There has been a heated discussion over several threads in www.fedoraforum.org about how disconnected some users feel from the development team, as well as a general "lack of direction" in Fedora's leadership. The latest of these discussions started about an article (posted a few months back here in the marketing list) about PackageKit and from there it spanned a rather heated discussion about Fedora and a perceived increasing developers<-->users gap.
I know Fedoraforum.org, though recognized as one site for getting help on and discussing about Fedora is by no means an "official" channel (which seems to draw much more users than IRC, for example) and it's been pondered several times in the past in the forums whether the forums should have more recognition from Fedora or not (I know, it's been discussed here in the past, more than once, IIRC), maybe is that time to revisit the issue? (food for thought). As things stand right now it feels like two completely different communities. I don't mean to cause any trouble or disgust anyone here in the marketing list. Is just that as of late these discussions on the forums seem to be increasing in frequency.
Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
There has been a heated discussion over several threads in www.fedoraforum.org about how disconnected some users feel from the development team, as well as a general "lack of direction" in Fedora's leadership. The latest of these discussions started about an article (posted a few months back here in the marketing list) about PackageKit and from there it spanned a rather heated discussion about Fedora and a perceived increasing developers<-->users gap.
I have already discussed this issue in the private staff forum and a few of the administrators are now showing up in #fedora-devel IRC channel to help bridge this gap.
Rahul
Rahul Sundaram escribió:
Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
There has been a heated discussion over several threads in www.fedoraforum.org about how disconnected some users feel from the development team, as well as a general "lack of direction" in Fedora's leadership. The latest of these discussions started about an article (posted a few months back here in the marketing list) about PackageKit and from there it spanned a rather heated discussion about Fedora and a perceived increasing developers<-->users gap.
I have already discussed this issue in the private staff forum and a few of the administrators are now showing up in #fedora-devel IRC channel to help bridge this gap.
Rahul
Thank you Rahul. I knew about some staffers being in contact with some community members (devs, management, etc) just didn't know at what level. I hope that some sort of consensus can be reached or some sort of Ambassadors program for the 100K+ users in the forums.
On 2008-07-27 04:17:29 AM, Rahul Sundaram wrote:
I have already discussed this issue in the private staff forum and a few of the administrators are now showing up in #fedora-devel IRC channel to help bridge this gap.
Thanks for that! It's been great talking to some of them on IRC. I think it could be interesting to Fedora Forum staff to talk to our IRC support people and see how the two groups could work together to improve our support (and the connection between users and developers).
I've also heard some interesting ideas from the IRC SIG meeting that could be worth collaborating on - for example, a place to collect frequently asked questions and answers for users.
Thanks, Ricky
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Gian Paolo Mureddu gmureddu@prodigy.net.mx wrote:
There has been a heated discussion over several threads in www.fedoraforum.org about how disconnected some users feel from the development team, as well as a general "lack of direction" in Fedora's leadership. The latest of these discussions started about an article (posted a few months back here in the marketing list) about PackageKit and from there it spanned a rather heated discussion about Fedora and a perceived increasing developers<-->users gap.
What exactly do the people who feel disconnected want? Will they be content just knowing that their opinions are heard? Communication is a project wide stumbling block. Developers get frustrated at just trying to talk among themselves, we certainly aren't going to require that all the developers try to track general user discussion lists and forums. We can probably do a better job at communication, on a number of fronts but such effort can only go so far. Rambling complaint threads on a forum or even the mailing list are just going to get ignored by the vast majority of people. Letting users pretend that participating in these sorts of long discussion amongst themselves will result in developer action is a disservice to everyone.
Or is the an unspoken expectation in the discontented userbase that popular userbase opinion is suppose to drive the direction of the project? Let me dispel that right now. Popular userbase opinion will not control the direction of any technology development that individual contributors want to use. That is not going to change. Here's the deal. Fundamentally Fedora runs on the power of its contributor-base... not its userbase. If there are group of users who feel they are not being served, they have the ability to organize and get involved as contributors. We could do a better job of encouraging those sorts of users to grow into contributors.
So knowing what should be done, really comes down to knowing what the discontented users are expecting.
-jef
On Sun, Jul 27, 2008 at 01:26:23PM -0800, Jeff Spaleta wrote:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Gian Paolo Mureddu gmureddu@prodigy.net.mx wrote:
There has been a heated discussion over several threads in www.fedoraforum.org about how disconnected some users feel from the development team, as well as a general "lack of direction" in Fedora's leadership. The latest of these discussions started about an article (posted a few months back here in the marketing list) about PackageKit and from there it spanned a rather heated discussion about Fedora and a perceived increasing developers<-->users gap.
