Archived comments for ForumAmbassadors.

Design

Possible tasks for the Ambassadors Team :

• To encourage and assist forum users in bug reporting, wiki usage and other community tools.

Types of relevant information : bugs, specs and ideas, priority of specs as felt by the forum users.

• One method may be by producing documentation on the forums to easily introduce users to launchpad.

  • -ManiacMusician : Good idea. This is something that users can do without any super-skills. and launchpad is definitely a strange creature to most; even me.

    • -PriceChild : Yeah, I don't like it some times. There are specs to help integrate it into the forums. :S

      • -Hobbsee : That wont mean that everything moves to the forums though, as much as some users seem to want it. Jono was looking to write an easy guide on "how to file bugs" - probably not one on the rest of launchpad, though

        • - UbuntuDemon : Yeah, we can use their work. They are thinking about something like reportingbugs.ubuntu.com. See the reporting bugs spec for more info.

          • - ManiacMusician : That could be a good long-term gobby project. We do need one big guide for launchpad

          • -Hobbsee : i would assume there would be space so we can do that. That's probably less scary than bzr, which the devs tend to use.

            • -UbuntuDemon : IMHO let Jono's spec do this. But it would be nice to provide input on it. <--ManiacMusician : oh, yes. I would never suggest that the ambassadors take it on. Just commenting.

      -PriceChild : Btw i think that there is a bit of documentation on ubuntuforums by one of the staff on how to file a bug *searches*

      • -Hobbsee : There's also some for mozilla, but I've got no idea where it is anymore. However, that's probably a moot point, seeing as we don't have jono here.

• Purposes of ambassadors:

  • Integration of other forums (all the LoCo forums and other languages). How do we get their feedback integrated? (Tough, this will be another spec).

    • -ManiacMusician : This can be taken care of eventually, as the ambassador project grows bigger and can accomodate more mediums. Should we make a priority list of where to deploy our teams to first?

      • - Hobbsee : Have you been able to link in with various developers on how you can help out?

        • - ManicMusician : ...Not yet.

          • - Hobbsee : Better get to it. People at MTV will probably find this easiest

            • - ManiacMusician : problem is getting the word out and getting them all to listen.

      • - UbuntuDemon : the devs seem to be most interested in bugs and regressions (that is high priority bugs and bugs around feature freeze)

        • - PriceChild : Could we get them in the next gobby if there is one?

          • - UbuntuDemon : We'll put this spec into drafting and improve it a little bit. Move it back into discussion with medium priority after that ( we don't want t it to block essential BOFs). I hope to have at least another BOF about this. But I will do at least a lot of informal talking with people.

  • Ambassadors from other forums?

    • - Hobbsee : As in, the kubuntu forums? (not official)

      • -ManiacMusician : ...something like that would be very hard. Maybe if we ever have enough manpower. As an alternative, I suggest delegating this task to the users at their seperate, unofficial forums. They can report back to "Ambassadors HQ" for the sake of organization -Hobbsee : I haven't seen many others wanting to participate, so that sounds fine.

      -UbuntuDemon : My take on this is that this team could be an example to other Ambassadors Teams on other forums for example different languages or derivatives.

      • -ManiacMusician : Yes, absolutely...but we can't have 50 teams interacting with the developers. It would be a hassle. It's more ideal to have a centralized Ambassadors Panel that can take in information from various teams and send it all out together, in an organized fashion

  • Launchpad team for Ambassadors

    • - Hobbsee : - It would be just for reference on who they are. That requires them to have LP accounts though. Also, you probably want to have something on the forums about that as well - seeing as most users wont look at LP

      • - ManiacMusician : We plan to get a subsection on the forums...most users should be aware of our existence, at the very least (UbuntuDemon : and we will get a Forum Ambassadors Team enstated as part of the staff)

      - PriceChild : I think that's more for dev's reference than normal users?

      • -Hobbsee : I think so too, but it will be necessary

        • -PriceChild : yup

  • Report on the team's work and achievements over a timeframe... monthly?

Implementation

• Central point of contact? Or distributed by team? How do you get decent coverage?

