User Advocacy in Ubuntu

[Benjamin Kerensa]

On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 12:52 PM, J Fernyhough <j.fernyhough at gmail.com>wrote:

> On 17 December 2013 20:23, Benjamin Kerensa <bkerensa at ubuntu.com> wrote:
> >
> > I'm hoping to solicit feedback on this proposal and the idea of having a
> > feedback tool built into Ubuntu.
> >
>
> (Advance warning: some blunt sentences)
>
> Wasn't this the purpose of Brainstorm, which was closed earlier in the
> year? How would an advocacy group produce a different result than
> Brainstorm in producing "popular" ideas that are ignored or judged as
> against the desired Ubuntu direction?
>

Good question. The problem with Brainstorm was it was a tool and time was
never really invested in pushing the ideas out of that tool and acting upon
them in our development process. This is why an advocacy team is needed
because the team would use the tools and data available to them to produce
actionable reports that could be acted upon by developers.

UA teams are not just about features but also addressing all the things
that impact our users including bugs that have simply been ignored for too
long or new bugs that have such a major impact on users that they need to
rise up to the highest priority for our developers to fix.


>
> I'd also suggest a very good place to get feedback would be the Ubuntu
> Forums which until recently pointed out that "developers don't read
> these forums" - although this text has changed I haven't seen any
> developers posting there.
>

I would agree and say that it would be good to try and use data from as
many sources as possible (Crash Data, Forums, AskUbuntu, Mailing Lists,
Social Media and ideally a Feedback system built-in to Ubuntu)

I have heard from several developers that say they do not use the forums, I
personally do not visit them but maybe once or twice a year. Developers
either do not have the time or do not want to make the time to try and
digest feedback from any of the sources available currently, and I get that
considering how time consuming it would be.



>
> How about consolidating existing aspects rather than perpetuating a
> NIH approach?
>
> WRT a "feedback" tool, how about a link to a section on the forum
> called - I don't know - "feedback" ? Then others can chime in with
> comments, criticisms, refinements, solutions, etc. rather than having
> a closed system? Or a dedicated web application with voting system so
> popular items can get more exposure - like the old Brainstorm system?
> Wait... :D
>

I'm not suggesting a closed feedback system I think feedback should be
available and public facing just like Mozilla's tools because it frankly is
the open source way. I wouldn't say this is an NIH approach I just think
this is something we have failed to realize we need. I mean even Microsoft,
Apple have feedback systems baked in.
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