On 19 Jul 2003 at 22:13, David Neary wrote: [...] > Those are the problems at the philosophical level. At the > practical level, the problems are: > > 1) Not enough users use bugzilla to report bugs Bugzilla is powerful, but its power comes at the price of complexity... > 2) Not enough developers use Bugzilla to find out what bugs need > fixing > 3) Not enough developers hear user complaints Most bug reports I've read are commented by at least one person who I'd consider to be one of the developers. This might be incorrect, maybe because in my opinion, developing isn't just coding. > 4) Not enough users know what's happenning in the developer > series. Tried to change this using gimp.de. As this is a german language portal site, it is known (at least I hope it is at all) mainly in german speaking countries. It's limited to the eye-catching features, i.e. new (ui) functions or performace improvments (like the recent mmx enhancements). > 5) Not enough non-technical people are working on the GIMP (this > is at odds with when I joined, when many of the most active GIMP people > were non-technical). In my opinion, it's not clearly defined what they can do. The most common answer is "write documentation", but this seems to requires cvs access or someone who will coordinate the whole thing. Maybe wiki.gimp.org can help here, though it's purpose is still somewhat undecided. > That's the practical level. Now, here's why I think these > problems exist. > > 1) Too many communication interfaces, not enough communication. > > The GIMP has the following communication methods available to it: > > - Website - www.gimp.org > - Website - mmmaybe.gimp.org > - Website - gug.sunsite.dk mmmaybe.gimp.org should replace www.gimp.org, so this should clear sooner or later. gug.sunsite.dk isn't under direct control of the gimp community, at least that's that's my impression. > - IRC - irc.gnome.org This is the fastest way to get support - even interactive - from the community, so it isn't redundant at all. > - Usenet - comp.graphics.apps.gimp Usenet is some peoples medium of choice, too. > - Mailing list - gimp-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > - Mailing list - gimp-developers@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > - Mailing list - gimp-web@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > - Mailing list - gimpwin-dev@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx gimpwin-dev is no more, it was closed and everyone was asked to use gimp- developer instead > - Mailing list - gimpwin-users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx > - Mail alias - bugs@xxxxxxxx > - Bugzilla - bugzilla.gnome.org > - CVS - cvs.gnome.org > - Release notes. > There's definite consolidation to be done there. That's 13 ways > to get information. And 13 ways to send it. I listen personally > to about 3 of those... bugs@xxx, Usenet and the devel list. I'm using at least six of them - 3 lists, usenet, irc, bugzilla. [...] > My first proposal would be to do a reverse split of the users > and developers mailing lists - get everyone talking to one > another. It will certainly annoy people because of increased > traffic, but I think it'll be worth it. We have to face up to the > fact that after 3 years without a major release, and only 14 > active developers, the GIMP is a small project. Step 1 is to get > people talking to each other. Well, whenever something got to technical on gimpwin-users, some of the users did unsubscribe. However, in most of the cases, it was far less technical than anything on gimp-developer, so there may be some problems here. Readers of gimp- user may be a bit more interested in this than the average win32 user, though. > Proposal 3 is to try to persuade the Win32 guys to come back to > the main gimp mailing list. 1.3 should be buildable out of CVS, > but I have not been able to find anyone who's actually done it > using free build tools. Personally I failed miserably somewhere > around pango. According to Tor Lillqvist, there was something missing from Pango 1.2.3 and fixed shortly after the release. Maybe a thread about building GIMP 1.3.16 on Win32 should be started here, I'm willing to contribute everything I've encountered while trying to do so. > Our biggest user base is win32 users, so that's > probably our biggest source for future developpers, documenters, > ui designers. We should be listening to them, and they should be > listening to us. Yep. Though listening to them is a bit hard sometimes. Most of the problems are some kind of "gimp is broken". Often, it turns out to be something completely different. And of course, you'll have to mute all those 'use a REAL os' - posts from the mailing list then. They aren't providing solutions, they are annoying users ;) [...] > Proposal 6 - allow people to submit bug reports without a > bugzilla account. I would like it if Bugzilla could get their > email address from the first mail they send to the portal, > sign them up and send them a password, but it doesn't. As a > technical problem, is this possible? Or could we have a mail > alias to which mails (which pass a spam filter) get converted > into bugzilla reports, with the e-mail information in the body of > the bug report? Quantity will increase, quality will decrease by allowing this. Get someone who sorts this out first, then implement it. > I think this is important to allow people see a more reactive > gimp community. A current typical use-case might be "gimp crashes, > restart gimp", or it might be "gimp crashes, go to gimp web page, > nothing about bugs on the first page, restart gimp", or it might > be "gimp crashes, go to gimp web page, nothing about bugs on > first page, scroll down 4 pages, follow "Submit a bug!" link, > there's a page asking for me to enter my e-mail address, restart > gimp". I don't believe that the typical gimp user gets a bugzilla > account when he runs into a gimp problem. That's something the typical user is searching on a support page. I suggested adding a "Support" link to mgo, but was have been convinced that this may be mistaken for a support hotline or something like that (in *.de, normally something like a faq or knowledgebase and downloads for hotfixes and tools is hidden behind such a link). Maybe something like "Support" -> "How we can help you (Tutorials, Docs, ...)", "How you can help us (Development, Docs, ...)"? HTH, Michael