  • -ManiacMusician: I feel it should be a combination. A central team that coordinates the movements of all the teams, and then separate teams of 3 to 5 people that cover special areas or branch out in some way

• Existing staff too busy to be ambassadors?

  • -ManiacMusician : For the most part, yes

• How toons (one or two), then elections. (Coleadership)

  • -ManiacMusician : What does this mean? Can the writer clarify? Or remove if it's no longer a concern?

  -UbuntuDemon : Mark just told us he would like to highlight some specs on the forums for discussion and get developers relevant to that spec into that -UbuntuDemon : We'll start small and slowly grow to a big team of Forum Ambassadors. We want to try to cover everything that is really important to the users.

  • It's important that people know that they don't have to be developers to talk on a developer level - it's not like the developers are unapproachable, nor that they need to be talked to in a weird language - they do understand day to day English. I suspect there are a lot of people who think "I cant do this, I'm not skilled enough to." If you have a reasonable knowledge of what is feasible and isn't, we need you!
• We have to make sure we can post to ubuntu-devel , edubuntu-devel and kubuntu-devel. There is a spec for closing down ubuntu-devel for non-users. Let's not forget to contact Matt Zimmerman / James Troup about this.

  • - Hobbsee : I've not seen the result of that, but we'd probably want this to be on the non-locked down list, if there are two lists

• The issue of electing forum ambassadors is still open. We can't accept every volunteer...it's a demanding job, and we can't afford to have people that may quit after a little while of doing it. it's a team-based effort. We have to formulate a way to accept members without being too elitist

  • - PriceChild : Who has final say on Ambassadors? - Forums Staff? Admins or FC?

    • - Hobbsee : Forum council, i guess. Which will mostly be the forums staff, i thought?

      • - PriceChild : Nope, starts with 3 admins, will change. How about the entire staff team with final decision by FC? - Hobbsee : Sounds sane to me. That's what we do for kubuntu, but it's not my decision"

        • -ManiacMusician : Not sure how I feel about external influences in this. I was kind of hoping to keep it inside the forums, because that's where the community is...those are the people that will have to be represented and they'll probably want to know or have a say in what's going on. What would the FC know about users on the forum?

          • - PriceChild: Forums Staff & FC are all in forums. FC HAVE to be a good member of the forums to be selected. i.e. admins to start with, maybe with the most experienced staff. - Hobbsee : Seeing as the FC is made up of all/mostly staff - a lot. No one's out to get anyone else.

            • -ManiacMusician : Didn't mean to imply that. Just wondering about the what the reaction will be at the forums.

              • - Hobbsee : Presumably it'll be made very clear on the forums who the members of the FC are, and so users can easily see that they're well known forum people.

Unresolved issues

• It's not possible to create a bug in the name of someone else.

  • -MikeBasinger But you can subscribe other people to the bug

    • - Hobbsee : Only if they have a LP account

      • -ManiacMusician : I think that if they're not going to file their own bugs, they might not need (or deserve) to take the credit for it. So, does it really matter whose name the bug is created in?

        • - Hobbsee : No, karma doesnt really apply to forum people anyway*de

• Need feedback from developers on what they would like to see in this spec.

  • - Hobbsee : Devs probably need to wait for the forum half to get more organised before we can say much about it. However, we can try to help point out what is feasible and what isn't

    • -ManiacMusician : I think everything in this spec is pretty reasonable; especially since most of the work is not being done by the developers. They basically just need to agree that they want to hear users' opinions. On the forums themselves, it'll be the job of the ambassadors to weed out the unfeasible.

      • "-Hobbsee - Yes, and figure out how the communication will happen. -Hobbsee

        • "-ManiacMusician : I think an Ambassadors mailing list would be reasonable. People who care or are integral can subscribe, and the rest don't have to.

• need feedback from Forum users
• Centralized team leader or should each team member have a point of contact.

• I, UbuntuDemon, have been doing some talking with some devs and stuff. I'm going to do some informal talking about this Forum Ambassadors stuff to developers. I have been getting good feedback.

Brain Dump

• Communicate what users like in other distros

  • -ManiacMusician : this is a priority

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