nms-cgi-devel

[Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Dave C. <da...@da...>]

Here are some thoughts about the nms project and its future. Thanks to
Simon Wilcox for helping me thrash out some of the details. Please read
all of this message.

The nms project is very successful. And I'm not convinced that we are
properly geared up for that success. I don't want the project to be 
forced to closed down, so I think we have to change the way we work.

I think we're having two major problems.

* Very small number of people involved in support.

  We have 65 people on the developers mailing list. But I think there
  have been about five people who have answered a support question in
  the last two months. I am, of course, eternally grateful to those 
  people for the time they put it, but if we keep relying on a such
  a small number of people they will come under more and more pressure
  until they decide they can't be bothered any more and leave the 
  project.

  There are also a small (but growing, I think) number of support emails
  that just don't get answered. This makes the project look bad. One of
  the things that is supposed to differentiate between us and Matt Wright
  is that we have a good support system. For some people that doesn't
  seem to be true currently.

  There are enough of us that the support effort doesn't need to be very 
  onerous for a small number of people. If we spread it out, each of us
  would only need to deal with a very small number of emails.

* Very little development going on

  Nick Cleaton is doing great work on FormMail and TFMail, but they
  seem to be the only programs that are moving forward. Once again I
  have to wonder why we have 65 people on the development list if most
  of them have no interest in doing any development.

  A few weeks ago, I posted several emails to the development list in
  one afternoon. They were all ideas for improvements that came from
  support requests. I posted them to the devel list hoping for a bit
  of discussion about the suggestions followed by someone volunteering 
  to take the project on. All of these emails were completely ignored.

  Simon also posted a number of emails to the devel list during 
  December. This were also ignored (by me too, I'm sorry to admit).

  As with support, if people make suggestions for improvements to our
  scripts and they are just ignored, then it makes us look bad.


Ok. So those are the problems. Here are some suggestions for solutions.

I need to delegate responsibility for the development and support for the
scripts. Already Nick pretty much controls FormMail and TFMail, but we
need to take that further.

I suggest that Nick gets a group of about four or five volunteers to help
him develop and support FormMail and TFMail. This group will be 
responsible for handling all support email on these scripts and for making
new releases available.

We'll also create smaller groups that do the same for the other scripts.
We'll probably need separate groups for wwwboard, search and guestbook as
(after formmail) they are the most commonly used. The other scripts can
probably all be dealt with by a single group.

These groups will also be responsible within themselves for assign rotas
of people who will deal with support issues. These will designate a
"first line support" person. This person will be able to call on other
people within the group to help them solve problems that they can't work
out on their own.

I also intend to make the developers mailing list closed. So that only 
people who are in one of these support groups will be subscribed to the
list.

In order to foster more of a feeling of responsibility towards the 
scripts I'd like to introduce a "team bios" page on the web page so that
people can see who's who on the project.

And speaking of the web site, it needs an overhaul so I'd like to create
another group that is responsible for that. Amongst the things I'd like 
them to look at are:

* Team bios page

* Script documentation on the web site
  (even better if it's auto-generated from the README files as a
  script is released).

* Script demos on the web site

* More FAQs
  Perhaps even some kind of "knowledge base" or wiki.

* Announcements
  I'd like to encourage people to sign up to a new announcements list
  when they download our scripts. They will then get automatic emails
  when a new version is released. This announcements should also be 
  listed on the web site.

* Articles
  Useful articles for CGI beginners. Things like "idiots guide to 
  debugging a CGI script".

Well, that's about all for now. Please let mw know what you think.

I really think that if we don't do something soon, then the project is
in danger of being overwhelmed.

Thanks for listening,

Dave...

-- 
  Drugs are just bad m'kay

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Nicholas C. <ni...@un...>]

On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 04:35:41PM +0000, Dave Cross wrote:

>   We have 65 people on the developers mailing list. But I think there
>   have been about five people who have answered a support question in
>   the last two months. I am, of course, eternally grateful to those 

> I also intend to make the developers mailing list closed. So that only 
> people who are in one of these support groups will be subscribed to the
> list.

