't see why that
would not be nice, since nobody would be forced to participate in the
forum. Of course, if no experts participate and newbies are left to
talk to each other, it won't work.
Or something that point to a translated page with instructions ?
This is a VERY good idea, simple to implement, that would guide the
newbie volunteer without (initially) taking up anyone's time (once the
instructions have been written). I would suggest that this be an icon
on the desktop. It could open a file on the user's system, or it could
access the url where those instructions are located.
Dale Huckeby
