[gentoo-dev] Improving Gentoo User Relations

[Christel Dahlskjaer]

Hi everyone, 

First, allow me to thank every last one of you for the great welcome you
gave me when I joined. It is an immeasurably great and exciting
challenge to take over as lead of the user relations[1] project and I am
very thankful to Seemant and devrel for the confidence they have shown
in me passing the baton on to me from Daniel (dsd) and I am delighted at
the prospect of working together with all of you; developers and users
alike to make this project the best it can be.

Having been warned that reviving the project would be a difficult task
and one where I'd struggle to create any interest; I am very much
pleased to find that this has not been the case. 

So now we are faced with the challenge of resurrecting the project and
making it the best it can be. We have a blank page to colour in in such
a way it becomes attractive to the majority of our ~200,000 users, and
of course to the developer community. And this is where we would like
your input, whether you are a developer or a user; What do you believe
we should and could do to improve relations between users and
developers? What do you believe could make Gentoo more attractive to new
users and to current users? What would make Gentoo kick even more arse
than it already has proven it can? What do we need to 'fix'? What do we
need to consider introducing? Where do you feel we go horribly wrong?
(Now for that question, I'd strongly suggest we all avoid attacking
eachother, I simply want to know and learn from mistakes made in the
past to avoid repeating them!) And what have we done right? 

If you feel you have useful input we would love to hear it, don't be
afraid that your suggestions or ideas may be dumb or insignificant. We
would like to listen at what you have to say however small or big it may
be. I would like for everyone to feel comfortable stating their opinions
and views and suggestions without fear of being flamed. However, should
you feel uncomfortable replying on-list you are most welcome to drop an
e-mail offlist be it to myself or to user-relations@g.o


It has also been asked that I explain the two roles created especially
with user relations in mind, I will do so here but remember that these
definitions may be tweaked slightly before they reach perfection.

One of the roles created is that of a representative from a other user
focused project within gentoo (such as pr, bugzilla, bugdays, arch
testers, forums, #gentoo ops, documentation etc) and is currently
explained as follows:

> Given the nature of the user-relations project and the number of
> established projects which interact directly with users, we felt it
> would be beneficial to have a defined point of contact with these
> projects, who can provide input on what they would find useful, and
> what could cause them problems. We envision these representatives as
> being able to provide feedback regarding anything user-relations is
> planning to do, and also to provide suggestions for new projects or
> initiatives that could benefit their projects, as well as keeping us
> informed about changes within their projects that could affect users,
> or that would require any action from user-relations to take advantage
> of them. The intention is that these project representatives would be
> a part of the user-relations team, and that each representative would
> be responsible for making sure that his/her project's best interests
> are properly taken into consideration during user-relations' every day
> activities. This way, we hope to keep in touch with other user-focused
> projects, and make sure that all user-facing projects know what is
> going on and can provide the greatest benefit to users and developers
> alike.

Provision has also been made by developer relations for the creation of
the role of 'user representative', which is explained below:


> Since the user relations project is intended to act as a bridge
> between developers and users, it is important that we do not let our
> assumptions as developers get in the way of communications with
> users. Many users may be unfamiliar with concepts or terminology that
> to a developer seems commonplace and easy to understand. The 'user
> representatives' are intended as a way to get feedback from
> non-developers on such things, for example to ensure that a survey is
> written in such a way as to be comprehensible to users before it is
> sent out. The role is intended as a way to get reliable input from
> non-developers in order to ensure that what we do has the maximum
> benefit for users and developers alike.

If you are a developer from a project who would like to be represented
within user relations and we haven't been in touch with your project
already there is a chance that we've overlooked you, in which case I am
terribly sorry and welcome you to contact us and let us know.

For the latter role, user representative, we will be looking for atleast
a couple of more people to welcome more diversity.

One of the things that gets mentioned over and over again as something
people would like us to look at is bugzilla, both users and developers
have been bringing this up on a daily basis for some time. It has also
been suggested we look at working with developer relations on revamping
the recruitment process. It has been suggested we ensure there is female
cut t-shirts in the gentoo store. It has been suggested we take the
initiative for creating a project similar to that of Debian Women[2] and
a host of other interesting things. We do of course welcome your views
on all of the above, as well as anything else you think we should do.

As well as interacting with us by replying to this e-mail you are of
course welcome to join us on irc (irc.freenode.net) in the
#gentoo-userrel channel. And we have a mailinglist[3] for those who wish
to partake on that. 

I hope my e-mail wasn't too vague, I also hope that I will wake up and
find my inbox full of exciting ideas and suggestions from all of you!

¡Viva la revolución!

Christel Dahlskjaer

[1] http://www.gentoo.org/proj/en/devrel/user-relations/
[2] http://women.alioth.debian.org/about/
[3] gentoo-userrel+subscribe@g.o



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