What exactly do the people who feel disconnected want? Will they be content just knowing that their opinions are heard? Communication is a project wide stumbling block. Developers get frustrated at just trying to talk among themselves, we certainly aren't going to require that all the developers try to track general user discussion lists and forums. We can probably do a better job at communication, on a number of fronts but such effort can only go so far. Rambling complaint threads on a forum or even the mailing list are just going to get ignored by the vast majority of people. Letting users pretend that participating in these sorts of long discussion amongst themselves will result in developer action is a disservice to everyone.
Or is the an unspoken expectation in the discontented userbase that popular userbase opinion is suppose to drive the direction of the project? Let me dispel that right now. Popular userbase opinion will not control the direction of any technology development that individual contributors want to use. That is not going to change. Here's the deal. Fundamentally Fedora runs on the power of its contributor-base... not its userbase. If there are group of users who feel they are not being served, they have the ability to organize and get involved as contributors. We could do a better job of encouraging those sorts of users to grow into contributors.
So knowing what should be done, really comes down to knowing what the discontented users are expecting.
A frequent criticism of FOSS is that we don't have the kind of formal usability studies that big companies can afford. (Which is not to say our usability is poor by definition.) If end users feel that a certain area is being neglected, one way they could influence the development in that area is with usability studies.
Those usability studies, though, would have to follow generally accepted best practices. As Jef points out, a popularity poll is not sufficient. There used to be a Usability SIG in Fedora but it didn't really pursue any of those goals. If users wanted to restart such an effort, it might prove worthwhile. But developers will only pay attention if there's solid, objective information for them to rely on.
Jeff Spaleta escribió:
On Fri, Jul 25, 2008 at 2:45 PM, Gian Paolo Mureddu gmureddu@prodigy.net.mx wrote:
There has been a heated discussion over several threads in www.fedoraforum.org about how disconnected some users feel from the development team, as well as a general "lack of direction" in Fedora's leadership. The latest of these discussions started about an article (posted a few months back here in the marketing list) about PackageKit and from there it spanned a rather heated discussion about Fedora and a perceived increasing developers<-->users gap.
I just saw your reply, sorry for the late response.
What exactly do the people who feel disconnected want? Will they be content just knowing that their opinions are heard? Communication is a project wide stumbling block. Developers get frustrated at just trying to talk among themselves, we certainly aren't going to require that all the developers try to track general user discussion lists and forums. We can probably do a better job at communication, on a number of fronts but such effort can only go so far. Rambling complaint threads on a forum or even the mailing list are just going to get ignored by the vast majority of people. Letting users pretend that participating in these sorts of long discussion amongst themselves will result in developer action is a disservice to everyone.
This poses an excellent question, one which answer I have not been able to properly put into words. Generally speaking it would seem as if an important number of users (or would be users) see Fedora as the mythical Hydra... A huge body (the community) with lots and lots of heads (projects) that sort of feel disconnected to one another; i.e. there still lacks a bit of cohesion. That is what I have been able to deduce after having participating in many more discussions that I care to remember about _what_ Fedora really is. The message here seems to be clear: The project home page seems to not be as successful as we might have thought once in regards to telling people (especially new users) what Fedora is all about... Sure for old timers the simple words "Fedora is a community driven project around a community...." etc, etc, may tell us exactly what it is, but it would seem as if many new comers are having a hard time grasping and understanding even the basic philosophy of Fedora.
Or is the an unspoken expectation in the discontented userbase that popular userbase opinion is suppose to drive the direction of the project? Let me dispel that right now. Popular userbase opinion will not control the direction of any technology development that individual contributors want to use. That is not going to change. Here's the deal. Fundamentally Fedora runs on the power of its contributor-base... not its userbase. If there are group of users who feel they are not being served, they have the ability to organize and get involved as contributors. We could do a better job of encouraging those sorts of users to grow into contributors.
I know that about Fedora, and I know there are several levels at which users may contribute back to the project, the point is that this very message doesn't seem to be *reaching* the users. Common complaints include:
* Scarcity of information available in the Wiki, by this I mean that not all the concepts seem (from user input) to be being covered. * Dispersion of information. Another common complaint is that there seems to be a lot of different "sites" covering all the different aspects of the distro, but there is lacking a central site which may explain (to a certain simple degree) what these other aspects *do* (I know we have some information regarding this in the Wiki, maybe it is not as exposed as it should? Maybe directly in the Overview section or link to a new page with information about projects and what they are?).
So knowing what should be done, really comes down to knowing what the discontented users are expecting.
-jef
Exactly. Which is why I've thought about a liaison of sorts (Ambassador[s]) for the forums on-line community and Fedora-proper. It will take some investigating to find-out what do these users really expect... Which could in turn give place to have better means for feedback from users, not necessarily from this particular "arm" of the community.
