ForumsCommunityIntegration

Status

Created: 2005-04-30 by BenjaminMakoHill
Priority: MediumPriority
People: RyanTroyLead, BenjaminMakoHillSecond
Contributors: BenjaminMakoHill
Interested: MartinMeredith
Status: UbzSpecification, BrainDump, BreezyGoal, DistroSpecification, CommunitySpecification
Branch: UbuntuTrack
Malone Bug:
Packages affected:
Depends:
Dependents:
UduSessions: 0
BoF sessions: none yet

Introduction

This spec tries to identify problems with the integration of the Ubuntu forums community and the rest of the Ubuntu community and brainstorm solutions to fix these.

Rationale

There is a major division between Ubuntu developers and the forum users who are involved in different types of Ubuntu development. Recently, forums users have begun to realize that the forums are largely an island within the Ubuntu community in terms of development and people building packages but nobody seems to have good ideas for how to handle this.

As far as user support goes, the forums are doing an excellent job. However, there are still things the community can do (e.g., integration with Ubuntu traffic and much more) to help integrate those communities. With development, the problem is even more pressing.

Scope and Use Cases

Implementation Plan

Perhaps UbuntuForums can serve as a frontend (one of several) to a unified source of documentation. I will not expand on the issues that many users have with using the wiki or IRC, but suffice to say that it is usually easier to just ask a question on the forums than to dig, chat or join the mailing list.

If the documentation team were to implement a more user-firendly collection of technical support (a users reference guide - much like the unofficial ubuntu starter's guide, just officially supported by the documentation team) users would use that before coming to the forums.

Comment - Please note that this has been done for Breezy (MatthewEast), see the Starter Guide in System->Help and to be released shortly online. For more ideas about docteam and forum integration see the recent thread here

In the event that the answer is already there, forum members would be able to refer to the guide instead of repeating the same information over and over. This would also standardise the level of support as well as add credibility.

Moreover, forum users could contribute to such a guide. It would be pretty easy for forum moderators to guide threads so that once the problem is solved, the user can easily know where to contribute the solution as new documentation or as a bug report. Many people are too shy to file a bug report. Experienced forum users can encourage lesser experienced users to file bug reports.

A great example is the AbsoluteBeginnerGuide. It is mentioned that part of the proble is that experienced users cannot conceive of the problems that absolute beginners face. It was mentioned on the wiki to ask Ryan Troy to create an absolute beginner's forum. This would be a great example of how the forums can make the documentation write itself. All that is needed is the guidelines for forum moderators to follow to encourage users to contribute, as well as a nice pleasant place that the information can be put (a documentation project front desk, if you will...).

Data Preservation and Migration

See point #3 in "Outstanding Issues"

Packages Affected

User Interface Requirements

Outstanding Issues

Have the forums globally reconized by everyone. What I mean by this, linuxfest northwest the ubuntu document team suggested users do not use the forums but use the mailing lists instead. This seems odd, can anyone clarify?
More forum activity from Ubuntu Developers? There are lots of ideas that do get passed around the forums that do not get suggested on the integrated development mailing list.
A more unified community it seems there are multiple resources for users: the wiki, forums, unofficial userguide, mailing lists etc. Do we need to create some sort of unification? At the forums we generally see users who do not wish to join the mailing list, who are new to linux and ubuntu in general, who find the wiki frustrating and hard to navigate. With that said how can we move forward to create a unifed "portal" of information that is easy for new and seasoned linux/ubuntu users. The forums have a wealth of information that can be extracted.
Forum memebers can get a "blog" on the forums that is attached to their account. This has become very popular possibly intergrate this into the main ubuntu site somehow?
The forums are serving as a makeshift knowledgebase at this point in time. If the information contained in the forums could be cleaned, distilled, and then added to a back-end engine along with the information contained in the wiki - with an easy search function and/or easy to find index front end... then a complete set of standardized documentation would exist for every level of user, especially as more information is added to the back end. The forums could then serve as a portal for information passing back and forth between users and developers.
Adding to the knowledgebase idea - a front end could be developed as a separate application that can be installed on every desktop that connects the forums, mailing lists, knowledgebase, et al. into a single application for all users to find documentation, add value, and connect with the community as a whole.

UDU BOF Agenda

Because Ryan Troy was not in attendance, the group decided to merely lay out the the issues and then to work offline with Ryan to make sure that this happened.

UBZ stuff

CategoryUdu CategorySpec

UbuntuDownUnder/BOFs/ForumsCommunityIntegration (last edited 2008-08-06 16:39:00 by localhost)