Forum support: your help is needed!

[marja]

Hi everyone,

Everybody here knows that doktor5000 does the largest part of forum support: without him, many users wouldn't have found a solution for their problems.

The workload has increased: doktor5000 does 30-40 posts per day and he doesn't have time for security updates, bugfixes and documentation and stuff. Worse, in this way he doesn't even have time left for a funnier part of real life and some spare time.

So your help is very welcome!

Please sign up in this thread if you want to help.

Doktor5000 will give you some explanation about how to do proper, structured and sustainable support and also to be en point and will give some training if needed.

[maat]

He's doing a fantastic job as the ultimate support guy... But helping all the users alone is exhausting... doing that job will finish with him killed

We need more people to help and support mageia users...

You don't need to be as skilled as doctor5000 is... Even if you just know the basics you can help newcomers.

Just that can give a noticeable relief to doctor5000... And even if you don't have plenty of time... Giving just one hour per week can bring an improvement...

[finid]

I've not been very active here, but this sounds like a good time to lend a hand or two.

I am available to help, not as much as doctor5000 at this time, but I can chip in about an hour/day.

Could be less, could be more.

--
finid

[jankusanagi]

I'll try to help when I can

[Ken-Bergen]

It would seem the Doktor is his own worst enemy.

There have been many times that I've written a reply to a question but I always recheck the thread before posting it and nine times out of ten the Doktor has replied while I slowly typed.

[macxi]

Marja,

I admire the hard work you (and Doktor5000, Wobo and many other) are doing, a real community support, with high technical quality.
Congratulations. I'm really impressed. You are answering hundreds of questions.

I think that in this week's launch Mageia everything is very difficult, there are many questions and many new users.

I agree that you need of the help from other people, but maybe this is not enough.

I think it's important to have help texts for beginners, in the wiki and forum.

One of the reasons I use the Mageia is because I believe it can be used by common people, without much technical knowledge.

I have no expertise. But I found a way to help editing "help texts" for beginners.

I have edited help texts (in Wiki MandrivaBrasil and Wiki MageiaBrasil) mainly for 3 basic tasks:

1 - Install Mageia
2 - Install the media (software repository)
3 -Install the software.

I edited these texts for the Forum and Wiki MandrivaBrasil and I copied them to the forum and Wiki MageiaBrasil.

- Simple answers to simple questions. Example: How do I do this? Answer: Read the directions from the wiki (see link). These questions, I and many others can answer.

- Answers complicated, only people with technical knowledge can answer (and that should not overloading with these tasks simpler, that one wiki can do).

Currently I'm not getting much help, but I can try, but I must take much more time than the Ken-Bergen, because English is not my native language.

I really want to help in this task of editing help texts for beginners, mainly to avoid the overhead of you again at the launch of Mageia 3 next year.

The Mageia becoming a very popular distro, so I hope that as soon as possible, Mageia have more people helping, and lots of help documentation to support, especially for novice users.

Cheers
Macxi


Note: The various problems with the upgrade of the "Mageia 1" to "Mageia 2" seem to have been very stressful. Perhaps in the "Megeia 3" this option to upgrade the version of the Mageia with "graphics mode" should be removed. Maybe this can help prevent new users get confused by the apparent simplicity of this option, which, in my opinion, should be done only by advanced users. The option to update the "graphics mode" is complex and if not done properly can generate a lot of mistakes (as I have mentioned here). Who wants, can upgrade version with the "text mode".

[marja]

You don't need to be as skilled as doctor5000 is... Even if you just know the basics you can help newcomers.

Just that can give a noticeable relief to doctor5000... And even if you don't have plenty of time... Giving just one hour per week can bring an improvement...

Thanks, maat, for your wise words

I am available to help, not as much as doctor5000 at this time, but I can chip in about an hour/day.
finid

Great, thanks finid

I'll try to help when I can

Thanks to you, too, jankusanagi

There have been many times that I've written a reply to a question but I always recheck the thread before posting it and nine times out of ten the Doktor has replied while I slowly typed.

Much less chance for that to happen now, he can't write 30-40 posts in 15 minutes. Also, there are ways to devide the work

I really want to help in this task of editing help texts for beginners, mainly to avoid the overhead of you again at the launch of Mageia 3 next year.

Thanks for your expertise and your way of helping, macxi, I'm looking forward to seeing this all in our English wiki
About the upgrade problems: here is a list of upgrade bugs https://bugs.mageia.org/show_bug.cgi?id=3342 (some bugs might have been filed, but not added to that tracker). If a bug is valid for you, too, please make a comment in it that that bug hit you.

Cheers,
marja

[madeye]

I've got some experience with Linux, and will lend a hand whenever I can. Albeit until now that's not been very often (with mageia that is). It seems someone beat me to it when I found a topic I could help with
On the other hand I only started using mageia like 2 weeks ago. Time will bring forth the power in you... Or something like that I guess.

I was browsing through the wiki to see what kind of documentation is listed there. Specifically I was looking for installation instructions for newcomers.
If any of you are familiar with arch linux you may know about the beginners guide. It's a really great guide to installation, but it is of course based on the arch installer which is a bit different. Maybe a version for mageia could be interesting?
I know it would be a lot of work and whether it is needed here I don't know.

[marja]

I've got some experience with Linux, and will lend a hand whenever I can.

Thanks to you too, madeye

I was browsing through the wiki to see what kind of documentation is listed there. Specifically I was looking for installation instructions for newcomers.

Did you see https://wiki.mageia.org/en/First_step_with_Linux_and_Mageia and https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Installation_of_Mageia_in_dual_boot_with_Windows, too? They were written with newcomers in mind.
Apart from that, there is http://doc.mageia.org/content/index.html that contains screenshots and the related help texts for the DVD installer. Note that it refers to more screens than anybody will see while installing. Depending on your hardware and the choices you make while installing, you won't see some or even many of those screens.