Currently I'm subscribed to the developers' list. (Obviously, because I
have received and am replying to this message). I'm not aware of very
many people who have actually sent mail to this list, the proportion of
that 65 who are 100% lurkers seems quite high.

I'm very unlikely to join any of the support groups, as I don't have enough
CFT to do all the things I'm already doing, and it would be wrong to
volunteer to be part of a support group where I can't pull my weight. So
by implication of the above I would become unsubscribed from the development
list.

Avoid the special case, or exceptions are bad, m'kay.
And I can't see a way to say "hmm. non-lurkers on development are useful
and can stay subscribed"

I'm not sure if I'm actually adding anything useful to the development
process by semi-lurking on this list - development itself doesn't take place
as patches sent for code review to the list, hence there's not that much
whizzing by that I could comment on. Hence it's quite likely that the
development process won't lose anything by dropping anyone like me who does
actively read messages but doesn't actively develop or support.

I'm not sure if any of the other 60 odd people who are subscribed but never
e-mail would behave in the same way as I would for the developers list
becoming closed. I think NMS would reduce soureforge's outgoing mail traffic,
but I don't think it would gain any new support people. So I'm not convinced
what the benefit of closing the development list is.

Hopefully I'm wrong, and it would cause people to join the support teams,
but the silent majority here do seem to be silent, and have been over
recorded history, so I suspect they'd continue to be silent on support
lists.

Hello silent majority. :-) Hello echelon :-)

Khaddafi AK-47 Soviet Mena Uzi Area 51 North Korea Vickie Weaver Ron
Brown Croatian Vince Foster Craig Livingstone $400 million in gold
bullion genetic Watergate

Nicholas Clark

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Olivier D. <dr...@sh...>]

Hi Everyone,

I've been one of the quiet ones for a very long time, being very busy
with University and all. There are mainly two things I'd like to
mention:

1. I agree with these organizational measures to a certain extent.
   Giving a smaller group feeling might boost the willingness of
   developpers to put effort into it. It also allows developpers to get
   more familiar with one script. On the flip side I also have some
   issues with them. First this is an open source project to which
   people *volunteer* their own time to. This is one of the greatest
   thing about open source, but can also be it's pin in the foot. I
   don't think going about beating on people because they don't put
   enough effort into it is a good thing. You're more likely to scare
   people away then attract them. Second, the group thing might not work
   if one group ends up not having time to volunteer in which case some
   scripts will be left out of development and support (which I guess
   couldn't be that much worse than right now, but no better either).

2. I don't have much time to volunteer and don't want to "lead" any
   group. That said, if someone wants to step up to that I'll gladly
   look over simple search.

