From Fedora Project Wiki
No edit summary
 
(21 intermediate revisions by 2 users not shown)
Line 3: Line 3:
== Ask Fedora Retrospective ==
== Ask Fedora Retrospective ==


Around this month in 2019, we moved the Ask Fedora user support web site to a new platform. We freezed the old askbot instance and we moved to Discourse.
Around this month in 2019, we officially moved the Ask Fedora user support web site to a new platform. The work started around February 2019. We archived the old askbot instance and we moved to Discourse.


=== Goals set ===
=== Goals set ===


The goals of such move were various. Technical ones were important, but the least decisive. Sure, the askbot site looked old (even if rich of resources), it was ---------- not well maintained ???------ and Discourse is one of the most modern open source web forum platform, however the main objectives were related to a new way to communicate and share knowledge. -------- ? mention outsource to eliminate the effort to maintain the platform and focus on something more important ? ------------
The goals of such move were various. Technical ones were important, but the least decisive, since similar to Askbot, the plan was to use a deployment that was hosted and supported for us. Askbot, while worked well enough, lacked certain features and a modern user interface that we thought was necessary for a good user experience. The main objectives were related to a new way to communicate and share knowledge. Discourse fit the bill very well for this. Similar to Askbot, where upstream hosted the instance for us, Discourse also allowed paid hostage. This freed up community resources that would otherwise be spent on non-trivial tasks of packaging, deploying, and maintaining the software ourselves.


Usually, when people have a problem, they ask the question and they pretend an answer, then someone will answer with a solution. And who ask the question would really want that some developer or long aged contributor pops in with the precise and concise set of steps leading to the solution of their issue. Like a support service of a big company. And that attitude was somewhat encouraged by the askbot platform.  
Usually, when a user has a problem, they ask a question and await an answer. Generally, we notice that on support forums the questioner expect precise and concise sets of steps leading to the solution of their issue, somewhat like a support service of provided in industry. Since Askbot was a question and answer platform designed for questions to be answered, it did not lend itself well to discussions. It was designed for questions and solutions, not for discussions and troubleshooting that enabled users to converge on solutions.


But we imagined something different. Nobody in the community is an help desk operator. And Fedora users shouldn't act like costumers of a product. Free and Open Source communities shouldn't feed such approach. Even the newbie user is not an end user in the commercial sense of the term. Obviously there are system rock stars, experts, developers and maintainers: such people has more experiences and knowledge than novices. But nobody should pretend an answer from them: all we are here to learn and share experiences, knowledge and to help each other. Nobody should pretend an answer from other people. One of the power of Free and Open source software and communities is that you have the possibility to learn a bunch of things, if you want it. Encountering bugs and issue is a valuable source of knowledge.
Nobody in the community is expected to serve as a help desk operator. Similarly, it doesn't quite work when users act like costumers of a product, either. That's not how Free/Open source communities work. They work on a voluntary exchange of knowledge and ideas. No end user is a user in the commercial sense of the term. Obviously there are system rock stars, experts, developers and maintainers: such people has more experiences and knowledge than novices. But nobody should really be demanding an answers from them: we are all here to learn and share experiences, knowledge and to help each other.


So the main goals of the new forum platform were the discussion, the involvement, the encouragement to learn and to participate in the community life. In Ask Fedora, we share tools and techniques to diagnose the problems, we invite people to file bugs instead of ranting, we push people toward the right documentation on docs.fedoraproject.org and if a document is outdated, we invite them to contribute. We also share community events where people could be easily involved (i.e. test days).
 
In short the new Ask Fedora was not planned as a support forum only.
So, we imagined something different: discussions instead of questions that expect answers. The main goals of the new forum platform were the discussion, involvement, and encouragement to learn and to participate in the community life. In Ask Fedora, we share tools and techniques to diagnose the problems, we invite people to file bugs instead of ranting, we push people toward the right documentation on docs.fedoraproject.org and if a document is outdated, we invite them to contribute. We also share community events where people could be easily involved (i.e. test days).
In short the new Ask Fedora is much more than a support forum, it is a channel for discussion based troubleshooting.


=== The beginning ===
=== The beginning ===


Initially, many people raised various concerns about the value of information contained in the old platform and a series of concerns about search engines pointing to the old platform. But, without diminishing years of contributions, we were very committed to refresh the whole platform keeping in high consideration the limited workforce we have. Again, we preferred to spend our limited volunteer time in more productive tasks instead of maintain or develop legacy stuff.
Initially, many people raised various concerns about the value of information contained in the old platform and a series of concerns about search engines pointing to the old platform. These concerns were valid, but with the limited resources at our disposal, it was not possible to migrate the information. Given how fast Fedora moves, while some general queries and solutions remain relevant across releases, a lot of release specific information gets outdated quite quickly. So, it was decided to put all the available man-power toward the setting up of a new, fresh platform instead of spending it on the maintenance and migration of a lot of generally outdated information from an older platform.


