Mailing List Archive

On Friday 20 July 2007, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 18:54 +0200, Thomas Scharl wrote:
> > Anyways this is more of philosophical/social issue to discuss about than
> > a technical one.
>
> One thing that I had been considering bringing up and getting help with
> is some scripts/whatever to get users to do things they might not know
> they can do during installation. For example, let's say we've got a
> little script, called sub_to_gwn, which takes a single argument, an
> email address. At the end of the Installer, we can ask "Would you like
> to subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter?" and subscribe people that
> say yes. We could do the same thing for a stats client, or any other
> projects that we deemed would be useful. The idea here is to present
> some of these things that we would like the users to be doing to provide
> us feedback (and disseminate information) to the user when they're
> installing. Of course, we'd also add the scripts into the
> documentation, so people can simply run them w/o the Installer, so we're
> not tying this stuff to Installer-only installs.

this is a hot idea ... the last page of the installer presents a list of
services you'd like to subscribe to for Gentoo spam (all unchecked of course)
-mike

Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 18:54 +0200, Thomas Scharl wrote:
>> Anyways this is more of philosophical/social issue to discuss about than
>> a technical one.
>
> One thing that I had been considering bringing up and getting help with
> is some scripts/whatever to get users to do things they might not know
> they can do during installation. For example, let's say we've got a
> little script, called sub_to_gwn, which takes a single argument, an
> email address. At the end of the Installer, we can ask "Would you like
> to subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter?" and subscribe people that
> say yes. We could do the same thing for a stats client, or any other
> projects that we deemed would be useful. The idea here is to present
> some of these things that we would like the users to be doing to provide
> us feedback (and disseminate information) to the user when they're
> installing. Of course, we'd also add the scripts into the
> documentation, so people can simply run them w/o the Installer, so we're
> not tying this stuff to Installer-only installs.
>
> Anyway, some things I think we could/should do are:
> - GWN
> - gentoo-announce
> - gentoo-stats (or whatever we have now, if anything)
>
> Anything else?
>

There is a similar thread in the forums[1] where forum users post if
they can offer help for free and if they need help. A similar one could
be set up for the developers who can state what scripts or patches they
need written if they are too busy or otherwise.

Designating some basic coding to knowlegable users could reduce workload
and leave developers time to concentrate on projects they feel are more
advanced or critical.

[1] http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-471318.html
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On Friday, 20. July 2007 23:48, Chris Gianelloni wrote:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 18:54 +0200, Thomas Scharl wrote:
> > Anyways this is more of philosophical/social issue to discuss about
> > than a technical one.
>
> One thing that I had been considering bringing up and getting help
> with is some scripts/whatever to get users to do things they might
> not know they can do during installation. For example, let's say
> we've got a little script, called sub_to_gwn, which takes a single
> argument, an email address. At the end of the Installer, we can ask
> "Would you like to subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter?" and
> subscribe people that say yes. We could do the same thing for a
> stats client, or any other projects that we deemed would be useful.
> The idea here is to present some of these things that we would like
> the users to be doing to provide us feedback (and disseminate
> information) to the user when they're installing. Of course, we'd
> also add the scripts into the
> documentation, so people can simply run them w/o the Installer, so
> we're not tying this stuff to Installer-only installs.
>
> Anyway, some things I think we could/should do are:
> - GWN
> - gentoo-announce
> - gentoo-stats (or whatever we have now, if anything)
>
> Anything else?

I don't know whether that is what you mean by "gentoo-stats", but other
distros have quite some interesting usage statistics by having their
users submit hardware profiles to a server. I like the idea and wanted
to have a look at Smolt [1]. The Fedora people would be interested in
providing the client for Gentoo and would extend the web interface to
enable better filtering of distros, too.

But right now that's just some random ideas until after my exams next
weeks :-)