I myself some times have resented a sorts of careless attitude towards simple users from some community members. As if some contributors/developers/management/etc people really couldn't care less about who uses Fedora or what their opinions are. I know that isn't necessarily the case, but (besides myself) some other users have stated they've felt some kind of hostility in the official channels of communication. I know addressing individuals is not practical and a waste, and that's why Fedora moves in clusters of people with common interests.
Like Paul suggests, maybe it would be a good time to conduct a usability study among Fedora users? I understand that Fedora advances through its contributors, but it's supported by its users.
On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 21:35 -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
Like Paul suggests, maybe it would be a good time to conduct a usability study among Fedora users? I understand that Fedora advances through its contributors, but it's supported by its users.
Just to be very clear, I'm not suggesting that the Fedora Project has the resources to do such a study. They're very time consuming and can be costly. So the chances are *very* small of all those costs coming out of our (equally) small budget.
What I suggested was that interested and experienced community members band together to design and implement these tests. There is much more to usability testing than simply making lists of what people would like to see. It's a highly organized science of its own. Those difficulties translate directly into high costs, which is why we don't conduct them centrally. So while I agree that now is "a good time" to do it, that doesn't solve the problem of *who* is going to do it, and *how*.
Hi folks,
Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 21:35 -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
Like Paul suggests, maybe it would be a good time to conduct a usability study among Fedora users? I understand that Fedora advances through its contributors, but it's supported by its users.
Just to be very clear, I'm not suggesting that the Fedora Project has the resources to do such a study. They're very time consuming and can be costly. So the chances are *very* small of all those costs coming out of our (equally) small budget.
What I suggested was that interested and experienced community members band together to design and implement these tests. There is much more to usability testing than simply making lists of what people would like to see. It's a highly organized science of its own. Those difficulties translate directly into high costs, which is why we don't conduct them centrally. So while I agree that now is "a good time" to do it, that doesn't solve the problem of *who* is going to do it, and *how*.
If it's any help at all, it is really really easy to conduct your own usability tests. You need to have a target for the test first. We did this recently at FUDcon for the Fedora website. I'll walk you through exactly how we did this quickly so you can see how to do it yourself:
1) First the Fedora websites team discussed what were the most important tasks we wanted users to be able to accomplish on our website: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-May/msg00094.html
2) Then we came up with a testing plan: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-May/msg00320.html
3) Then we conducted a test! It did not take very long. Here's our report: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-June/msg00231.html
Do note that usability testing doesn't fix problems. It identifies them. It does not identify solutions. However it's really valuable to see for yourself first hand how others experience what you're working on.
I wonder if it would be cool to have a "usability test a friend" day, where some project or focus within Fedora gets together to write up a pre-defined set of tasks to test, and then we publicize the usability test a friend day. Then everyone involved in Fedora can find just one person within their circle of friends and run them through those tests, and contribute their usability report back. It might be cool to give some kind of recognition to the person who tests the most people and/or writes up the best reports :)
Even if only 10 folks were willing to go grab one friend and watch them try out some of the features of Fedora or our website, and then report back to us the experiences they had, we would have a really valuable body of data from which to understand what basic problems we need to solve to make Fedora better. It really should only each person take 20-30 minutes of their time per user they test.
~m
On Tue, 2008-07-29 at 21:39 -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
Hi folks,
Paul W. Frields wrote:
On Mon, 2008-07-28 at 21:35 -0500, Gian Paolo Mureddu wrote:
Like Paul suggests, maybe it would be a good time to conduct a usability study among Fedora users? I understand that Fedora advances through its contributors, but it's supported by its users.
Just to be very clear, I'm not suggesting that the Fedora Project has the resources to do such a study. They're very time consuming and can be costly. So the chances are *very* small of all those costs coming out of our (equally) small budget.
What I suggested was that interested and experienced community members band together to design and implement these tests. There is much more to usability testing than simply making lists of what people would like to see. It's a highly organized science of its own. Those difficulties translate directly into high costs, which is why we don't conduct them centrally. So while I agree that now is "a good time" to do it, that doesn't solve the problem of *who* is going to do it, and *how*.
If it's any help at all, it is really really easy to conduct your own usability tests. You need to have a target for the test first. We did this recently at FUDcon for the Fedora website. I'll walk you through exactly how we did this quickly so you can see how to do it yourself:
Well hush my mouth, this sounds great. But the key factor is the "target" part -- and mostly the studies that I've seen users advocate is a limitless problem set, without boundaries. So I mistakenly brought that knee-jerk bias to this conversation, which is my own fault.
