Thanks for taking the time to write up and analyze this survey, Andrew.
I regret to say that it slipped my mind to take it. :-(
Nevertheless, I'd like to post some (hopefully brief) comments regarding
the things you have mentioned.
On Tue, 2009-02-17 at 07:36 +, Andrew Sayers wrote:
There are a few general points that I thought were worth highlighting:
There is a gulf between the way that developers and non-developers see
the world. This is reflected in their interests, their speech, and
their approach to issues. While Ubuntu has many ingenious
technologies to improve developer/user interaction, technological
solutions can only ever have a limited impact on this interpersonal
problem.
While the number of useless posts isn't so bad, we could definitely
stand to increase the number of useful posts to the list. This list
is an important place for interaction between developers and
non-developers, which isn't currently being used to its full extent.
I think you've hit this right on the nose--it's an interpersonal
problem, not a technical one, and likely not a problem that can be dealt
with in a technical fashion.
I've been subscribed to this list and ubuntu-devel for several years
now, and have made occasional posts throughout that time. I find it
very comforting, in addition to being helpful\productive, to be able to
talk to the people whose efforts have such a large impact in making
Ubuntu the great OS that it is. For this reason, I have, in the past,
been subscribed to fedora-test, grub, samba, and shorewall-users lists,
both for the purpose of asking questions relevant to improving the
applicable software, and to post input that may be of use to those who
are interested in hearing the opinions and experiences of a
non-developer user of the respective software.
Background: I'm not a dev, and probably never will be, although I do
make BASH scripts and the like to make tasks at my job (computer repair
technician/system builder/tech. manager of a local computer shop) and at
home easier/faster/etc. People have referred to me as both a Linux
Guru (which isn't entirely true), and as a Power User (which I like
to think I am, but may not be either). I know my way around several
distributions, some better than others, such as Slackware, Suse, Fedora,
CentOS (appliance distros), Gentoo, Mandriva, and Ubuntu. I am familiar
with setting-up desktop computers (my specialty, assuming I have one),
Asterisk PBX servers, file servers, and other miscellaneous applications
of Linux. I often have to make these interact with Windows machines in
an amenable way.
Back to the topic: I find that ubuntu-devel (in my mind, at least) has a
bit of a prickly atmosphere where posting by non-devs is concerned,
whereas u-d-d seems to be much friendlier to posting things that a
non-dev would understand or care about. U-d-discuss seems to have a
much more caring attitude concerning newcomers, but is often rife with
inappropriate comments/attitudes (on behalf of both devs and non-devs).
All this may just be something that exists only in my head, but for the
purpose of discussion, I'll make some points to illustrate my reasons
for having this opinion:
1) It used to be that anybody could post to u-devel, which is still
possible, but now one must have the post approved or some such first, if
the poster is not a dev. This makes me feel as if, as far as that list
is concerned, non-devs are second-rate guest citizens, who only sort-of
get to have a say on that list. Still, though, as long as the devs pay
attention to u-d-discuss, as was intended when -discuss was created,
that's not so much a problem. More on that later. (Please don't take
this as an invitation to be offended; this is just how _I_ feel about
it, which, I realize, may not be representative of how other people
feel.)
Few people are currently planning to leave. Either everyone that's
going to leave has already left, people leave shortly after making
their mind up to leave, or people that complain about noise don't
respond to surveys.
2) It's my understanding that this list was created so that devs and
non-devs could collaborate without email-bombing the -devel list with
things not immediately related to things that *only* apply to devs and
development coordination. It saddens me somewhat, and even invokes a
little anger when I see that devs are unsubscribing and/or ceasing to
pay attention to this list for whatever reason, albeit possibly not
exactly a bad reason. (Sometimes users come across as real
jerks--granted, but that doesn't mean that anybody should allow
themselves to be discouraged and/or driven away by somebody else's bad
behavior, who probably could be banned from the list if they were really
*that* disruptive.) Here's an email excerpt from my mail archives,
dated Dec. 8, 2006, from Matt Zimmerman, in the u-devel list:
--quote--
In other words, we recognize two communication needs:
* The developers need a mailing