[madeye]

The first two I had seen. But not the last one.
No Worries. I will find a way to help.

[doktor5000]

FWIW, there's also https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Missing_documentation for documentation which is needed urgently. Feel free to add documentation which you think is needed the most or would be frequently needed, and please have a look at the documentation linked there and feel free to improve it.

[marja]

FWIW, there's also https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Missing_documentation for documentation which is needed urgently. Feel free to add documentation which you think is needed the most or would be frequently needed, and please have a look at the documentation linked there and feel free to improve it.

Thanks, doktor5000.

In your hurry, you forgot to say something else to the people who replied in this thread
But no worries, they are not evil , they won't run away because you're too overloaded and tired to tell them you're glad with their help.

[doktor5000]

Totally sorry, please excuse me

I'm absolutely glad with any help offered, and to be honest, i didn't take this for granted, even if that may seem so from the absence of replies from me.
Will come back here later after the meeting this evening about forums organisation.

[doktor5000]

Just a short status update: During the reactivation/reorganisation of the helpers group, we already gained 3 new members who applied by themselves, 3 of the original members already replied and said they want to help and just needed a call or something like that, and i've made everyone who replied here and expressed that he's willing to help a member of the helper group.

This means that you can now edit/move/merge posts, adjust thread titles, apply code tags where necessary, but only in Basic support subforum. But please remember - with great powers comes great responsibility.
Hoping for the best

[dubigrasu]

Oh yes, The Doctor. He does all this and that and then some, no doubt about it.
I think he is one of the best thing that could happen to Mageia so to speak.
But then again he also has a gift in discouraging people when trying to help.
It worked on me anyway...

[maat]

Sorry for you... see the disclaimer in his signature. It may not have been on purpose

But please note this topic has been started to see how we can provide a better help to mageia users without killing the doctor.

So as this team is being built my belief is that we'd better encourage them or at least give this team a little bit of time to demonstrate its worth

[doktor5000]

Another status update: https://ml.mageia.org/wwsympa-wrapper.f ... 00017.html

Or for those who don't like the sympa anti-spam features, here's the content of maats mail:

Hi Gents & Ladies,

2 points for this mail summary:

Election results
1st Meeting


Elections:
We have at last voted on team election.

Here are the results :

https://epoll.mageia.org/vote/XCZDg3S9

We have now :

1 "team leader" : me ( at your service )

3 "assistants" (Girls first, then a->z) :

marja van waes (aka marja)
florian hubold (aka doktor5000) - assistant
karel roth (aka isadora) - assistant

1st Meeting:

Here are the logs or our 1st meeting after election (in 2 sessions):

http://meetbot.mageia.org/mageia-forums ... 18.01.html
http://meetbot.mageia.org/mageia-forums ... 19.29.html


As a summary:

We need to complete the team:

Helpers (as much as we can recruit)
PHP/PHPBB Hackers

I'm going to check for inactive moderators and set them back to standard members 1st feature that we agreed to put on "urgent" track : [SOLVED] button mod We have a few discussions to complete:

Timeslot for meetings
"Organizing" the chaos... making clear boundaries for teams responsibilities (admins, global moderators, helpers...)

(And i add we still need to advance in writing policies)

Thanks all,

Maât

And as an addendum, my comment:

And, most importantly, we now have a public TODO/open points
list so that anybody can view and track progress:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forums_todo_ ... oints_list

[tom_]

Please sign up in this thread if you want to help.

Hi all,

I'll try to help as I can

Tom

[doktor5000]

Ok, could you add information in which form exactly? Doing support in forums and helping other users troubleshoot their problems, or helping with forums organisation or both?

[tom_]

I'm working as developer (unlikely not on linux) and during working hours
I often have some free minuts that I can use to check the forum
and possibly give some short answer to the users.

I can't understand what you mean with 'forum organisation';
if it is somethings I can do often in a few minuts
(like formatting user messages or moderate/close/join threads )
I can afford it.

If it is partecipate to meetings or do some development
I can't assure my help

[doktor5000]

I can't understand what you mean with 'forum organisation';
if it is somethings I can do often in a few minuts
(like formatting user messages or moderate/close/join threads )
I can afford it.

If it is partecipate to meetings or do some development I can't assure my help

Partly ...
If you want to do some basic moderation, i could add you to the Mageia Helpers group, which can do moderation in Basic support subforum.

[Ken-Bergen]

If you want to do some basic moderation, i could add you to the Mageia Helpers group, which can do moderation in Basic support subforum.

Correction, a Helper can moderate in both Basic and Advanced support forums.

That said moderation is not integral to support and should be used sparingly after careful consideration.

[viking60]

I have started the forum todo Wiki:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forum_todo_and_open_points
You can take it from there....
(Although I fail to see why putting it in a wiki after it is already proposed here is of any use...)

[tom_]

Intresting reading,
this means that the forum development is almost stopped and that's really a pity...

rethinking to the maat words:

In other words we need people wiling to install a forum clone @home and patch it with mods with in mind all above consideration and then say 'hey the modxxx it there ready to be git pulled, i have tested it and the upgrade is easy provided you do this and that'.

couldn't we work in team to create one of these person?
I'n not a git expert but I have used it in the past,
so I can cover the git part.

I have also some knowledge of php,
wobo says he knows PHPbb and probably we can found in phpBB forum a lot of the code we need,
then we miss a server where install a copy of the current forum
and do coding and tests, but probably we can found it.

Is that feasible in your opinion?

[doktor5000]

I have started the forum todo Wiki:
https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forum_todo_and_open_points

As mentioned in the other thread, please use the original list: https://wiki.mageia.org/en/Forums_todo_ ... oints_list