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Ubuntu Open Week - Ubuntu Brainstorm Q+A, becoming moderator - Nicolas Deschildre - Wed, Nov 5th, 2008

(02:59:00 PM) nand: ok!
(03:00:24 PM) nand: ok ok, so now's Ubuntu Brainstorm time
(03:00:33 PM) nand: hmm
(03:00:45 PM) nand: ok let's start with what is Ubuntu Brainstorm
(03:00:47 PM) nand: or rather
(03:00:51 PM) nand: what is its use
(03:01:17 PM) nand: I guess you all have ideas on how Ubuntu could be improved
(03:01:37 PM) nand: even lots lots lots of ideas
(03:01:57 PM) nand: but the thing is, your ideas are subjective to your relation to your computer, of what you're doing
(03:02:10 PM) nand: your requests may be not as important for others
(03:03:29 PM) nand: so basically it is not easy to grasp what are the main requests out there. Some people can be very vocal about something, but they may represent a tiny portion of the userbase
(03:04:06 PM) nand: so Ubuntu Brainstorm is a place where you can post your ideas, and vote on the ones you agree on
(03:04:32 PM) nand: and the voting system makes it easy to assess what is the most asked
(03:05:54 PM) nand: ok so we can see what the most asked, and that will be taken into account during the next Ubuntu Developer Summit, where the planning is laid out
(03:06:09 PM) nand: so that we can maximize the awesomeness factor of Ubuntu
(03:06:48 PM) nand: for people who didn't quite follow what's going on on Brainstorm, you can fetch a summary I wrote : http://www.ndeschildre.net/downloads/UbuntuBrainstorm810Report.html
(03:06:56 PM) nand: Ok
(03:07:04 PM) nand: Now, Ubuntu Brainstorm is far from perfect
(03:07:39 PM) nand: it is an experiment : besides Dell's Ideastorm, this has never been used on this scale
(03:08:23 PM) nand: so things are not perfect . Often ideas are duplicates of others, ideas are not well formed
(03:08:40 PM) nand: we are open to critics
(03:09:15 PM) nand: A new version of Ubuntu Brainstorm will come Soon (c) which will try to fix some of these issues
(03:09:29 PM) nand: You can see a preview here: http://devel.ideatorrent.org/
(03:10:07 PM) nand: The main improvments are Idea and Solution separation, to force users to structure their ideas
(03:10:40 PM) nand: and more moderator tools, including a brand new moderator team (23 people so far!)
(03:11:15 PM) nand: ok... any question so far?
(03:12:23 PM) nand: QUESTION: what happens to our old ideas with the new system?
(03:13:05 PM) nand: they will be of course transfered to the new system. But as there was no idea/solution separation, there will be a "fake" solution
(03:13:15 PM) nand: See for example : http://devel.ideatorrent.org/idea/14433/
(03:13:34 PM) nand: From now on, you will be able to post several solution to one idea
(03:13:55 PM) nand: and the voting will occur on a per-solution basis
(03:14:31 PM) nand: Part of the job of the new moderators will be to separate the rationale from the solution to make some clean ideas
(03:14:55 PM) nand: ok, so let's continue with moderators
(03:15:29 PM) nand: Being a moderator on Ubuntu Brainstorm is a hard work
(03:15:49 PM) nand: because until recently we were a very few
(03:15:58 PM) nand: and we gets dozens of duplicate reports every day
(03:16:13 PM) nand: (So far, almost 4000 ideas have been marked as dup!!)
(03:16:30 PM) nand: and marking as duplicate is not an easy task
(03:16:34 PM) nand: as it looks
(03:16:53 PM) nand: you have to read fully and understand both ideas, and make a decision, sometimes hard
(03:17:46 PM) nand: that's why, this plus the limited number of moderators, there was unfortunately some ideas incorrectly marked as dup
(03:17:50 PM) nand: but behooold!
(03:17:56 PM) nand: things will change soon
(03:18:05 PM) nand: once the new version is out
(03:18:27 PM) nand: anyone will be able to join the Ubuntu Brainstorm moderator team to give an hand!
