Informal polls amongst ubuntu members/developers ?

[Matthew East]

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> Oliver Grawert wrote:
>> well, preferably people would participate in the sessions at the
>> conferences, there are VOIP options, the specs get edited publicly in
>> gobby etc, so its very easy to take part (and thanks to gobby to even
>> write your own parts in specs from home).
>
> Hi,
>
> This is now mentioned a number of times as an argument, and I have to
> disagree with this point of view. It isn't that easy to be part of the
> decision making for regular users:
>
> The specs are not well announced and they usually end up being pretty
> complex creatures nearing towards being approved. You have to either
> have to catch it before getting more or less reviewed, or to read a
> whole wiki page and no one likes reading too much :)
>
> VOIP and gobby aren't good options for participation as the user will
> need to tweak around, learn new stuff, spend time etc. I, for one, just
> couldn't figure out how to monitor UDS straight forward, so I didn't
> pursue -this is what a regular joe/jane would do as well :) And believe
> me, I'm one dedicated regular user ;)

I tend to agree. It's not in fact as easy as it seems to participate in
the conference discussion of specs. Putting technical issues aside, time
differences and day jobs mean that specs are heavily swung in favour of
the views held by those attending the conference.

Now, that's fine, because the main developers all attend the conference.
Oliver is right, reverting specs reviewed/approved at the conference is
not helpful. But, discussion from the wider community would be good, so
how about an alternative - give more time for discussion of specs by the
wider community *before* the conferences... Specs ready in advance, good
communications with the community to spread the word about what specs are
planned, etc.

Matt