Talk:Ask

This page contains Discussions about the Ask LibreOffice site.

= Suggested Discussion Topics =

There are number of different topics that have been proposed for discussion:


 * Will people use IRC?
 * What's a good way to hash-out rules for the site?
 * What can we do to improve the site, increase conversion of question-askers to question-answerers, etc..?
 * What should we do with old questions?
 * Closing vs. Resolving
 * What about current stock response "Try latest build, then file bug" ?
 * What should we do with 'abandoned' questions? (similar to 'old questions')
 * How do we deal with impatient users?
 * What do we think about Answers that require the user to install additional proprietary software?
 * Instead of saying "Do X with PhotoShop...", we could say "Do X with the GIMP"
 * We support LibreOffice on proprietary OSes (MS-Windows, OSX, and perhaps iOS in the future), but our goal is still to promote FLOSS
 * Better docs on User Profiles and in particular, resetting the User Profile
 * Come up with notes about how to tell users to do this
 * Why they should reset the profile
 * How to reset the profile
 * What to do next if resetting the profile doesn't work
 * Collaboration with Documentation: Take content from popular Questions/Answers and put it into LibreOffice's official documentation?
 * Collaboration with the QA/Team:
 * How can get get bugs off the Ask site and into FDO for them quickly? (and preserve all useful info)
 * Share docs/best practices information?
 * Share personel? (encourage volunteers to try some of the other work)

= Past Discussions =

Ask mailing list
Question: Do we want our own mailing list?


 * April 2013 - Per discussion on the Website list, we're going to try using the Website list for now.

= Current Proposals =

Proposals by individuals or groups of individuals for specific changes/rules for the Ask site. These often might come out of discussions as described above, or conversations on the ML, on IRC, or even on the Ask site itself!

(we might want to split this out into its own page if it gets big enough as a section)

Proposal: Dealing with old Questions (I guess this is actually a few different proposals wrapped into one) (Qubit (talk))
 * Problem: People abandon questions and don't return to answer our inquiries for more information or to select the correct/best Answer
 * Solution: Provide a set of guidelines for when and how we should Resolve or Close-out questions.


 * Closing questions: After a NEEDINFO request, a user will get a check-in ping no sooner than 1 week later, and then have their question closed no sooner than 2 weeks later as ABANDONED (assuming the user never replies).

For example, if a user ask a question on January 1st and gets a NEEDINFO reply on January 2nd, by January 9th (1 week after the NEEDINFO ping) if we don't hear from the user we should poke them back in a friendly manner, such as:

@user --- Hi, just checking-in with you. Are you still looking for an Answer to your Question?

If January 23rd rolls around (2 weeks after the check-in ping) and we still haven't heard anything from the user, we should CLOSE the question as "Question not relevant or outdated" (Note: I'd really like to add a different closing status, like "question abandoned", but that's not going to happen anytime soon)

Proposal: Joren gets to wear a QA Hat on the Ask site (Qubit (talk))
 * Problem: (None -- this is an improvement)
 * Solution: Joren is such as nice guy (and a long-term member of the QA/Team) that he deserves a QA Hat to wear on the Ask site. Speaking more generally, it would be nice to have more than just our badges and karma to reward our dedicated volunteers. It would be helpful to know, for example, that joren can answer QA and QA Team questions.

Proposal: @reply emails should be enabled by default (set to: Instant) (Qubit (talk))
 * Problem: Users don't respond to updates to questions, perhaps because they haven't subscribed to read email replies when their questions (or questions on which they have commented) get updates.
 * Solution: Enable @reply emails by default so that users see the new post and will visit the site and engage with our merry band of volunteers.

Other related material?
What else is related to discussions?


 * Notes or thoughts on how we should hold discussions?
 * Rules for discussions