On Thursday 18 March 2010 15:11:06 Sascha 'saigkill' Manns wrote:
Hello Mates,
inspired by other Threads, i think we should clarify what are the Goal of OWN is? --> Just for ppl who are active in the Community (read planet and Mailinglists, Forums every day) --> Just for new ppl who doesn't read and know the planet and MLs --> For ppl outside? --> Or an mix of all 3 Groups.
What are todo? Place there your proposals:
I believe that at the very least, it has one purpose for our own community.
One of the blatant issues we had in the past, and still have today to some
extent, is the lack of communication and information between people who work
1) in different areas (development, packaging, helping out, translation,
marketing, artwork, ...)
2) in different channels (mailing-lists, forums, IRC, wiki)
3) in different languages
If I remember correctly, that was actually the initial idea about the weekly
news: to provide a compilation of the interesting things that happened in all
those areas and in all channels, in order to keep everyone updated on the
things that matter.
Translations are a very important feature, in order to address issue #3 as
above.
So, if we consider the weekly news to also be some sort of marketing tool,
which it can be indeed, we mustn't forget about its primary purpose, which is
a service to our own community.
We indeed need to investigate why there aren't more people reading it.
How about a poll, or just asking around, say on the opensuse and opensuse-
project mailing-lists as well as on our forums ? There is some work involved
in posting it everywhere (especially the forums, if we consider the non-
English ones as well) and following the replies, but we would be asking at the
source.
- were you aware that it exists ?
- do you read it ?
- if yes, what should we improve most ?
* layout
* content
explain: ...
- if you don't read it, why ? explain: ...
Something along the lines of the above... although it is really critical to
ask the good questions in order to have feedback
- that isn't too difficult to digest (and use): e.g. ask questions that are
precise
- that still permit enough free form to collect information that wouldn't fit
in questions that are too tight (not just checkboxes)
It's quite some work, but is very likely to give a very good indication on why
there aren't more people reading it. It is quite possible that the problem is
just that many people don't know about it (needs more spread and publicity
about it), or that very simple changes (a more appealing design, have more
inline content rather than having to click many links) would already prove to
be a big leverage.
I always find it problematic to only think about what we could do to improve
something in an "in-breed" form (the people who do it think about how to
improve it). It is very useful, of course, but shouldn't be the only source of
information.
cheers
--
-o) Pascal Bleser