launchpad-dev team mailing list archive

[Jamu Kakar <jkakar@xxxxxxxx>]

Hi,

On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 5:56 PM, C de-Avillez
<carlos.de.avillez@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> On 05/27/2011 10:21 AM, Jamu Kakar wrote:
>> On Fri, May 27, 2011 at 3:34 PM, C de-Avillez <hggdh2@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>> And this is what we are trying to address: how to find a workaround
>>> in (potentially) tens of comments. Note, we have had [1] for quite a
>>> while -- and we still cannot get it to be really used.
>>>
>>> So we get back to Rob's end point -- that we are already lost if we
>>> are going to expect 200M users to know what to do. I agree. But the
>>> only way to have this happen is if it is easier for the "we the
>>> people" part of the 200M -- the *vast* majority of them -- to reach
>>> someone that knows a bit more, and so on. Having a 'workaround'
>>> field is a _step_ to that.
>>>
>>> If we are going to expand Ubuntu usage even more explosively, we
>>> need to think on how to help the non-technical folks out there. LP
>>> is a technical resource as far as the generic Ubuntu user is
>>> concerned.
>> I think there's a fundamental flaw here.  200M users are not going to
>> use Launchpad.  In fact, they should never have to even know about
>> Launchpad.  Launchpad is for technical users (or those who are on the
>> path to becoming so).  We should make it easy for people to use and do
>> what they want, but we need to be careful to understand who our
>> audience is.
>
> Yes, this is exactly my point. The vast majority of users will most
> probably never know of LP. At the same time, we will need to have
> something(s) in between LP (and its technical audience/users) and
> the end-users.
>
> On a previous UDS we had a presentation from folks from the
> University of Waterloo (IIRC) on mining Google searches. We could
> continuously mine it looking for the most common issues, and
> adressing them (perhaps by enhancing the docs, perhaps by
> prioritising some issues-to-be-fixed).
>
> I think we can accept as given that LP will *not* be used by all.
> Based on this assumption, what can be done?

It seems that http://askubuntu.com is one part of the answer to this
issue.  I don't think it makes sense to try to make Launchpad fit this
role.  It should be a powertool for contributors to Ubuntu.  It should
be easy to learn about and use, of course, but the content will
usually require some technical knowledge to understand.

Ask Ubuntu is nice because its geared toward end users instead of
project contributors.  It could be interesting to explore better
integration capabilities between it and Launchpad.

Thanks,
J.