Paul W. Frields wrote:
Well hush my mouth, this sounds great. But the key factor is the "target" part -- and mostly the studies that I've seen users advocate is a limitless problem set, without boundaries. So I mistakenly brought that knee-jerk bias to this conversation, which is my own fault.
Ahh, I didn't mean it that way!! I have to totally agree with what you originally said, "There is much more to usability testing than simply making lists of what people would like to see."
I think a lot of people have the perception:
1. Do usability tests 2. ??? 3. PROFI^H^H^H^H^HThe next ipod!!!!11
I more wanted to highlight with the right focus (a very targeted scope for testing; you need to know what finely-grained and well-defined tasks that you've identified as the most critical for a specific application) usability testing can be something that ANYBODY can do and doesn't need to involve a lot of time or $$. However like you hinted at:
1. "Usability tests on Fedora" = $$, time, data not useful since it'll reflect on the Fedora of three or four versions ago by the time a study of that boundless scope is done (and since the tasks may not have been chosen strategically it might give you data on the usability of tasks that aren't even critical for your users to be able to complete)
vs.
2. "Usability test to determine how difficult it is for a new Fedora user to download, burn, and install Fedora in order to try it out" - much, much easier to do. It's got a well-defined scope, is a task that is quite strategic and critical for Fedora's success (if people can't even download and run it, they would never see all the improvements in Fedora itself)
I do apologize for beating a dead horse :( but as someone who has a usability and design background, I do get a LOT of questions on why we don't just usability test Fedora or usability test Satellite or usability test this or that to solve problems, so I think this thread maybe hit a nerve. :) I think there are a lot of misconceptions about how usability testing works and what you actually get out of what you put into it (you get a list of problems, not answers to them). So I thought it would be useful to make it more clear why simply 'usability testing Fedora' is not really something that can be done.
I think the more key thing is to identify those strategic tasks we want Fedora users to do. It would help identify the most important development priorities. Even without usability testing, we probably already have backlogs of bugs and complaints about those tasks that are hidden amongst the body of bugs and complaints about less-important tasks...
And I think identifying the strategic tasks flows from what Fedora's goals are. Who do we want Fedora to be when it grows up? How important are less-technical users vs more savvy developers? How important is server capabilities vs desktop capabilities? The answers to these kind of questions definitely influence what tasks you want users to be able to accomplish most easily. I think projects like the Fedora foundations and the marketing plan that was done a while back (I can't seem to find it on the wiki now :() are really key for defining this.
~m
Máirín Duffy escribió:
If it's any help at all, it is really really easy to conduct your own usability tests. You need to have a target for the test first. We did this recently at FUDcon for the Fedora website. I'll walk you through exactly how we did this quickly so you can see how to do it yourself:
- First the Fedora websites team discussed what were the most
important tasks we wanted users to be able to accomplish on our website: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-May/msg00094.html
- Then we came up with a testing plan:
https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-May/msg00320.html
- Then we conducted a test! It did not take very long. Here's our
report: https://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-websites-list/2008-June/msg00231.html
Do note that usability testing doesn't fix problems. It identifies them. It does not identify solutions. However it's really valuable to see for yourself first hand how others experience what you're working on.
I wonder if it would be cool to have a "usability test a friend" day, where some project or focus within Fedora gets together to write up a pre-defined set of tasks to test, and then we publicize the usability test a friend day. Then everyone involved in Fedora can find just one person within their circle of friends and run them through those tests, and contribute their usability report back. It might be cool to give some kind of recognition to the person who tests the most people and/or writes up the best reports :)
Even if only 10 folks were willing to go grab one friend and watch them try out some of the features of Fedora or our website, and then report back to us the experiences they had, we would have a really valuable body of data from which to understand what basic problems we need to solve to make Fedora better. It really should only each person take 20-30 minutes of their time per user they test.
~m
Marin, you just gave a great idea... I'll have to think it through more thoroughly and even test it before I'd dare suggesting it fully. I'll do some tests, but first I have to find some volunteers (I have a few prospects). When I have something I hope to present it to you all... Until then, there's a lot of thinking I have to do.
On Tue, Jul 29, 2008 at 5:39 PM, Máirín Duffy duffy@fedoraproject.org wrote:
I wonder if it would be cool to have a "usability test a friend" day, where some project or focus within Fedora gets together to write up a pre-defined set of tasks to test, and then we publicize the usability test a friend day. Then everyone involved in Fedora can find just one person within their circle of friends and run them through those tests, and contribute their usability report back. It might be cool to give some kind of recognition to the person who tests the most people and/or writes up the best reports :)
This would require us having friends. And if I extrapolate from my own personal experience, that could be a serious problem. Though I could probably participate in a "test a university student" day.
-jef
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