Re: Launchpad janitor / expiry of unanswered questions

[Curtis Hovey <curtis.hovey@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 2008-07-17 at 12:07 +0100, Gavin Panella wrote:
> Hi Hobbsee,
> 
> I mailed the LP devs internally about this, and Martin Pool correctly  
> suggested that we should have the discussion on launchpad-users, so  
> I'll summarise what's been said so far, then things can go from there.
> 
> The conversation so far, which I've tried to edit for clarity:
> 
> Gavin Panella (me) started:
> > Hobbsee is mentioning that it's difficult to reach the LP devs via  
> > Answers. Looking at it, very few of us are answer contacts for  
> > Launchpad itself.
> >
> > If we all became Answer Contacts for Launchpad, would this help get  
> > questions answered?
> >
> > Is there anything else tangible we can do to make this better?
> >
> > Is Hobbsee's observation not actually a problem?
> 
> 
> Julian Edwards replied:
> > I would rather see questions triaged through someone, maybe Joey's  
> > team,
> > before developers get involved.
> > ...
> > Having said that, I am an answer contact for Soyuz as it's fairly  
> > low volume.
> 
> Martin Pool:
> > Looking at the answers [Hobbsee] linked:
> >
> > * some of them are misplaced or confused (how to install/uninstall  
> > Ubuntu)
> > * some are things that really need help from a Launchpad admin, I
> > think - like removing content or an account - or at least a brief
> > reply to say you're not going to do them
> > * some really are questions and need someone dedicated to answering
> > them (if answering them is a good idea) - or maybe to be put into a
> > place where they will be answered by other users
> > * some are bugs
> 
> 
> Tom Berger:
> > Regular traiging by a responsible group, with regular reports on the
> > status of the questions queue (maybe in the team meeting?)
> >
> > We should also arrange for an announcer, similar to the one we have
> > for bugs in #launchpad.
> > ...
> > Responding quickly to user's queries is something we should be
> > able to do well (we've got near universal coverage).
> 
> 
> That's all so far.
> 
> My feeling is that this is a matter of (un)awareness rather than devs  
> ignoring users. Martin's comment shows that we are missing things,  
> and, regardless of our intent (or lack of), this gets perceived as the  
> devs ignoring users. I like Tom's ideas about regular reports and an  
> announcer, and I think doing one or both of those would help.
> 
> I've added an item about this to the agenda for today's developer  
> meeting.

I think the Release Team should be answer contacts. Their first
responsibility is to do triage *by assigning* questions to developers
from the right team. Questions will not expire if they are assigned. 

I would have said this was the Foundations Team's responsibility, but
most of the questions are not pertinent to the team. Maybe that is the
problem, questions are not being reassigned to the correct project, like
launchpad-code or launchpad-translation.

-- 
__Curtis C. Hovey_________
http://launchpad.net/

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