Oops, re aptitude : was [Re: Edgy in the news]

[Matthew Copple]

On Wednesday 01 November 2006 15:15, Mario Vukelic wrote:
> On Wed, 2006-11-01 at 21:59 +0100, Andreas Lloyd wrote:
> > One central point would be to integrate as much of what Automatix does
> > directly into the GNOME application installer
>
> Good point
>
> > With regards to the problem of faulty advice, that is very tricky to
> > cover.
>
> For the websites:
> Maybe there should be an official area by Canonical, one supervised area
> at help.ubuntu.com/community, and a free area at wiki.ubuntu.com. All
> three should have a distinguishable website design that makes the
> different levels obvious.
> I don't see a way around some oversight over the community part of
> help.ubuntu.com, at least for some articles. E.g., it really should not
> be possible to maliciously or ignorantly add harmful advice to
> EdgyUpgrades, especially not around the release of Edgy.

I had a thought in that regard. This is more of a brainstorm than a 
fully-formed idea, but it might serve as a foundation for discussion:

Why not institute the ubuntu version of a "Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval" 
for community-contributed how-tos? Give those pages a graphic, or perhaps 
more prominent search placement (if that is possible technologically) if they 
meet basic quality criteria. Just throwing out ideas here, but some of those 
criteria could be:

1. Format and style -- does the page meet ubuntu style standards? Is it easy 
to read and understand?

2. Accuracy -- is it accurate, and does it fix the problem presented 
efficiently? This could be verified by a system similar to that used for 
review of packages -- requiring, for example, that a certain number of "joe 
users" comment on the page and indicate that they have used the how-to 
successfully.

The seal of approval could be a dynamic thing -- given only after a designated 
person or team of persons have reviewed the page, and should the page be 
changed or updated, the approval has to be given again.

> The mailing lists and forums are an even harder problem, both because
> they are a more sprawling environment and because the amount of
> wrong/outdated info that is given is huge.

I think most users understand that it is "caveat emptor" with the mailing 
lists (at least the -users list) and the forums. There's just too much 
bandwidth there to effectively monitor, anyway.

<SNIP>

> The task at hand I think is to educate to broad community to give useful
> advice. How to do that I don't know either, but I think it's high time
> to start to think about it

Essentially, we have to figure out ways to use carrot, knowing we really don't 
have a stick. Possibly some sort of recognition program for outstanding and 
highly knowledgeable users, like the Microsoft MVP program?

Another option might be to institute an informal user certification program -- 
not as involved (or as expensive) as LPI, but something that gives users an 
incentive to embed themselves more deeply into the community while not 
costing them an arm and a leg.

-- 
Matthew G. Copple
mcopple at gmail.com