Fedora Support channels Improvement ideas

[Nigel Jones]

nodata wrote:
> Am Donnerstag, den 26.06.2008, 17:52 -0300 schrieb jeff:
>   
>> nodata wrote:
>>     
>>> Am Donnerstag, den 26.06.2008, 16:30 -0300 schrieb jeff:
>>>       
>>>> Kevin Fenzi wrote:
>>>>         
>>>>> Thats just a few ideas to get things going. 
>>>>>           
>>>> I've always thought the following idea would be cool to implement. It's not 
>>>> IRC, but I figured I would throw this idea out there, especially now since you 
>>>> now have talk.fedoraproject.org.
>>>>
>>>> What about *free* telephone support?
>>>>
>>>> A rough outline:
>>>>
>>>> * newbie user has problem. Has no clue what IRC is. Knows what telephone is.
>>>>
>>>> * supergeeks live on IRC, read every message in fedora-devel (well, almost) and 
>>>> have VoIP software with talk.fedoraproject.org account.
>>>>
>>>> * Each supergeek, when available, goes to a webpage and clicks "available" to 
>>>> let fedora asterisk know they are available "agents" (in asterisk speek) that 
>>>> can receive calls from the support queue.
>>>>
>>>> * noob calls local number via the majick of a bunch of $2 DIDs around the world 
>>>> which connects them to the fedora asterisk server. "Welcome to the fedora 
>>>> telephone server..."  They hit "1" for support.
>>>>
>>>> * fedora asterisk looks at all the available agents and routes the call to one 
>>>> of them.
>>>>
>>>> "Thanks for calling Fedora support! This is supergeek $foo. How can I help?"
>>>>
>>>> Just an idea....
>>>>
>>>> -Jeff
>>>>
>>>>         
>>> Wouldn't this shift the focus away from users finding answers for
>>> themselves (RTFM, essentially) and us writing good documentation?
>>>
>>> I can only see this being useful if it fed back into a knowledge base.
>>>       
>> Well, depending on their problem it could be as easy as just to say  "open your 
>> browser and go to http://wiki...." if there is a solution there. Newbies have 
>> trouble even finding what doc is relevant to their problem (well, not just 
>> newbies either....)
>>
>> -Jeff
>>
>>     
>
> Then is phone support useful?
>
> I mean phones are very inefficient/disruptive (and not the "good"
> disruptive) for this kind of thing since they prevent you from being
> able to queue requests (like on irc, jabber, email, etc); they require
> an instant response. Giving URLs over the phobe won't be fun either.
>
>   
My two cents...

Pros:
- It's there
- It uses infrastructure that we control (we don't control the phone 
system, but we control our Asterisk setup)

Cons:
- As pointed out by nodata, it's sometimes hard to communicate over the 
phone
- There is an expectation for an answer, you may not know, all forms of 
communication online, allow for you to say to someone "I'm sorry I don't 
know but if you stay a little while someone else might" or (in private) 
"Hey guys, I don't know the answer for X anyone know and mind taking 
it?" followed by a transfer.
- If your having a bad day, anger is a bit more predominate over the 
phone too, and can leave someone with a bad impression of Fedora/Fedora 
Community.

In essence, to much work to too little gain (phones anyway).

- Nigel