<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Mar 15, 2011 at 4:33 PM, Jacek Antonelli <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jacek@kokuaviewer.org">jacek@kokuaviewer.org</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
At our meetup last week, we discussed making some changes to our<br>
project communication channels (forums, issue tracker, mailing list,<br>
etc.), to make things more organized and easier to follow. We decided<br>
that a good first step is to define a policy about how each channel<br>
should be used, and to make that policy clear to our users. I'm<br>
working on that policy, but I have a few things I would like to get<br>
some feedback on:<br>
<br>
* What should users do with crash logs? I'm assuming that we'll set<br>
up a proper crash report collection system eventually, but people need<br>
to know what to do in the meantime. Should they file an issue, or<br>
email us, or what? I'd say that reproducable crashes should be<br>
reported on the issue tracker, but what about random/unknown cause<br>
crashes?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Setting up the crash reporter--at least for Windows--is mostly a matter of collecting them somewhere. It'd help immensely to have this available, as it's very hard to debug crashes without crash dumps on Win (most people will attach their log rather than Imprudence.dmp). I'd rather tell people to attach them to redmine in the meantime, even if they can't reproduce it. If nothing else it could give us clues on problem areas. </div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
* How should users provide feedback about a release (stable or<br>
experimental)? In the past we created a forum thread for each release,<br>
but I think that should change. I'd say that bugs should be reported<br>
on the issue tracker as usual, but other feedback (questions, general<br>
complaints, praise, etc.) should be posted as a comment on the blog<br>
post announcing the release. Does that sound alright, or can you think<br>
of a better way?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Every bug should be reported on the issue tracker. Let's keep it consolidated. Mandatory fields should be at least version (maybe we could have two pull downs--one for month and the other for day--for reporting for the experimentals?) and Help > About Imprudence. I added a button to the About window that copies people's system info to their clipboards, so it should be easier for them to provide that info to us now. Personally, I like having the issue tracker be the only place we look for bugs. Sifting through the forums takes up too much of my time. </div>
<div><br></div><div>What I *don't* want to do is have our issue tracker turn into, say, LL's, where issues are closed because they don't have enough info in them or because they aren't read fully or just because they've been open for a long time. I'd rather have a "messy" issue tracker than an unfriendly one. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I like the blog for providing feedback on releases since people don't have to register, but I don't have any opinion other than that. </div><div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
* What should users do if they experience a problem and aren't sure<br>
whether it is a bug with the viewer, something wrong with their<br>
system, or user error? I was thinking perhaps they should:<br>
<br>
1. First, check the knowledgebase/Q&A (when we get it set up).<br>
2. If the knowledgebase doesn't have a solution, get help from<br>
other users/our support team by posting in a "Tech Support" forum<br>
section or using the inworld group chat.<br>
3. If it turns out to be a bug in the viewer, check the issue<br>
tracker for an existing bug report, and file a new bug report if there<br>
is none yet. </blockquote><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
What are your thoughts on this?<br></blockquote><div><br></div><div>My thought's still the same as at the meeting: send users to one webpage, then let them pick from that page what option suits their needs best, and go from there. Here're some use cases:</div>
<div><br></div></div><blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div>Frank crashed in Imprudence. He wants to help us fix the crash, but he doesn't know what to do, so he goes to the website and sees a link for "Info and Support" and under it some helpful text, such as "Have a question? Want to provide feedback? Need help?" Frank clicks the link, which takes him to our support page. On the page, he sees several categories in large bold letters, each signifying part of the site. For example:</div>
</div><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>* Ask a question (knowledge base)</div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>* Report a bug (redmine)</div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>
* Talk to other users (forums)</div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>* Documentation (wiki)</div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>He wants to report a bug, but he's not sure how. He clicks on "Report a bug" anyway, and thankfully he's taken to a page with images which shows him how a proper bug report should look. He registers on redmine and posts what he knows. </div>
<div><br></div><div>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br></div></div><div class="gmail_quote"><div>Anne doesn't know if Imprudence has breast physics and wants to find out before she downloads it. She goes to the site looking for a list of features but really doesn't want to scroll through release notes to find the answer to her question. Impatient, she clicks the "have a question?" link and is taken to the support page, where she then clicks "Ask a question". The knowledge base (which codie setup) is good at taking feedback in the form of questions and spitting out answers. She types in "Does Imprudence have breast physics?" and the top link is a knowledge base article about the feature, which shows how to toggle it, change settings, etc. Satisfied, she downloads Imprudence. </div>
<div><br></div><div>~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~</div><div><br></div><div>Jerry is a developer interested in compiling viewers and submitting patches to improve them. He doesn't need fancy-shmancy support pages (that's what "man" is for) but he does need to know how to compile the viewer and submit code. He immediately goes to "Documentation," which has takes him to the main wiki page, which is full of his kind of geek lingo. He clicks the "how to compile" link and in short order has a working build environment setup. If he wanted, he could've put "compiling" into the knowledge base search and gotten to the same info, but Jerry has a deep mistrust of support pages. </div>
<div><br></div></div></blockquote>Hope that makes sense.<div><br></div><div>-- MC<br><blockquote class="webkit-indent-blockquote" style="margin: 0 0 0 40px; border: none; padding: 0px;"><div class="gmail_quote"><div><br>
</div>
</div></blockquote><div class="gmail_quote"><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
<br>
- Jacek<br>
_______________________________________________<br>
ImpDev mailing list<br>
<a href="mailto:ImpDev@lists.imprudenceviewer.org">ImpDev@lists.imprudenceviewer.org</a><br>
<a href="http://lists.imprudenceviewer.org/listinfo.cgi/impdev-imprudenceviewer.org" target="_blank">http://lists.imprudenceviewer.org/listinfo.cgi/impdev-imprudenceviewer.org</a><br>
</blockquote></div><br><br clear="all"><br>-- <br>"Work is love made visible." — Kahlil Gibran<br><br>"We will not walk in fear, one of another. We will not be driven by fear into an age of unreason if we dig deep in our history and doctrine and remember that we are not descended from fearful men, not from men who feared to write, to speak, to associate and to defend causes which were for the moment unpopular. We can deny our heritage and our history, but we cannot escape responsibility for the result. There is no way for a citizen of the Republic to abdicate his responsibility." -- Edward R. Murrow, March 9, 1954<br>
</div>