On 4/30/05, Marc Chamberlin wrote:
Again speaking as an engineer, and a developer of my own products, I have come to the conclusion over the years, that the single most important feature that any company/developer can provide is a feedback infrastructure for their users. How else, as an engineer, can I learn what the problems are that a user is facing? Managers, engineers, and marketeers must all have some mechanism in place to allow them to learn where they have been successful and where they are failing. I believe so strongly in having feedback mechanisms that I will NOT work for any company that does not provide them for its users. And I will not repeat buy a product that does not provide such a feature. I don't expect support to be free, but I DO expect the ability to provide feedback to be. Every product I have developed has that built in as part of its help system and my own product web pages go out of their way to provide feedback forms, wiki wiki sites etc.
Novel/SuSE may provide other alternative means of giving them feedback, but I assumed this news group is also one of the ways to reach them. Since it is being hosted on their domain I presume they have people monitoring this group. Hence I threw this particular rock, in the hopes that either by joining a clamor of voices complaining about their marketing strategy/policy, on SuSE Pro, or by starting such a ruckus, we might eventually get them to reconsider and address this issue. Newsgroups are nice for users who have a complaint as it can serve as a rallying point, getting like minded people together and bring attention to getting a problem solved. Novel is taking advantage of its power users in such a group as this, to offload the need for support back onto the users themselves, but I don't think that should be the soul purpose of this group. We users should take advantage of it as well and let Novell/SuSE know when they are making a mistake or angering us because of their decisions and policies.
I have looked around on Novell's website for their feedback mechanisms and yes they do provide some, but not good ones really. They like a lot of companies want to tie feedback in with support (for which there usually is a cost) or assume a customer wants to use it for pre-sales/marketing purposes. I would like it to be much easier and more obvious as to how to give them feedback, so as to simply give them a heads up, for example, on some technical issue or idea, rather than having to hunt around so hard on their website in order to find a way to do so. If I were in their position, I would have a direct feedback link/form right off of their home page in such an obvious way that it shows that THE COMPANY DEEPLY CARES about how their users are experiencing their products. I know a lot of companies fear being overwhelmed with complaints and people wanting free support, but IMHO it is far better to be overwhelmed than to be in the dark and oblivious. I don't expect them to respond to each person individually, just accept the information, analyze and categorize it, and use it in setting their future goals, products and direction.
One thing I want to caution everyone against, is do not discourage people from complaining on a newsgroup, such as this one, about things that are troubling them about the SuSE products. Even if the complaint is redundant and has been raised before, the more people complain the higher it raises the priority to get that issued fixed and/or addressed. If someone comes on strong, after becoming very frustrated over something, try to look beyond the emotion and examine the root cause. Look for solutions together, and refrain from badgering them.
I really hope Novel is monitoring this group for their own sake, having feedback is so darn vital and valuable it is not funny. They would be wise to even have someone officially represent them, monitoring and responding from time to time, on this news group...
Marc...
Novell officially does NOT monitor this list although several of their employees choose to unofficially hang out here. You need to use the official feedback form (which for SuSE Pro anyone can use.) I just googled for "suse feedback". The very first hit was the official (english) feedback page. http://www.suse.de/cgi-bin/feedback.cgi HTH Greg -- Greg Freemyer The Norcross Group Forensics for the 21st Century