Various time has been spent evaluating the categories of the forum. Also due to Discourse limitations, we ended up with the most limited number of categories. We avoided to chop a forum in dozen of categories, preferring to cover the main areas: for each language there are two categories Install/Upgrade and Fedora Usage. A more detailed categorization of a post is mandated to the tags. In addition, another category is the Community related one (with the "On contributing to Fedora sub category).  
A lot of time was spent evaluating the categories of the forum. Within the possibilities that Discourse allowed, we ended up with the smallest set of categories that would enable organisation of information without adding complexity that would confuse users. We preferred to cover the main areas: for each language there are two categories Install/Upgrade and Fedora Usage. A more detailed organisation of posts is mandated to the tags. In addition, another category is the Community related one (with the "On contributing to Fedora sub category").  


A big effort has been devoted, with the help of some forum user, to identifiy and to move the most common and still up to date issues to the Fedora quick docs.
To ensure that information that remained relevant to current releases, we, with the help of numerous forum users, identified and moved the most common and still up to date issues to the Fedora quick docs. Additionally, to ensure that there was no single point-of-contact (point-of-failure), we spent some time documenting necessary bits into a series of standard operating procedures (SOPs) https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/ask-fedora-sops/


We also wrote a series of standard operating procedures (SOPs) https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/ask-fedora-sops/
Since the Fedora community is global, the current category structure allows the splitting of the forum into smaller bits each dedicated to a particular language. It was important that all these languages have community members actively looking after and moderating them. So, with help from the community, we set up a few initial languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Persian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese. More languages can be supported through new categories, but we do make sure that the volunteers that step forward to maintain them are able to commit the necessary time and resources to the forum.


People that are able to look after can ask to create and translate the forum categories in their language. The forum started with these language specific categories: English, Spanish, Italian, Persian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese. An initial effort to start a German category suddenly stopped due to lack of manpower.
For more information on the discussions and process that we followed, you can read all the tickets related to Ask Fedora on pagure: https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issues?status=all&tags=C%3A+AskFedora
 
You can read all the tickets related to Ask Fedora on pagure ----------- https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issues?status=all&tags=C%3A+AskFedora


=== How it is going ===
=== How it is going ===


The forum is running pretty well. There are new topics every day, and the discussions are usually polite and welcoming. Flagged posts (posts reported by the users because not respecting the CoC or the common sense) are very rare. It didn't happen so far any flame or bad behaviour that required the strong intervention of the moderators.
The forum is running very well. There are new topics every day, and plenty of active polite and welcoming discussions. Flagged posts (posts reported by the users because not respecting the CoC or the common sense) are extremely rare. The English category is most active, with the "on using Fedora" perhaps receiving most posts. An active team of moderators help when needed. The Discourse trust system rewards active users, so we have a much larger team of moderators on the forum that when we had started: a good sign!


=== Some data/statistics ===
=== Some data/statistics ===


Hear we have some data from around Feb 2019 to Dic 2019.
An important feature that attracted us towards Discourse was the possibility of gathering data on usage. This was not straightforward in Askbot. Here, we have some data from around Feb 2019 to December 2019.
 
There are 659 active users. With an average of 50 new users every month. (Note: the authentication system is limited to FAS).
 
Discourse is equipped with its own reward system. Like Fedora Badges, but it is not integrated with them. There are 4 levels called "trust levels". The more the users interact with the forum, the more they gains trust so they can level up. While more than 50 people easily reached level 2, the ones that reached level 3 are just two couple (users can loose their trust level if they don't maintain their activities over time). Finally, 21 spammers took the time to create FAS accounts to spam the forum. These were all detected, deleted from Askbot, and the FAS accounts reported to the infrastructure team as well.
 
These are the numbers of topics (posts) created under each category:
 
* a total of 1315 topics in the English category
** 17 in the "Discussions" Category
*** 1072 in the "On using Fedora" subcategory
*** 226 in the "On installing or upgrading Fedora" subcategory
 
* 72 topics in the whole "Community related discussions" category
* 41 topics in the "Site feedback" category
* 37 topics in the "Lounge" category
* 33 topics in the "Staff" category
* 8 topics in the "New users! Start Here!"
 
These are the numbers for each language category:
 
* 30 topics in the Spanish categories
* 4 topic in the Italian categories
* 44 topics in the Persian categories
* 10 topics in the Chinese Simplified categories
* 9 topics in the Chinese Traditional categories
 
As we can see, even non native English speaking people prefer to ask questions in the English category, possibly because it is more active so there are greater chances of receiving help.


