Kubuntu Feedback

[Richard JOHNSON]

Somehow I have taken on the insane task of creating some form of simple
feedback for Kubuntu during the release cycle.

In the past we have attempted to utilize the wiki, however when you get a
bunch of people trying to edit it at the same time and they don't catch
that it is currently locked, well then you get a bunch of conflict messages
on the page, therefor rendering it pretty much useless.

Jonathan and I talked for a few minutes over the past day or so and decided
it would be nice to have a simple way for people to contribute feedback
during each development release. Jonathan said it would be nice to have a
plasmoid we could install on the desktop during the cycle that people could
use to file this feedback and send it to a server.

Well after researching the "Feedback" apps out there, it seems they all are
really bad. Really bad meaning they are from the 80s or they are just way
to much.

So for the Alpha 1 release of the "Kubuntu QA Feedback" plasmoid, I setup a
server on my host that does present a web based survey. I have gone ahead
and filled it with a few questions, and set it up for testing. The web
framework is Lime Survey, which I have to admit is far better than anything
else out there, even though it could be a bit much, or maybe just simpler.
So the plasmoid is nothing more than a Python script using Plasma.WebView.
Ya, very simple I must say, but if we were to decide that this route would
be good enough, well then I will add some more to the script portion so it
can be utilized even when there is no Internet connection. This way here
when the person does go back online and they have filed out the survey,
then they can simply sync it if need be. Like I said, this is Alpha
1/design 1.

There is of course a design flaw with the plasmoid, as it will only be
available during a Live CD session and after install. If install or Live CD
sessions fail, then we can't get feedback :(  So, the nice thing about this
setup, is of course we can have something like feedback.kubuntu.org that
will provide some simple feedback surveys for people to fill out :)

If you want to give it a try, download the file at:

http://www.nixternal.com/files/kubuntu-qa-feedback.plasmoid

Once you have it downloaded, install it:

plasmapkg -i kubuntu-qa-feedback.plasmoid

Then to view it, you can either add it to the desktop, or run it from the
Plasmoid Viewer:

plasmoidviewer kubuntu-qa-feedback

I have some other ideas for a system that would allow people to provide
feedback, and it is not out there, trust me, however it would require a
bunch of work with frontends, backends, and a database server. I think this
type of application would be very handy to not only Kubuntu, but every
other distro out there that would like to get feedback.

-- 
 Name|  Richard JOHNSON
Title|  Developer
  WWW|  http://www.ubuntu.com
Email|  nixternal at ubuntu.com
GnuPG|  3578 0981 A21D D662 2A96  7623 F4C1 838C D8C4 4738
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