[Mageia-discuss] Suggestions

Michael Scherer misc at zarb.org
Sun Oct 24 10:57:07 CEST 2010


Le samedi 23 octobre 2010 à 22:13 -0500, Dale Huckeby a écrit :
> > On Sun, 24 Oct 2010, Michael Scherer wrote:
> >
> > The patch arguent is invalid, because people can also send mail, like
> > "here is a better description of package $FOO because I didn't
> > understood the current one and I wanted to help".
> 
> But you didn't say that. You said "send a patch" which is not so user
> friendly. Oh that's right, you already addressed that. But yeah, if
> I could just send the desired text via email that would be easy, and
> for that matter learning to create and send patches would be pretty
> easy to learn, too. Just never had reason to before.

Yeah, I say "send a patch" in the general sense, guess that it was too
specific, sorry for the misunderstanding. Usually, people are ok when
being contacted directly with non structured patchs, especially for
something as trivial as changing a string. And at worst, someone will
tell "please fill this in the bugtracker, I will take care of it later".


> > And I think that most of use naively think "if something is wrong, at
> > least 1 person will say it". yet, it doesn't happen.
> 
> Yes, you are being naive. Other packagers aren't going to say anything
> because it's not their package and because, like you, they don't really
> notice the missing descriptions. And ordinary users aren't part of that
> world, so it doesn't occur to them to say anything, or to contribute
> in any way, because it would seem presumptuous. I think Mageia should
> make a special effort to recruit, to make to feel comfortable, users
> who might want to contribute but don't know how, who feel kind of lost
> at sea when it comes to knowing where to begin.

Well, we could organize some days on the forum/ml/irc/whatever where
people collectively review packages descriptions. Some people could
review current packages, some other could write proper description, a
third set will review it, and the last part of the group will organize
this with packagers and push the description to cauldron. 

And we could also have people who dedicate them self to read packages
description in changelog to notice such problems in time.

Debian also has a set of guideline about description, that we could
reuse to improve ours :
http://www.debian.org/doc/developers-reference/best-pkging-practices.html#bpp-pkg-synopsis

( I must add that I do not volunteer to organize such days, I have
unfortunately enough work to do, but I am ok to give a hand ).

> > So if we want to scale and make it work, then we need to find how to
> > make people who are directly concerned contribute. And so, the best way
> > to find why something didn't happen is to simply ask to people who are
> > directly concerned.
> 
> Exactly. There needs to be some way new users can be informed, either in
> the install process itself or via, say, an icon on the desktop which,
> when clicked, explains briefly what Mageia is, how users can contribute,
> where they can go to get more information, etc.

Maybe a entry "report problem" in the menu that would send them either
to bugzilla ( but I feel this would not be ideal to new users ) or to a
forum/ml/irc ( which would be nice, but I feel that I putting the
problem on someone else shoulder and that's not nice ) ?

Or something that point to a translated page with instructions ?

-- 
Michael Scherer



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