ambassadors

This is a project that is meant to bring closer the developers of Ubuntu and the community.

The discussion thread on the forums

If you want to be an Ambassador, please add your forum screen name to the last section in this page (the "Applicants" section).

Proposals

Post here your personal idea of how this should work. the first proposal is number one, the second is number two and so on. You may post here more than one of your ideas.

1. This is the original proposal, first drafted by myself a few weeks ago, and a little refined since then:

First, general suggestion threads would be posted that would be loosely organized. No, these are not just for features requests. They are just general concerns, comments, and yes feature requests if necessary, but there's no emphasis on any one part. Based on the results of those threads, the next action will be decided upon. After taking all the sensible and do-able ideas/advice/suggestions/concerns from those threads, a more organizational structure would be created based on that. So the suggestions/concerns/etc would be divvied up accordingly, and put up as polls. This will be done repeatedly, with different groups of poll "answers", until there are only handful left. Those will then be the discussion points for the ambassadors to take up with the dev's. That's the outline anyways. -ManiacMusician

2. This is a specific proposal on how the ambassadors subforum will be built

The purpose of the subforum mechanism is summarizing information so that ambassadors don't have to scan the whole forums in search for what users seem to be demanding from the devs. This subforum will be created as a virtual subforum via the use of tags (see #5 below). It will be visible in the main forums page by creating a direct link to a tag search and by using the forum display option for tags searches in Zoints vBulletin add-on. Instead of having a dedicated "real" subforum, this approach has the following advantages:

  • No crossposting needed. The OP might want to keep the thread as it was originally intended (a help demand, a complaint, a request, whatever) and just tag it so the ambassadors can use it to show the issue to the devs.
  • The OP might not intend its post to be used by ambassadors but the mod still believe it would be useful, so the thread could go on "as is" and still serve the purpose of showing to the devs a particular point.
  • Where the thread originally started will bring useful information to devs, mods and ambassadors. For instance, threads tagged from the beta testing forums are quite different from those coming from "absolute beginners".
  • Ambassadors might "de-tag" some threads to prevent abuse. This might help the ambassadors getting a cleaner look at what they have to say to the devs.

-ComoMolo

3. Using a subforum with coordination with moderators:

Ther would be a subforum dedicated to requests/suggestions to the developers. Moderators wold move appropriate posts from the rest of the forum to the subforum, where the ambassadors would look them over and publish the good ones on developer channels of communication. This includes but is not limited to filing bug reports, publishing specifications for feature requests on launchpad and the wiki, and publishing on mailing lists. -Yman

4. A "report as suggestion" button:

Every post or thread would have a button that any user could press in order to report a post or thread as a suggestion and bring it to the attention of the ambassadors. -Yman

5. An "Ambassadors" tag:

A thread starter, moderator, administrator or ambassador may tag a thread with the "Ambassador" tag. The ambassadors can then view the threads in the tags page (tags > Ambassadors). Inappropriate threads may be removed by removing their "Ambassador" tag. For the sake of this task, ambassadors would receive special authority, perhaps moderator authority. -Yman

Drafts

After debating over the different proposals, this where the work on the final version starts. Each draft would have a number - One for the first, two for the second and so on.

Final Versions

Whatever is decided would become the final version. The final version would be the way the Ambassadors concept is implemented and thats what would be acted upon. The final version is also subject to change and the highest version number is what we would work with.

Applicants

ambassadors (last edited 2010-08-24 18:28:05 by 216)