(03:18:36 PM) nand: the team: https://launchpad.net/~brainstorm-moderators
(03:18:53 PM) nand: and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Brainstorm/BrainstormModerators
(03:19:13 PM) nand: there will be two level of moderators
(03:19:44 PM) nand: 1) Idea Reviewer : anyone can become one, and your job will be to review incoming ideas
(03:19:47 PM) nand: Ooooops
(03:20:04 PM) nand: I happen to have forgot another new fanstastic feature :)
(03:20:13 PM) nand: http://devel.ideatorrent.org/ideas_in_preparation/
(03:20:22 PM) nand: You may have noticed this "Idea sandbox"
(03:20:57 PM) nand: Now, when an idea will be submitted, it will have to be reviewed by 2 moderators, for some very basic guidelines
(03:21:15 PM) nand: See more explanations here: http://devel.ideatorrent.org/faq/#question14
(03:22:00 PM) nand: In summary, moderators will check you are not posting a dup, a bug report, and check that your idea is precise (no more "Make Ubuntu Faster"), and with some kind of realistic solution
(03:22:14 PM) nand: so
(03:22:34 PM) nand: 1) Idea Reviewer : anyone can become one, see explanation on https://launchpad.net/~brainstorm-moderators
(03:22:52 PM) nand: the job will be to review incoming ideas, discuss with the author to add more details, and so one
(03:23:15 PM) nand: and once you did a great job for some time, you can become a:
(03:23:40 PM) nand: 2) Moderator : who can virtually do anything
(03:24:09 PM) nand: To summarize, being a moderator, you can:
(03:24:14 PM) nand: - Review incoming ideas
(03:24:27 PM) nand: - Mark ideas as duplicates
(03:25:00 PM) nand: - Separate rationale and solution from imported ideas from Brainstorm v1
(03:25:06 PM) nand: The main goal being
(03:25:19 PM) nand: *Making Ubuntu Brainstorm clean and exploitable*
(03:26:18 PM) nand: because anyone do not expect to spend hours through bad ideas
(03:27:02 PM) nand: ok, some more questions?
(03:27:57 PM) nand: QUESTION: as an idea reviewer, is your task only approving/declining idea's, or does one have to write a reason?
(03:28:53 PM) nand: as an idea reviewer, you can just approve, or discuss with the author to help him improve his idea
(03:29:34 PM) nand: ultimately, if the idea is not one, or the author do not correct it, you can mark it as "not an idea", or "already implemented" (another kind of bad idea)
(03:29:49 PM) nand: Ah, and if you want to see what to expect
(03:30:05 PM) nand: you can just log in using the test accounts here : http://demo.ideatorrent.org/
(03:30:25 PM) nand: you will see what are the moderators tools for each kind of roles (moderator, admin, idea reviewer ,....)
(03:30:45 PM) nand: I recommend you to check that!
(03:30:48 PM) nand: QUESTION: have any other projects (e.g. gnome, firefox, etc) expressed an interest in using ideatorrent?
(03:31:41 PM) nand: I have seen some interests in mailing lists/forums, but so far, no project have actually started using it (besides blender using an old customized version of it)
(03:32:31 PM) nand: the weird thing is, I get more requests from corporate companies (Stockholm airport is going to launch its ideatorrent soon, and another *BIG* name too) than from open source projects!
(03:33:13 PM) nand: QUESTION: what *big* company in particular?
(03:33:24 PM) nand: sssshh, that's a secret!
(03:33:40 PM) nand: I guess you'll know quite soon
(03:33:54 PM) nand: QUESTION: The current models for determining what's "popular" seem really really bad - an idea with 100 up votes and 0 down votes is considered less popular than an idea with 1101 up votes and 1000 down votes, simply because more people have voted on the latter.  The current hack to this is to count ideas as less popular as more time elapses in a weird hyperbolic fashion (divide by number of days).  Why not just move to
(03:34:05 PM) ***nand is waiting for the end of the question :)
(03:34:45 PM) nand: anyway, starting with the start of the question
(03:34:58 PM) nand: I often get this remark
(03:35:45 PM) nand: but if you look closely at http://devel.ideatorrent.org/, you'll see that you can now see the proportion of +1, -1, +0 votes
(03:36:30 PM) nand: and that, when an idea has > 100 votes, the proportion is more or less always identical : 80 to 95 percent of +1
(03:36:49 PM) nand: See for examaple : http://devel.ideatorrent.org/idea/14433/
(03:37:03 PM) nand: The green and red bar just under the number of votes
(03:37:17 PM) nand: 419 promotions / 31 demotions
(03:37:22 PM) nand: (in the tooltip)
(03:37:44 PM) nand: so in conclusion,
(03:38:08 PM) nand: and that answers: QUESTION:  Why not just move to a "percentage upvote" model after some 100-vote grace period?
(03:38:35 PM) nand: looking at stats I have, this would not be a good model
(03:39:00 PM) nand: but I'm still open to discussion on better improved models to order ideas
(03:39:20 PM) nand: QUESTION: Even if it's often "90% up votes" surely there's meaning in lowering one that's only 85% or the occasional one that's worse than that?
