Matthew Miller <mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org> writes:
On Sun, Mar 23, 2014 at 08:34:55PM +0100, lee wrote:
> I`m somewhat surprised that the feeling of apparent desinterest of the
> makers of Fedora in what its users think seems kinda widespread under
> its users. Perhaps it`s a wrong impression; if not, it may be something
> for Fedora.next to address.
I think it's unfair impression. Some of the developers only care about their
own area, and perhaps the users of that thing but not the project overall,
sure. But overall, we care very much.
... and time and resources are limited.
The catch is: it's hard to get a good sense of what the userbase
as a whole
thinks. It's easy to conflate that with "care about what some users are
repeating very loudly on a mailing list". That's certainly _some_ input, but
it's a skewed view of the actual world.
Many of the better possible ways to measure are very expensive, but overall,
there is one which is straightforward and effective: users who represent a
large enough community will have some percentage of people willing and able
to contribute by becoming Fedora developers, and those people guide the
project through their actions.
Are users making packages substantially different from users giving
input through a mailing list? In both cases, you have a number of
users, and some of them do something, i. e. are active on the mailing
list or are active by making packages.
The ones making packages probably have more influence. Is it supposed
to be like that?
That's why we have Gnome, KDE, LXDE, and MATE-Compiz desktop
spins --
and, pointedly, not a fvwm one. If you really think that this is the
best course for Fedora, I encourage you to step up and create
one. (See <
https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Spins_Process>.)
I don`t understand why every possible choice should require making a
distribution on it`s own.
Or, if that's not really you're thing, you could step back
and focus on what
you are suggesting is a bigger problem -- getting user input into Fedora.
How could that be done better? Surveys? More user testing? An active "User
Feedback SIG"?
I think that a mailing list like this one can provide a lot of input and
that extracting it can be a problem. It`s not like all package
maintainers could read all posts here in order to figure out what users
might want.
Surveys might be a good idea, though someone would have to put them
together, and someone would have to extract the information from them.
Both of that isn`t easily done, either.
How do you currently find out what users want?
--
Fedora release 20 (Heisenbug)