-Olivier

On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 04:35:41PM +0000, Dave Cross wrote:
> Here are some thoughts about the nms project and its future. Thanks to
> Simon Wilcox for helping me thrash out some of the details. Please read
> all of this message.
> 
> The nms project is very successful. And I'm not convinced that we are
> properly geared up for that success. I don't want the project to be 
> forced to closed down, so I think we have to change the way we work.
> 
> I think we're having two major problems.
> 
> * Very small number of people involved in support.
> 
>   We have 65 people on the developers mailing list. But I think there
>   have been about five people who have answered a support question in
>   the last two months. I am, of course, eternally grateful to those 
>   people for the time they put it, but if we keep relying on a such
>   a small number of people they will come under more and more pressure
>   until they decide they can't be bothered any more and leave the 
>   project.
> 
>   There are also a small (but growing, I think) number of support emails
>   that just don't get answered. This makes the project look bad. One of
>   the things that is supposed to differentiate between us and Matt Wright
>   is that we have a good support system. For some people that doesn't
>   seem to be true currently.
> 
>   There are enough of us that the support effort doesn't need to be very 
>   onerous for a small number of people. If we spread it out, each of us
>   would only need to deal with a very small number of emails.
> 
> * Very little development going on
> 
>   Nick Cleaton is doing great work on FormMail and TFMail, but they
>   seem to be the only programs that are moving forward. Once again I
>   have to wonder why we have 65 people on the development list if most
>   of them have no interest in doing any development.
> 
>   A few weeks ago, I posted several emails to the development list in
>   one afternoon. They were all ideas for improvements that came from
>   support requests. I posted them to the devel list hoping for a bit
>   of discussion about the suggestions followed by someone volunteering 
>   to take the project on. All of these emails were completely ignored.
> 
>   Simon also posted a number of emails to the devel list during 
>   December. This were also ignored (by me too, I'm sorry to admit).
> 
>   As with support, if people make suggestions for improvements to our
>   scripts and they are just ignored, then it makes us look bad.
> 
> 
> Ok. So those are the problems. Here are some suggestions for solutions.
> 
> I need to delegate responsibility for the development and support for the
> scripts. Already Nick pretty much controls FormMail and TFMail, but we
> need to take that further.
> 
> I suggest that Nick gets a group of about four or five volunteers to help
> him develop and support FormMail and TFMail. This group will be 
> responsible for handling all support email on these scripts and for making
> new releases available.
> 
> We'll also create smaller groups that do the same for the other scripts.
> We'll probably need separate groups for wwwboard, search and guestbook as
> (after formmail) they are the most commonly used. The other scripts can
> probably all be dealt with by a single group.
> 
> These groups will also be responsible within themselves for assign rotas
> of people who will deal with support issues. These will designate a
> "first line support" person. This person will be able to call on other
> people within the group to help them solve problems that they can't work
> out on their own.
> 
> I also intend to make the developers mailing list closed. So that only 
> people who are in one of these support groups will be subscribed to the
> list.
> 
> In order to foster more of a feeling of responsibility towards the 
> scripts I'd like to introduce a "team bios" page on the web page so that
> people can see who's who on the project.
> 
> And speaking of the web site, it needs an overhaul so I'd like to create
> another group that is responsible for that. Amongst the things I'd like 
> them to look at are:
> 
> * Team bios page
> 
> * Script documentation on the web site
>   (even better if it's auto-generated from the README files as a
>   script is released).
> 
> * Script demos on the web site
> 
> * More FAQs
>   Perhaps even some kind of "knowledge base" or wiki.
> 
> * Announcements
>   I'd like to encourage people to sign up to a new announcements list
>   when they download our scripts. They will then get automatic emails
>   when a new version is released. This announcements should also be 
>   listed on the web site.
> 
> * Articles
>   Useful articles for CGI beginners. Things like "idiots guide to 
>   debugging a CGI script".
> 
> Well, that's about all for now. Please let mw know what you think.
> 
> I really think that if we don't do something soon, then the project is
> in danger of being overwhelmed.
> 
> Thanks for listening,
> 
> Dave...
> 
> -- 
>   Drugs are just bad m'kay
> 
> 
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.NET email is sponsored by:
> SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See!
> http://www.vasoftware.com
> _______________________________________________
> Nms-cgi-devel mailing list
> Nms...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nms-cgi-devel

