On Fri, 31 Aug 2012 08:01:54 +0800 Marguerite Su <i@marguerite.su> wrote:
On Fri, Aug 31, 2012 at 3:08 AM, Andreas Jaeger <aj@suse.com> wrote:
No dead end - ask! ;) New packages should get introduced on opensuse-factory first and as part of that the submitter can ask what the best devel project would be - and then somebody can volunteer and help if needed,
Sure. but that is what I call "a lot of pain". ... I translated openSUSE into Chinese in two month, 30000+ items. but I can just submit 200 line of KDE translations in a week. ...
In a few years all translations will be in :) How do you count items? Even in lines of text it is huge.
And actually ML and IRC are the successful output of last century. The new generation prefers Instant messaging or social tools. ...
It is about informational capacity of MLs and IRC channels. They are just too slow in reaction to query, and information transfer speed is too low. Without external links you can't even have complex answers with images, diagrams and videos. New generation of Linux users is different type of users then last century Linux fans. Linux fans were technically inclined, often developers, needed only hints to solve problems, and above all they wanted to play with Linux. It is like car user that is hobby, or professional, mechanic in love with its subject. Modern Linux users don't want to know about Linux more then car driver wants to know about car. When they are hit by a problem they want it solved, without learning any bit more how-stuff-works. The only difference between them and Windows, or MAC, users is that they want ability to change oil, or replace broken part, but not farther then that.
I think there're a lot of crying about why we developers don't show up in forums.o.o or twitter.
There is, but it is actually symptom of underlying problems. When advanced users can't help beginners, that means that they are lost in all changes that happen. When they feel lost then they cry for help from those with more knowledge - developers, but then comes in your next paragraph:
If you are only available to help through your mailbox in front of your home yard or the only one telephone in your office. That help nearly means nothing in a so big world.
One developer can answer to one user, not to all that have a problem. It is also unrealistic to expect that developers will do any good if they try to help beginners. The language they speak is full of expressions that they learned after few years of college and few more practice. Translating that to daily language means explaining what those special expressions mean, which will most likely pull in more secondary explanations and finally mount to the unsolvable problem in itself. The only way to solve this is to have communication between developers and halfway educated users, some kind of interest groups, or fandoms, so that there is someone that can actually answer to all users that have a problem, write wiki, make a movie.
Actually you made an assumption that the ones who can offer help is available through ML. The Chinese "team" page in zh.o.o only got 300+ views from we had wiki to now. After I added a gtalk group into it. now its almost 3000+ views.
In short, I mean:
* Human help slows someone down if she's a powerful Google user. * We can't force the potential contributors who never use a ML or IRC in her life before to use that only to find out information which should be documented.
:) Problem is also who is going to write that docs. Example of the problem for systemd. New thing to everybody. Only few of developers understand it. Docs that were written some time ago for unknown version of openSUSE and systemd, appear to be misleading. (Yesterday, on IRC, I was in position to guess what to do with http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Systemd and user that was looking to set up test system to check is his computer ready for update. User could not get systemd running. It was missing some bit somewhere. ) Developer wrote docs once with no notion what they relate to and never updated them. No one else has knowledge to keep docs up to date. What now? It would be not a problem if that is only one subject, but that is how it happens all over the wiki. It is more rule that docs are not checked for validity when revision of underlying software is changed then exception. In other words each developer, or software title, is missing fans that will take care of details, or notify responsible person about changes, so that developer can focus on software development, but docs are updated when needed.
And also, having a layout doesn't compromise the human help but improves it. Because nowadays even maintainers don't know exactly the purpose of every repositories. They need a reference to mention too.
Even if they know, they can't be available 24/7, so reference is must have. If no one is available, at least Google will find it. (Just checked some of http://en.opensuse.org/Special:LonelyPages and Google have them. )
Marguerite
-- Regards, Rajko -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse-packaging+owner@opensuse.org