Robert

[1] https://hosted.fedoraproject.org/projects/smolt/ ,
http://smolt.fedoraproject.org/stats
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Chris Gianelloni schrieb:
> On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 18:54 +0200, Thomas Scharl wrote:
>> Anyways this is more of philosophical/social issue to discuss about than
>> a technical one.
>
> One thing that I had been considering bringing up and getting help with
> is some scripts/whatever to get users to do things they might not know
> they can do during installation. For example, let's say we've got a
> little script, called sub_to_gwn, which takes a single argument, an
> email address. At the end of the Installer, we can ask "Would you like
> to subscribe to the Gentoo Weekly Newsletter?" and subscribe people that
> say yes. We could do the same thing for a stats client, or any other
> projects that we deemed would be useful. The idea here is to present
> some of these things that we would like the users to be doing to provide
> us feedback (and disseminate information) to the user when they're
> installing. Of course, we'd also add the scripts into the
> documentation, so people can simply run them w/o the Installer, so we're
> not tying this stuff to Installer-only installs.
>
> Anyway, some things I think we could/should do are:
> - GWN
> - gentoo-announce
> - gentoo-stats (or whatever we have now, if anything)
>
> Anything else?
>
quite cool idea, some more optionals could be
- subscribe to -user/<lang> ML's
- install a bookmarks file in ~/ with all relevant Gentoo links
- create accounts for b.g.o/f.g.o
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On Friday, 20. July 2007 23:56, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> Smolt, which is Fedora's new hardware-profiling program, is actively
> porting to other distributions. We could probably join in the fun
> there pretty easily, since it seems our own stats are on hiatus.
>
> Anyone interested?

Damn, always late. :-)

As pointed out in the other mail I talked to Mike McGrath and he
promised support from the upstream/server side.
They also plan to enable submission distribution specific information
which we could use to save "selected profile" or so.

-R.
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On Fri, 2007-07-20 at 14:56 -0700, Donnie Berkholz wrote:
> On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 14:48:12 -0700
> Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> > Anyway, some things I think we could/should do are:
> > - GWN
> > - gentoo-announce
> > - gentoo-stats (or whatever we have now, if anything)
>
> Smolt, which is Fedora's new hardware-profiling program, is actively
> porting to other distributions. We could probably join in the fun there
> pretty easily, since it seems our own stats are on hiatus.
>
> Anyone interested?

I could have sworn genone was working on something stats-related. We
should see where he's at before trying to pick up something new, but if
smolt (or anything else) is better, I say we go for it. My point is
that I'd like to start doing some of these things, if not by 2007.1 then
by 2008.0, which will help make things simpler for our users and also
give us more feedback on our user base.

--
Chris Gianelloni
Release Engineering Strategic Lead
Alpha/AMD64/x86 Architecture Teams
Games Developer/Council Member/Foundation Trustee
Gentoo Foundation

On Fri, 20 Jul 2007 15:29:10 -0700
Chris Gianelloni <wolf31o2@gentoo.org> wrote:
> I could have sworn genone was working on something stats-related.

He was. I asked him about it a while ago and that's where I got the
"hiatus" bit.

00:30 <@dberkholz> genone__: anything ever happen with the stats app?
01:09 <@genone> dberkholz: got to the test stage, then got frustrated
with a few aspects that didn't work, worked on other things, and then
infra wanted the testserver back.
01:11 <@dberkholz> genone: so what's the status now?
01:12 <@genone> dberkholz, right now it's dormant
01:12 <@dberkholz> genone: a good candidate for that projects page? =)
01:13 <@genone> dberkholz, I don't have a problem if anyone wants to
take it, if that's your question

Thanks,
Donnie

Marijn Schouten (hkBst) wrote:
> Perhaps we also need to make it more clear where users can ask such
> Gentoo-specific questions about specific packages, so they don't need to
> go and annoy upstream. Associate an irc-channel with each package. Most
> packages have a herd associated with them which can belong to a project
> which could have an irc-channel where the relevant developers could be
> found and which can put common problems in its topic. Fallback for when no
> appropriate irc-channel can be found would be #gentoo. Currently it is
> usually difficult to find such irc-channels or to know if there is none
> and that your only option is #gentoo or #$upstream. It would also make it
> easier for users to start helping developers and eventually become
> developers themselves, since they won't need to search for a point of
> entry anymore.
>
I think it's a great idea to have an irc-channel associated with each herd/
package. Certainly it took me a while to find #gentoo-desktop which is
busier than #gentoo-kde.

The fallback should be #gentoo-dev-help however, wrt to questions about
changing ebuilds, imo.


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Eric Polino wrote:
> Not sure if this fits in to what you're talking about, but I do know
> that as myself a "would like to me maintainer someday", I'm somewhat
> lost as to knowing how I can get involved and who I need to talk to.
>
Your best starting point is #gentoo-dev-help (if you need to talk a problem
out with someone) and bugzilla (in terms of getting involved and being
useful; just start fixing bugs for stuff you use.)

If you know the herd, a quick !herd <name> in #gentoo-dev-help
(irc.freenode.org) will ping anyone in the herd who is available to help
out (which is why they've logged into the channel, one would hope.) Even if
they're not there, anyone who can help will answer. Do please take the time
to read all the docs in the /topic. #gentoo-sunrise is good for when you
start submitting ebuilds.


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