sliptonic wrote: ↑Tue Feb 14, 2023 5:37 pm
openBrain wrote: ↑Wed Feb 09, 2022 5:40 pm
This thread proposes to improve this by centralizing links to community "polls" inside the various threads of the forum.
This has been talked about in the past and I expressed some reservation about it then. I still think it's problematic for a couple reasons.
Sorry, can't get where you're going with all that.
First, it's bypassing the
CONTRIBUTING process both in method and intent.
I don't think it is. But will come back on this.
This thread is by far prior to contributing process. Even the last post before you revived it is. So if you think contributing process has made this useless or obsolete, just redirect to the former and lock the thread. Over.
Anyway, if you read the OP, this doesn't aim at having any role in the contributing method, but only bring a tool that can facilitate achieving a choice in some (described) situations. It doesn't state poll results will give any power about anything.
We're not clearly identifying a problem and then proposing a solution, rather we're asking for opinions and then acting based on votes.
Not clear about what you're talking.
* If you talk about this thread, it clearly identifies a problem and proposes a solution. This is mainly what the OP is all about.
* If you talk about polls, you're comparing 2 things that lies on 2 different levels. Poll is a tool, and it's perfectly feasible to clearly describe a problem in it, and offer choice between clearly defined solutions. This is matter of using the tool. Which is case for any tool BTW.
Second, there's no rigor around the voting. I understand that this is just meant to get a sense of how the community feels about an issue and isn't binding. I don't think that's good enough. The FreeCAD community has grown well beyond the forum with large groups on linkedin, Reddit, Facebook etc. They have no visibility to the polls. More importantly the polling doesn't reflect any kind of demographics.
Well, that's bringing nothing new but confusion. The problem isn't well described and you're proposing no solution.
Please, what solution would you propose in such a solution : "I'm a developer and to fix a bug in FreeCAD, I have to choose my implementation between 2 different behaviors. I'd like to know which one is the more appropriate to community usage. How should I proceed ?"
Are developers well represented? What about commercial users? What about first time users vs experienced users?
Hmmmm. Should developers be considered as special users when we talk about FreeCAD behavior ?
"Commercial users" ??? There are no commercial users of FreeCAD. This is as saying "commercial users of Linux". It doesn't exist. There are only commercial users of products/services based on FreeCAD(Linux).
At this step, I feel like you're having very unclear intentions as trying to achieve some omnipotence on the contribution process to FreeCAD.
This feeling is certainly reinforced by your mixing roles as both maintainer (core dev) and Ondsel owner, and I can't prevent to think you're thinking about the latter leveraging of a well tailored contribution process.
This is a slippy slope IMO.
In the end, it's impossible to look at a poll result and understand what it means.
Again it's a matter of how the tool was used. The tool itself can't really be blamed.
I think it's great that we're trying to get some consensus around these subjective issues but I'm concerned that polls don't give useful information and might give a false sense of consensus.
IMHO there's still far too much development discussion happening in the forum where important points get lost or buried and far too little in the issues where they can make a difference. For example:
I'm curious how the tracker issue is more "demographic representative" than the forum...
Why not close all the development-dedicated subforums and point to GH tracker ?
Here's an
forum topic that has gotten 75 comments in two weeks. No corresponding issue in the tracker.
Here's a
tracker issue that has gotten 20 comments in four months.
There is probably as much bias in this example as in a poll (if not more). Maybe the first topic is highly interesting and/or dividing, and the second is absolutely not (don't know actually, didn't clicked the links
)
PS: As reviewing this post, it may sound a bit rude. But maybe it shall. Don't know.
And don't think I have special concerns about what's happening to this thread. I don't. I'm happy we tried this and I don't care it's future.