-- 
                  __-/|    ? ?     |\-__
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          _-/   /   /   \ / ( )  /   \   \   \-_
         /  /   /  /     ~(  ^^ ~     \  \   \  \
         / Oli Dragon    dr...@sh... \
        /  Sfwr Eng III  (  McMaster University  \
        /  /  /     __--_ (   ) __--__     \  \  \
        |  /  /  _/        \_ \_       \_  \  \  |
         \/  / _/            \_ \_       \_ \  \/
          \_/ /                -\_\        \ \_/
            \/                   -)         \/
                                *~
 ___--<******************************************************>--___
[http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=olivier+dragon&op=index]
 ~~~--<******************************************************>--~~~

RE: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Wizard <wi...@ne...>]

Ok, let me know if this is acceptable:

First, I have just downloaded wwwboard, and will have a look. I'll be busy
for the short-term with a few other projects, so I don't know how much I'll
get done, but as I proceed, you can expect questions/RFCs to this list.

A few things, partly because SourceForge is presently broken:

1.> It would be nice if anyone has an existing installation that they could
.tar.gz for me to test against. Nothing too huge, please.

2.> I would like to find out where we are putting this stuff. I couldn't
find a CVS/RCS reference on the web site, but I'm assuming that there is one
from the $Id tags. Some info please.

3.> It would be nice if someone could compile all of the Support requests
for WWWBoard into a list. SourceForge's Search system is presently broken
and I'm not subscribed to the list, so if you already have the list in your
mail,...

4.> We should try to recruit people to run QC tests, as I presently only
have Win2k/Apache, Solaris/Apache, and Linux/Apache available for testing.
Ideally it would be nice to have a nms-testers list, if that's possible.
Perhaps we could recruit some of the ISPs listed on pages for that.

If anyone else is planning any changes, please let me know and I'll hold off
or we can split up the project. From the version that I've downloaded, it
looks as though no one has done anything since last September, though.

Let me know if this is OK with everyone,
Grant M.



> -----Original Message-----
> From: nms...@li...
> [mailto:nms...@li...]On Behalf Of Dave
> Cross
> Sent: Sunday, January 12, 2003 11:36 AM
> To: nms...@li...
> Subject: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward
>
>
> Here are some thoughts about the nms project and its future. Thanks to
> Simon Wilcox for helping me thrash out some of the details. Please read
> all of this message.
>
> The nms project is very successful. And I'm not convinced that we are
> properly geared up for that success. I don't want the project to be
> forced to closed down, so I think we have to change the way we work.
>
> I think we're having two major problems.
>
> * Very small number of people involved in support.
>
>   We have 65 people on the developers mailing list. But I think there
>   have been about five people who have answered a support question in
>   the last two months. I am, of course, eternally grateful to those
>   people for the time they put it, but if we keep relying on a such
>   a small number of people they will come under more and more pressure
>   until they decide they can't be bothered any more and leave the
>   project.
>
>   There are also a small (but growing, I think) number of support emails
>   that just don't get answered. This makes the project look bad. One of
>   the things that is supposed to differentiate between us and Matt Wright
>   is that we have a good support system. For some people that doesn't
>   seem to be true currently.
>
>   There are enough of us that the support effort doesn't need to be very
>   onerous for a small number of people. If we spread it out, each of us
>   would only need to deal with a very small number of emails.
>
> * Very little development going on
>
>   Nick Cleaton is doing great work on FormMail and TFMail, but they
>   seem to be the only programs that are moving forward. Once again I
>   have to wonder why we have 65 people on the development list if most
>   of them have no interest in doing any development.
>
>   A few weeks ago, I posted several emails to the development list in
>   one afternoon. They were all ideas for improvements that came from
>   support requests. I posted them to the devel list hoping for a bit
>   of discussion about the suggestions followed by someone volunteering
>   to take the project on. All of these emails were completely ignored.
>
>   Simon also posted a number of emails to the devel list during
>   December. This were also ignored (by me too, I'm sorry to admit).
>
>   As with support, if people make suggestions for improvements to our
>   scripts and they are just ignored, then it makes us look bad.
>
>
> Ok. So those are the problems. Here are some suggestions for solutions.
>
> I need to delegate responsibility for the development and support for the
> scripts. Already Nick pretty much controls FormMail and TFMail, but we
> need to take that further.
>
> I suggest that Nick gets a group of about four or five volunteers to help
> him develop and support FormMail and TFMail. This group will be
> responsible for handling all support email on these scripts and for making
