[libreoffice-design] Re: [tdf-discuss] Re: RfD: Non-corporate user representation?

Hello Mike,

Le samedi 17 janvier 2015 à 22:02 +0000, Mike Hall a écrit :
> On 21/12/2014 13:18, Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> > > > Would a different attitude/culture, something like
> > > > "Users 1st", help to mitigate that?
> > Users do not dictate what developers do. That's not how Free and Open
> > Source Software works, as "the culture change" entails that users would
> > tell developers and contributors what to do. What would be the
> > incentive for anyone to do that? I have a day job. Many others do. Why
> > would I receive directives from random people?:-)
> >
> > > > At the same time it would be good
> > > > to define the user's implicit responsibilities resulting from their
> > > > choice to use the product. To make the difference clearer, it's not a
> > > > case that the user needs to 'Join us!' as on the Help > Send
> > > > Feedback...    page, rather it would be an accepted fact that all
> > > > users are automatically a member of the community simply by virtue of
> > > > being users.
> > Users are users. They get rights from the software freedom conveyed by
> > the licenses we use. They do not get anything else, unless they want to
> > become contributors. Anything else is toxic for the community and
> > profoundly demotivational (btw: we have ten years of experience on that
> > inside OpenOffice.org)
> >
> > > > To make this change of emphasis visible I'm thinking of an extension
> > > > to the    Help > Send Feedback...    page, also ideally putting that
> > > > content into the main help file so users can see it without going
> > > > online.
> > > >
> > > > Below is a very rough draft, based in part on Thorsten's excellent
> > > > summary above. I'd be happy to put more effort into a better version
> > > > if gets support. Keeping this kind of text simple and inviting is
> > > > always very difficult.
> > > > ==============================================================================
> > > >   Welcome to the LibreOffice Community
> > > >
> > > > The LibreOffice community includes all users. Everyone is welcome,
> > > > whether as a user or if you are able to become more involved.
> > How about: "Everyone is welcome: see how you can become involved today!"
> > Otherwise  you keep on having this distinction where users are not
> > encouraged to become contributors.
> OK, I can spend some time on this now and will work though the design 
> group as suggested.

Thanks! This is really appreciated and perhaps more that you could
guess. (See my other answer specifically on the design list). Only
answering your points below for now...

> I'm still keen on a 'users first' approach and an acceptance that users 
> are 'in' the community by virtue of being users. It's semantic I 
> suppose, since in some sense users are clearly part of the wider LO 
> community.

Yes indeed. 

>  The idea actually comes from my local hospital, which has the 
> byline 'patients first' on all its correspondence and documentation. The 
> patient is considered to be part of the team rather than someone to whom 
> things are done. In my personal experience it makes a huge difference to 
> how 'users' feel. It doesn't though make much difference to medical 
> processes and treatment. So, by a similar analogy, I don't see why you 
> would expect a 'users first' approach to change current processes 
> significantly. BUT, in my view there is a considerable potential upside 
> because it will make the user feel more valued, it will make the step to 
> deeper involvement seem smaller even though in practice it's just the 
> same, and it will probably make it slightly more likely that users will 
> take that step, which is what we all want. I understand that it might 
> seem threatening having thought about the relationship in a different 
> way for 10 years. I expect hospital staff felt the same when the idea 
> was first floated there, and their history is much longer than that. So, 
> I plan to draft stuff along 'user first' lines and see how it looks. If 
> it still seems too awful, it will no doubt get changed before 
> implementation.


Sorry for not having been clear. I meant that we spent 10 years
practicing the "Putting users first" way and we got bad results; if
anything Free Software projects do not work well with this notion. The
"fear" we were mentioning is based on something we witnessed before:
instead of encouragement (which I understand is what you're betting on)
we develop a sense of entitlement while at the same time discouraging
contributors. 

Going back on what you would like to do in terms of design: this is
important as we are constantly interested in gaining new contributors
out of users. So what you're doing could be quite helpful and useful.
Looking forward tot this!


Best,

Charles.


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