(03:39:57 PM) nand: I quite don't get the question...
(03:40:51 PM) nand: QUESTION: I'm especially worried about overlooked ideas.  An idea might be very very good, but few people understand it (and thus don't vote on it), meaning you won't see it in that "popular" listing even when it gets >90% approval
(03:42:02 PM) nand: hmm, I think you misunderstand the current "popular" algorithm
(03:42:47 PM) nand: the current "popular" idea algorithm is quite simple : it is ordering based on (number of votes) divided by (time since creation)
(03:42:59 PM) nand: or more precisely, by the number of votes per unit of time
(03:43:36 PM) nand: so you could even see negative ideas on the popular listings, if you go at the end of the list
(03:44:42 PM) nand: ok, still a little time...
(03:45:43 PM) nand: so if you're interested about Brainstorm and moderation, you can go to #ubuntu-brainstorm, or discuss on the mailing list here: https://launchpad.net/~brainstorm-moderators
(03:46:03 PM) nand: QUESTION: when will brainstorm.ubuntu.com actually *use* ideatorrent?
(03:46:05 PM) nand: well
(03:46:06 PM) nand: hrm
(03:46:08 PM) nand: hmm
(03:46:51 PM) nand: hopefully within the month. But don't take that as a promise!
(03:47:13 PM) nand: (and note that brainstorm.ubuntu.com IS using ideatorrent. It just got some major changes!)
(03:47:39 PM) nand: QUESTION: so if an idea from the sandbox gets approved by 2 reviewers it will get to the popular ideas?
(03:47:44 PM) nand: yes.
(03:48:07 PM) lordnoid:  An approved idea doesn't neccesarily have to be popular..
(03:48:24 PM) nand: "Popular ideas" is kind of not the real good name, I agree, but it's better than "approved ideas"
(03:48:32 PM) nand: let's say I put that in lack of a better name :)
(03:48:55 PM) nand: QUESTION:  ideatorrent is just a new drupal theme? or something more?
(03:49:13 PM) nand: Ideatorrent is a Drupal module (open source of course)
(03:49:26 PM) nand: you can download it at http://www.ideatorrent.org
(03:49:48 PM) nand: 10 mn left...
(03:49:55 PM) nand: go go go questions!
(03:50:50 PM) ***nand just realize http://www.blenderstorm.org is actually quite used, 700+ ideas so far
(03:51:07 PM) nand: QUESTION: how will you make approved, but not-popular idea's visible?
(03:51:46 PM) nand: well, first new non-popular yet ideas will appear on the "latest ideas", "most popular these 24H" lists, where most of the initial voting goes
(03:52:01 PM) nand: then, if it is quite popular, it will go on "most popular this week" and get more votes
(03:52:06 PM) nand: then, if it is quite popular, it will go on "most popular this month" and get more votes
(03:52:11 PM) nand: then, if it is quite popular, it will go on "most popular this 6 months" and get more votes
(03:52:16 PM) nand: and so on :)
(03:52:26 PM) nand: that's the current classic behavior
(03:52:38 PM) nand: plus some cheaters are using digg.com to help themselves :)
(03:52:49 PM) nand: Quite a lot of ideas are digged
(03:52:58 PM) nand: and some of them reached the digg popular state
(03:53:16 PM) nand: QUESTION: how much ideas implements from Brainstorm?
(03:53:43 PM) nand: Concerning Intrepid only, that's 18 : http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/implemented_ideas/
(03:54:11 PM) nand: but note that quite a few of them, we missed and are still in the "New" state, because of lack of moderators!
(03:54:30 PM) nand: QUESTION: Why are you calling drawing attention to an idea with Digg "cheating" -- it seems like it would only give something more votes total, not necessarily more upvotes
(03:54:42 PM) nand: it was just a joke :)
(03:55:05 PM) nand: I encourage all possible external websites to add more votes to the current 1.3 million of them!
(03:55:26 PM) nand: and you can promote your ideas using the images links on your blog e.g. http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/idea/10701/promote/
(03:55:38 PM) nand: Question: Is there an widget\applet\gadget to subscribe to new apporved ideas with an voting mechanism directly from the desktop?
(03:56:35 PM) nand: That could be an interesting thing to look at. You will be able to suscribe to a RSS feed, but I haven't looked at the voting question yet...
(03:57:41 PM) nand: ok ok, 3 minutes before some Virtualization talk!
(03:59:05 PM) nand: ok then thanks all for your interest, I'm hoping to see you soon to discuss moderation and join our awesome big brand new moderation team!