There are 659 active users. With an average of 50 new users every month. (Note: the authentication system is linked to FAS).
And these are the totals:


Discourse is equipped with its own reward system. Like Fedora Badges, but it is not integrated with them. There are 4 levels called "trust levels". The more the users interact with the forum, the more they gains trust so they can level up. While more than 50 people easily reached level 2, the ones that reached level 3 are just two couple (users can loose their trust level if they don't maintain their activities over time).
* 1603 topics
** 157 marked as solved by staff
** 396 marked as solved by members (the users who asked the question)


Number of identified spammers: 21 (reported to infrastructure team as well).
=== Heroes of Ask Fedora ===


Here the number of topics (posts) created under each category:
The staff and community members of Ask Fedora want to thank these users for their great contribution, time and great work for the community.


* a total of 995 topics in the English category
* vgaetera, with 40 posts marked as solution
** 723 in the "On using Fedora" subcategory
* nightromantic, 26
** 262 in the "On installing or upgrading Fedora" subcategory
* xtym, 16
* QuLogic, 10
* Alone, 10
* refi64, 10
* fasulia, 7
* florian, 5


* 73 topics in the whole "Community related discussions" category
And thanks to everyone else... and keep it growing.
* 36 topics in the "Site feedback" category
* 20 topics "Lounge" category
* 12 topics "staff" category


These are the numbers of each language category:
=== Last thoughts ===
* 19 topics in the Spanish categories
* 24 topics in the Persian categories
* 18 topics in the Chinese categories
* 2 topic in Italian


These are the Totals:
For the future, we hope that Ask Fedora will be used even more. We ask the community members and the seasoned contributors to take a look to the topics and help other people with useful answers and discussions.
* 1199 topics
** 169 Solved by Staff
** 396 Solved by Members


As we can see, even non native English speaking people, prefer to ask questions in the English category.
We think that Ask Fedora is not meant as a replacement for any other discussion channel. It is not the official Fedora support platform. Many people feel more comfortable using a mailing list (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users%40lists.fedoraproject.org/), other people prefer to use an instant messaging platform like Telegram (https://telegram.me/fedora) or IRC (i.e. #fedora channel on Freenode), other people like other forums not affiliated with the Fedora community. Each platform isn't meant to replace the other: the key is to help each other.

Latest revision as of 10:21, 13 May 2020

This page is a draft only
It is still under construction and content may change. Do not rely on the information on this page.

Ask Fedora Retrospective

Around this month in 2019, we officially moved the Ask Fedora user support web site to a new platform. The work started around February 2019. We archived the old askbot instance and we moved to Discourse.

Goals set

The goals of such move were various. Technical ones were important, but the least decisive, since similar to Askbot, the plan was to use a deployment that was hosted and supported for us. Askbot, while worked well enough, lacked certain features and a modern user interface that we thought was necessary for a good user experience. The main objectives were related to a new way to communicate and share knowledge. Discourse fit the bill very well for this. Similar to Askbot, where upstream hosted the instance for us, Discourse also allowed paid hostage. This freed up community resources that would otherwise be spent on non-trivial tasks of packaging, deploying, and maintaining the software ourselves.

Usually, when a user has a problem, they ask a question and await an answer. Generally, we notice that on support forums the questioner expect precise and concise sets of steps leading to the solution of their issue, somewhat like a support service of provided in industry. Since Askbot was a question and answer platform designed for questions to be answered, it did not lend itself well to discussions. It was designed for questions and solutions, not for discussions and troubleshooting that enabled users to converge on solutions.

Nobody in the community is expected to serve as a help desk operator. Similarly, it doesn't quite work when users act like costumers of a product, either. That's not how Free/Open source communities work. They work on a voluntary exchange of knowledge and ideas. No end user is a user in the commercial sense of the term. Obviously there are system rock stars, experts, developers and maintainers: such people has more experiences and knowledge than novices. But nobody should really be demanding an answers from them: we are all here to learn and share experiences, knowledge and to help each other.


So, we imagined something different: discussions instead of questions that expect answers. The main goals of the new forum platform were the discussion, involvement, and encouragement to learn and to participate in the community life. In Ask Fedora, we share tools and techniques to diagnose the problems, we invite people to file bugs instead of ranting, we push people toward the right documentation on docs.fedoraproject.org and if a document is outdated, we invite them to contribute. We also share community events where people could be easily involved (i.e. test days). In short the new Ask Fedora is much more than a support forum, it is a channel for discussion based troubleshooting.

