Greetings. First of all, I am not sure this is the best place to discuss this, but I figured I would start here. If someone can think of a better venue I am happy to move discussion there. (Also, see the end of this mail where I suggest a brainstorming session on IRC). This weekend at Paul's State of Fedora talk at the end of the sessions on Saturday, he mentioned several areas where Fedora really could improve. One of these areas was the help that people get on the #fedora irc channel. I've been hanging out in that channel for the last year and a half, and I agree we could do a lot better than we have been, so I jotted some ideas down while waiting for my 5 hour delayed flight leaving boston. Lets look at where we are now first. End users can seek peer provided support from: - #fedora on irc.freenode.net - #fedora-XX (for lang specific support) on irc.freenode.net - The web based Fedora forum at http://fedoraforum.org - The fedora-list email list at: http://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-list/ Currently as far as I know, all these efforts are managed by interested folks in each area, largely without any guidance from the Fedora Project itself. I'm going to focus now on the #fedora channel, because I know it. Perhaps some interested folks who are involved in the forum and/or the fedora-list can chime in here and talk about them? On the IRC channel I think there are a number of issues that we should address, here's just a few I came up with in a few minutes: - It's impossible for a user seeking help to know who they should listen to. Anyone can provide incorrect or bad advice, but it should be easier for them to identify that someone is representing Fedora and/or has helped lots of others and knows what they are talking about. - Sometimes no ops are around, so abusive or disruptive people aren't kicked out soon enough. - Sometimes no helpers are around, so questions just go unanswered. - Sometimes users are abused by folks that seem to be helping them. Always taking their questions very literally, pointing them to unhelpful sites, leading them on with a bunch of statements that don't help to get the users question figured out or problem solved. - Support is uneven. It would be good if there were clear guidelines what things were off topic and/or not supported. Most folks will tell users that Fedora versions without updates anymore (anything before f8 currently) aren't supported, but some people still try and assist them. - Sometimes users are upset with the way they have been treated, and they have no recourse to improve things or find out what they did wrong. Some possible solutions I think would be worth considering: - Form a 'Fedora Support' SIG to gather all the support channels under one org and start up some communication channels between them. Perhaps call it "Fedora HelpDesk" or "Fedora Helpers" or something to prevent people from confusing it with paid support. One possible problem with this is the legal aspect: Can folks who are in a SIG ofically representing Fedora talk about things like the livna repo or point people to those sources. (Many many many folks coming to #fedora for help ask about those). - Some way of showing who has been helpful on the IRC channel would be great. Perhaps some kind of karma system where users could add karma to people who are assisting and remove from those who are not, then a periodic report to the channel about the active users and their standing, or a pointer to a website with current stats. Perhaps freenode cloaks for the folks in the SIG/group. - Some guidelines people could look at for the channel. What is specifically supported. What is not. A list of items that will get you removed from the channel. A way to address a complaint to the SIG that will get mediated and checked. Specific HOWTO's or docs that should be used to help users. - Scheduled Shifts for SIG members, listed somewhere people could look. Ideally we could get enough people to always have someone available to help. If not, we could clearly show that it was "after hours" and come back when helpers are around. - Scheduled Shifts for OP's. Ideally we would always have an active OP around who could take care of abusive or disruptive people, based on the guidelines. - Training for helpers and/or open to the Fedora community. Get a rotating group of people to do a class on irc once a week on some topic or SIG. Regular meetings of the SIG could help show other support channels what questions are "hot" and the best answers to them. - A bot might be useful to implement some of these things, allowing users to check karma, get pointers to guidelines or resources, etc. Thats just a few ideas to get things going. I propose that any interested parties meet on #fedora-meeting later this week and brainstorm ideas. Anyone interested in attending, please send me an email what times you are available on thursday or friday of this week and we see what we can come up with. Hopefully the idea isn't all bad. ;) kevin
Attachment:
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
-- fedora-devel-list mailing list fedora-devel-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-devel-list
