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On Fri, 2005-11-11 at 10:03 +0100, Grobian wrote: |
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> Ok, you want a reaction, because you are Feeling Blue[1], right. |
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|
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The only reaction I want is for us to meet the goals that I have set |
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out, instead of trying to move those goals. |
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> You describe here (and in your diary) the aim to reach 100% of our user |
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> base. Wow, nice thing. Discussions on whether you will succeed or not, |
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> are out of the question right now, it's just your aim. Good. I hope |
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> you will succeed! |
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Thanks. |
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> I scoured the forums a bit and looked what users were telling. I wasn't |
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> surprised. What do you expect from a user telling it all doesn't work |
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> any more, who doesn't run etc-update just because "after every emerge |
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> --upgrade --world it has over 100 files to update"? Such user just |
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> ignores the importance of the tool, and will most certainly ignore |
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> anything else that we try to help this user. This was just one example. |
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|
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When we have emerge --news done, and users come along and complain that |
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they didn't know about something, then *maybe* we have some moral high |
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ground to stand on. |
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Personally, I don't care for the whole approach of moral high ground on |
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this one. |
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Gentoo's not just a cool toy. We're also responsible to delivering the |
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best we can for our users. I'd like to think that includes the best |
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news. |
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> It is a very humble attempt to try and help these users, but they simply |
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> chose the wrong Linux distro, because Gentoo expects you to be an system |
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> administrator, not a user. At least that's my vision on it. I think we |
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> can agree that Gentoo requires a user to know/realise more than a |
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> Fedora/SuSe/Ubuntu user. |
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I agree that the required knowledge level is higher than certain other |
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distros. But I don't think experience or ability is the issue. I don't |
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believe that experience or ability has anything to do with whether or |
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not that person keeps up to date with important Gentoo news. |
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|
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Even if a user keeps up with the news, there will be lapses due to |
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sickness, holiday, pressure of other tasks, and so on. One of the nice |
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benefits of emerge --news is that the news will be there for them when |
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they need it. |
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> I am just in the opinion that we lack a system where users can find the |
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> information they need. |
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Agreed, but there's no way that every user (or even a majority of users) |
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will take the trouble to go looking for that information. I'm making |
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that assertion partly on common-sense, and partly on my experience of |
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running a F/OSS project back in the mid-nineties. |
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|
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I think this is where it'd help if Gentoo had some way of working out |
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the install base, and comparing that to some meaningful stats from |
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www.g.o et al, so that we could have a discussion based on facts that |
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could stand up to scrutiny from both sides. |
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|
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However, we don't really have a way atm that I know about to get either |
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of these stats. Maybe infra could do some rsyncd log analysis to put |
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together a rough guestimate, and maybe the GDP could post some useful |
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stats from www.g.o as I've twice asked for now. |
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|
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There again, maybe we don't really want those stats. Who knows - they |
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might show that our userbase is nowhere near the size we think it is :) |
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> Here comes the point where I can express my doubt about the 100%. There |
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> are unfortunately users who are too hard to help, if you get what I |
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> mean. |
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I agree. But at least we will have done our best, which I'd like to |
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think is what having that nice @gentoo.org email address is all about. |
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> As you might guess |
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> from my comment above, I simply think _communication_ is the big |
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> problem, as I see being a problem in many places around here. |
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I think that covers a multitude of sins though. I'm not trying to fix |
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them all. I just want to fix this one problem at a time. |
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The one I'm concerned with is ensuring that the news we already generate |
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reaches all of our users. That's all I care about right now. I don't |
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actually care whether it's done by emerge --news; I will happily support |
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a more effective solution. |
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> Not that perfect communication solves the problem entirely, but it allows to |
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> reply in the sense of 'rtfw'. |
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rtfn, surely? :) |
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> If you're serious here, feel free to contact me (off-list) to see what |
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> we can arrange. |
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Drop into #gentoo-apache and let's talk :) |
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|
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Best regards, |
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Stu |
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-- |
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Stuart Herbert stuart@g.o |
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Gentoo Developer http://www.gentoo.org/ |
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http://stu.gnqs.org/diary/ |
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|
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GnuGP key id# F9AFC57C available from http://pgp.mit.edu |
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Key fingerprint = 31FB 50D4 1F88 E227 F319 C549 0C2F 80BA F9AF C57C |
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