The beginning

Initially, many people raised various concerns about the value of information contained in the old platform and a series of concerns about search engines pointing to the old platform. These concerns were valid, but with the limited resources at our disposal, it was not possible to migrate the information. Given how fast Fedora moves, while some general queries and solutions remain relevant across releases, a lot of release specific information gets outdated quite quickly. So, it was decided to put all the available man-power toward the setting up of a new, fresh platform instead of spending it on the maintenance and migration of a lot of generally outdated information from an older platform.

A lot of time was spent evaluating the categories of the forum. Within the possibilities that Discourse allowed, we ended up with the smallest set of categories that would enable organisation of information without adding complexity that would confuse users. We preferred to cover the main areas: for each language there are two categories Install/Upgrade and Fedora Usage. A more detailed organisation of posts is mandated to the tags. In addition, another category is the Community related one (with the "On contributing to Fedora sub category").

To ensure that information that remained relevant to current releases, we, with the help of numerous forum users, identified and moved the most common and still up to date issues to the Fedora quick docs. Additionally, to ensure that there was no single point-of-contact (point-of-failure), we spent some time documenting necessary bits into a series of standard operating procedures (SOPs) https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/ask-fedora-sops/

Since the Fedora community is global, the current category structure allows the splitting of the forum into smaller bits each dedicated to a particular language. It was important that all these languages have community members actively looking after and moderating them. So, with help from the community, we set up a few initial languages: English, Spanish, Italian, Persian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese. More languages can be supported through new categories, but we do make sure that the volunteers that step forward to maintain them are able to commit the necessary time and resources to the forum.

For more information on the discussions and process that we followed, you can read all the tickets related to Ask Fedora on pagure: https://pagure.io/fedora-join/Fedora-Join/issues?status=all&tags=C%3A+AskFedora

How it is going

The forum is running very well. There are new topics every day, and plenty of active polite and welcoming discussions. Flagged posts (posts reported by the users because not respecting the CoC or the common sense) are extremely rare. The English category is most active, with the "on using Fedora" perhaps receiving most posts. An active team of moderators help when needed. The Discourse trust system rewards active users, so we have a much larger team of moderators on the forum that when we had started: a good sign!

Some data/statistics

An important feature that attracted us towards Discourse was the possibility of gathering data on usage. This was not straightforward in Askbot. Here, we have some data from around Feb 2019 to December 2019.

There are 659 active users. With an average of 50 new users every month. (Note: the authentication system is limited to FAS).

Discourse is equipped with its own reward system. Like Fedora Badges, but it is not integrated with them. There are 4 levels called "trust levels". The more the users interact with the forum, the more they gains trust so they can level up. While more than 50 people easily reached level 2, the ones that reached level 3 are just two couple (users can loose their trust level if they don't maintain their activities over time). Finally, 21 spammers took the time to create FAS accounts to spam the forum. These were all detected, deleted from Askbot, and the FAS accounts reported to the infrastructure team as well.

These are the numbers of topics (posts) created under each category:

  • a total of 1315 topics in the English category
    • 17 in the "Discussions" Category
      • 1072 in the "On using Fedora" subcategory
      • 226 in the "On installing or upgrading Fedora" subcategory
  • 72 topics in the whole "Community related discussions" category
  • 41 topics in the "Site feedback" category
  • 37 topics in the "Lounge" category
  • 33 topics in the "Staff" category
  • 8 topics in the "New users! Start Here!"

These are the numbers for each language category:

  • 30 topics in the Spanish categories
  • 4 topic in the Italian categories
  • 44 topics in the Persian categories
  • 10 topics in the Chinese Simplified categories
  • 9 topics in the Chinese Traditional categories

As we can see, even non native English speaking people prefer to ask questions in the English category, possibly because it is more active so there are greater chances of receiving help.

And these are the totals:

  • 1603 topics
    • 157 marked as solved by staff
    • 396 marked as solved by members (the users who asked the question)

Heroes of Ask Fedora

The staff and community members of Ask Fedora want to thank these users for their great contribution, time and great work for the community.

  • vgaetera, with 40 posts marked as solution
  • nightromantic, 26
  • xtym, 16
  • QuLogic, 10
  • Alone, 10
  • refi64, 10
  • fasulia, 7
  • florian, 5

And thanks to everyone else... and keep it growing.

Last thoughts

For the future, we hope that Ask Fedora will be used even more. We ask the community members and the seasoned contributors to take a look to the topics and help other people with useful answers and discussions.

We think that Ask Fedora is not meant as a replacement for any other discussion channel. It is not the official Fedora support platform. Many people feel more comfortable using a mailing list (https://lists.fedoraproject.org/archives/list/users%40lists.fedoraproject.org/), other people prefer to use an instant messaging platform like Telegram (https://telegram.me/fedora) or IRC (i.e. #fedora channel on Freenode), other people like other forums not affiliated with the Fedora community. Each platform isn't meant to replace the other: the key is to help each other.