Communications 2.0

[Tim]

On 03/05/16 01:04, Narcis Garcia wrote:
> About website, I suggest 2 measures:
>
> 1. Better appearance theme
These are the mock-ups for the new theme (not sure if they are the lastest versions but should be close)
https://www.behance.net/gallery/35183935/ubuntugnomeorg-the-redesign-V2
>
> 2. More menu options. My proposal for menus structure:
>
> 1. About/Discover
> {What is Ubuntu-Gnome, features, license, requirements, screenshots}
>
> 2. Install/Download
> {Downloads, install guides, more resources}
>
> 4. Get help/Participate
> {Documentation, Bugs tracker, Forums, Mailing list}
Some of those are covered by the mockups, however mostly the content still needs to be written, for which we could really use help with!
>
>
> El 02/05/16 a les 16:09, Jasper Backer ha escrit:
>>
>> On 02-05-16 12:56, Tim wrote:
>>> Many people over recent times have complained about our communications
>>> channels. It seems the established staple diet of IRC and Mailing lists,
>>> that just about every established FOSS teams use doesnt work so well,
>>> particularly for the newcomers in our community. I am hoping to create a
>>> UOS[1] session to discuss some of these things, but lets get the
>>> discussion started before that.
>> How come other teams can use the traditional methods just fine and we
>> don't?
>>> Apparently every time we raise this stuff on the list, it gets taken
>>> way off topic by trolls and their politics. So let me start with a little
>>> warning, if anyone tries to derail this thread with proprietry vs FOSS
>>> politics, I won’t hesitate to ban you from the email list. This is about
>>> finding solutions that work for improving communications for our users
>>> and core teams.
>>>
>>> The current situation is basically:
>>>
>>> IRC – Real time messaging, it is great in that everyone is there (most
>>> ubuntu/GNOME/debian developers etc), but it can be hard for people that
>>> aren’t used to it, timezones are a challenge, particularily when you
>>> cant stay connect 24/7. Also so far no one outside of our development/qa
>>> areas has really embraced IRC
>> IMO (unfortunately) IRC is still a main communication tool and somewhat
>> directly related with being in these (OS/dev/test/etc) circles.
>>> Mailing Lists – Generally work well if you constantly follow the
>>> messages, many complain about it being hard to catch up with past
>>> discussions,
>>> which I guess is particularily true if you use the web interface.
>> However, again, this is "classic" to any distro - How come we can't
>> utilize this properly?
>>> Launchpad – Bug tracking, it handles tracking individual bugs really
>>> well, but the shear volume of bugs makes it hard to track/find specific
>>> bugs. We are not about to move away from that, but we could find
>>> better ways to tag/track Ubuntu GNOME specific bugs in a centralised
>>> location.
>>>
>>> Wiki – has lots of useful information, but many find it hard to
>>> navigate. Also generally most people are too scared to try and edit
>>> it, since
>>> MoinMoin markup is a bit of a learning curve.
>> IMO the wiki is a huge non-organized mess. Same would go for the website
>> which is unprofessional and unclear. Luckily the distro speaks for
>> itself, but the website and wiki do no good as it lowers the quality
>> perception on the product.
>>
>>
>> I think we need a better seperation of information between the wiki and
>> the website. The wiki has loads of useful information on it, but
>> newcomers find it hard to navigate. The website is really meant to be
>> the portal for new users, but largely just links to the wiki. Of course we
>> will try improve this with the new website, once it arrives, but either
>> way the wiki could use some improvements. I did a little experiment
>> today pretending to be a new user, and think I got up to about 10 links
>> without my questions answered (simply what is involved in testing Ubuntu
>> GNOME)!
>>
>> Even I gave up to for example try and translate the release notes as the
>> path is super unclear. For example for Fedora I wanted to change some
>> Dutch translations and literally was able to do so in an hour with the
>> translation being online the next day.
>>> I think some sort of central hub for planning would be useful, maybe
>>> that would just be a page that aggregates information from the various
>>> existing channels or an entire new platform. We are very much lacking
>>> in the collaborative documentation section and in particular that is
>>> discoverable. Blueprints cover things to an extent, but not that well.
>>> Maybe Discourse would work here, though we would need to make sure it
>>> doesnt get overrun with support/general questions otherwise it seems
>>> it would be pretty ineffective. We need an easy way for teams to manage
>>> release planning, TODO lists, track release notes etc
>> Do the other teams use Discourse? If so, why don't we? More accessible
>> to everyone than slack imho.
>>> I have wondered if simplifying the team structures would help, I know
>>> Ali went to a lot of work to setup all the different sub-teams, and it
>>> seemed like a great idea at the time, it just hasn’t worked out that
>>> great. In my opinion, sandboxing users in micro managed teams, limits
>>> their
>>> contributions to that niche. We already merged a couple of teams
>>> recently, however I think we should strip it right back to about 3 teams,
>>> Technical (dev/qa), community and marketing or something like that.
>> Would seem like a logical step. Less clutter = more better.
>>
>>