[SOLVED] Ubuntu Idea Storm?

[Hobbsee]

A couple of comments:

1. I'm in complete agreement with Laserjock here - if you actually read all of his posts in this thread, and comprehended them, you probably wouldn't still be arguing.

2. The people being attracted here are not the current ubuntu developers - they're prospective developers. It seems that some of the more vocal people on this thread think that it's a way of attracting the current ubuntu developers. It's not. Read it again if you need to.

3. The people on this forum really seem to have the logic that the current developers are willfully ignoring the user feedback from this forum. Let me give you a small piece of advice - even if the developers *did* read every single piece of feedback on this forum, or even this subsection, as you desire, they wouldn't suddenly have the time to implement it all - in fact, they'd have less time to implement interesting and cool things on ubuntu, due to the time spent here. Unless you've managed to clone people, or add more hours to the day, you cant really avoid this one. You can close your eyes, and wish really hard, but this hard fact still remains. It's annoying, i know - the developers wish it were possible too.

[Henrik]

I think this is a very good idea.

The forums (for example) do contain a great deal of information about user's experience with Ubuntu, but there is simply too much information for the development team to digest. A website that encapsulated the main ideas and had a voting system that would bring prominence to the main issues would be very useful.

[gweaver]

Slightly off topic but...

Is there anyone who actively trawls the forums for common requests and issues and then distills them and passes them on to developers?

Should a role be created to do this?

[23meg]

Regarding common issues, it's part of what the forum ambassadors team has set out do, but it hasn't really been done so far, mostly because we've been busy doing other things and interest and participation in the team has been weak.

Common requests are those that get a lot of attention in the Idea Pool forum. We'd like to help people write specs and find interested developers to implement those after some discussion, but so far only five or so proper specs have come out of the hundreds of threads in the forum.

We'll fine tune the process and stress further the importance of actually taking the steps to get things done, once the Hardy development phase kicks off.

[Kilz]

3. The people on this forum really seem to have the logic that the current developers are willfully ignoring the user feedback from this forum. Let me give you a small piece of advice - even if the developers *did* read every single piece of feedback on this forum, or even this subsection, as you desire, they wouldn't suddenly have the time to implement it all - in fact, they'd have less time to implement interesting and cool things on ubuntu, due to the time spent here. Unless you've managed to clone people, or add more hours to the day, you cant really avoid this one. You can close your eyes, and wish really hard, but this hard fact still remains. It's annoying, i know - the developers wish it were possible too.

You are addressing something new here. No one has posted about working on any specific thing. Also the reasons why the developers do not interact has not been brought up.
I have this feeling some are posting simply to defend the actions of developers. They are not under attack. But the posting, at least that done by me is only about the feasibility of a site that would require them to pay attention to the wants and desires of users.
That they do not already do so leads me to believe they dont value user opinions. That a site devoted to it is a waste of time.
This has nothing to do with wanting them to work on any specific feature. In fact I have not requested any or filled out any specifications, posts, wiki entries or anything else for features for Gutsy or Gutsy +1.

To re-rephrase, 90% of specs are "tossed out" because they're not really specs, not because nobody wants to listen to people who wrote them.
Quoting for emphasis.

Demanding technical perfection from ideas is a way of limiting them.

[23meg]

Demanding technical perfection from ideas is a way of limiting them.

The specification system isn't for voicing ideas; it's for specifying in well defined steps the things the person or team implementing a feature should do. The "tossed" specs I'm talking about aren't just imperfect; they're almost devoid of substance. I can cite examples if you like. Some basic understanding of how things work and what exactly a feature specification is is required, not perfection.

"Ideas" should be posted to the Idea Pool forum, or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IdeaPool, and then once (or if) they mature into implementable plans, specs should be written for them.

[Kilz]

The specification system isn't for voicing ideas; it's for specifying in well defined steps the things the person or team implementing a feature should do. The "tossed" specs I'm talking about aren't just imperfect; they're almost devoid of substance. I can cite examples if you like. Some basic understanding of how things work and what exactly a feature specification is is required, not perfection.

"Ideas" should be posted to the Idea Pool forum, or https://wiki.ubuntu.com/IdeaPool, and then once (or if) they mature into implementable plans, specs should be written for them.

Please, give me a link to a few of the incomplete ones.
Just a question.
How is the average ubuntu user, who may never have developed anything, going to know enough to write a step by step plan for development? If so many are imperfect are you sure that the person writing them understands what is required?

[23meg]

Please, give me a link to a few of the incomplete ones.

First, read https://wiki.ubuntu.com/FeatureSpecifications and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/SpecSpec if you're not familiar with them.

According to those pages, a valid specification has to have a wiki page or some other resource where the job of actually specifying things is done, right?

The specs I'll link to, just like the "90%" of all specs (a figure I threw off the top of my head), have no such page, no assignee or drafter set; hence my calling them "not really specs". Their URLs aren't set; they just consist of a summary. The users who wrote them are probably under the impression that the specification system is intended as a "feature request" tracker, and that the request is to be written into the "Summary" field in the form of "Do this, do that" and that's it, the job is done. It's not; it's not even started.

Note that not every spec with no URL set is a "non-spec"; it may very well be in the process of pre-drafting discussion, which isn't reflected in Launchpad.

https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubu...pec/virtualbox
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/kome
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubu.../wireless-ease
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubu...c/win-exe-help
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubu...gets-in-ubuntu
https://blueprints.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+spec/sata-dvd

How is the average ubuntu user, who may never have developed anything, going to know enough to write a step by step plan for development? If so many are imperfect are you sure that the person writing them understands what is required?

The non-technical user who of course doesn't have the hang of writing blueprints is meant to post their ideas to the Idea Pool forum. Then, if their ideas are feasible, and once they mature, the forum ambassadors team will assist them in writing blueprints. We're here to bridge gap you're pointing to.

[TuxMux]

Back to the subject, I have started to work on the website.

Based on joomla 1.5(RC3), the main lines were pretty trivial to put in place thanks to its powerful framework. Basic voting is on, and I will work on idea submission next.

In a few days/weeks I will put this online to get some feedback while I'm developping it. Especially I hope someone will help me on the design side

I will create a new thread in a more appropriate section then.


See ya!