15 Nov 2011
We have a DevRoom at FOSDEM!
LibreOffice has a DevRoom at FOSDEM!
FOSDEM is the premier open source developers conference, and the most significant developers conference for LibreOffice after the annual LibreOffice conference. Please find time to come if you can. Talk submissions about the LibreOffice project is welcome: development, infrastructure, marketing, code overviews, specific features etc. but must have a focus on, and be accessible to developers.
Here’s our Call for Papers: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Marketing/Events/Fosdem2012
The Libre Office bug submission system is itself broken. There is no use submitting bugs because no one cares and no one responds. I want to help and can troubleshoot the problem. I wish Document Foundation spend some time on bug handling and interaction with actual users.
Totally agree! There should be a clear system that reflects the number of errors, statistics, problem solving, etc.
Here are some ideas on how the bug handling system could be more user friendly:
1. add a page view index to each bug page. Since comments or reactions to bug reports are not so common at least acknowledging that someone has read it would decreasing the feeling that submitting a but is a waste of time a bit (that is, if someone actually reads the bug).
2. create a “bug blog” which highlights a new bug every one or two weeks, gets feedback from some developer and engages users. It could involve “success stories” from bug reports and user suggestions. If you show that user contributions (from people who are keen users but not themselves programmers) are of use then user participation will increase.
3. create a targeted blog for each application in the Libre Office suite. Post previews on upcoming features, ask for targeted user feedback on small parts of the application and guide users on how they can become more active. Do user polls on features.
4. Revamp the scripting system in Libre Office with user friendliness in mind. Userscripts and Stylish for Firefox have a strong user community and the threshhold for participation is very low which is a great thing. Make it easy for users to participate and solve their own usage problems in ways that can be reused easily.
Note: I’m using bug handling in a very wide sense here, because much that currently is forced into your bug report system are things that should properly be processed in other ways (user interaction, scripting issues, and so on) but isn’t because those other pathways are not there.