> new releases available.
>
> We'll also create smaller groups that do the same for the other scripts.
> We'll probably need separate groups for wwwboard, search and guestbook as
> (after formmail) they are the most commonly used. The other scripts can
> probably all be dealt with by a single group.
>
> These groups will also be responsible within themselves for assign rotas
> of people who will deal with support issues. These will designate a
> "first line support" person. This person will be able to call on other
> people within the group to help them solve problems that they can't work
> out on their own.
>
> I also intend to make the developers mailing list closed. So that only
> people who are in one of these support groups will be subscribed to the
> list.
>
> In order to foster more of a feeling of responsibility towards the
> scripts I'd like to introduce a "team bios" page on the web page so that
> people can see who's who on the project.
>
> And speaking of the web site, it needs an overhaul so I'd like to create
> another group that is responsible for that. Amongst the things I'd like
> them to look at are:
>
> * Team bios page
>
> * Script documentation on the web site
>   (even better if it's auto-generated from the README files as a
>   script is released).
>
> * Script demos on the web site
>
> * More FAQs
>   Perhaps even some kind of "knowledge base" or wiki.
>
> * Announcements
>   I'd like to encourage people to sign up to a new announcements list
>   when they download our scripts. They will then get automatic emails
>   when a new version is released. This announcements should also be
>   listed on the web site.
>
> * Articles
>   Useful articles for CGI beginners. Things like "idiots guide to
>   debugging a CGI script".
>
> Well, that's about all for now. Please let mw know what you think.
>
> I really think that if we don't do something soon, then the project is
> in danger of being overwhelmed.
>
> Thanks for listening,
>
> Dave...
>
> --
>   Drugs are just bad m'kay
>
>
> -------------------------------------------------------
> This SF.NET email is sponsored by:
> SourceForge Enterprise Edition + IBM + LinuxWorld = Something 2 See!
> http://www.vasoftware.com
> _______________________________________________
> Nms-cgi-devel mailing list
> Nms...@li...
> https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/nms-cgi-devel
>

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Nick C. <ni...@cl...>]

On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 04:35:41PM +0000, Dave Cross wrote:
> Here are some thoughts about the nms project and its future. Thanks to
> Simon Wilcox for helping me thrash out some of the details. Please read
> all of this message.
> 
> The nms project is very successful. And I'm not convinced that we are
> properly geared up for that success. I don't want the project to be 
> forced to closed down, so I think we have to change the way we work.
> 
> I think we're having two major problems.
> 
> * Very small number of people involved in support.
> 
>   We have 65 people on the developers mailing list. But I think there
>   have been about five people who have answered a support question in
>   the last two months. I am, of course, eternally grateful to those 
>   people for the time they put it, but if we keep relying on a such
>   a small number of people they will come under more and more pressure
>   until they decide they can't be bothered any more and leave the 
>   project.
>
>   There are also a small (but growing, I think) number of support emails
>   that just don't get answered. This makes the project look bad.
>
>   One of the things that is supposed to differentiate between us and Matt Wright
>   is that we have a good support system. For some people that doesn't
>   seem to be true currently.

Our current standard of support is less than perfect, but I hope you'll
agree that it's a lot better than none at all, so it's still a big win
over Matt's scripts.

>   There are enough of us that the support effort doesn't need to be very 
>   onerous for a small number of people. If we spread it out, each of us
>   would only need to deal with a very small number of emails.

Very true, it would be nice to see more people looking through the
support list and answering any questions that they feel able to deal
with.

> * Very little development going on
> 
>   Nick Cleaton is doing great work on FormMail and TFMail, but they
>   seem to be the only programs that are moving forward. Once again I
>   have to wonder why we have 65 people on the development list if most
>   of them have no interest in doing any development.

Which way is forward ?

Any objections to the OO module based scheme I described in my
previous post to nms-dev ?

>   A few weeks ago, I posted several emails to the development list in
>   one afternoon. They were all ideas for improvements that came from
>   support requests. I posted them to the devel list hoping for a bit
>   of discussion about the suggestions followed by someone volunteering 
>   to take the project on. All of these emails were completely ignored.
> 
>   Simon also posted a number of emails to the devel list during 
>   December. This were also ignored (by me too, I'm sorry to admit).

I too have ignored the dev emails of others and had mine ignored in
turn.  Coming up with hairbrained schemes is so much more fun than
talking other people out of their hairbrained schemes, isn't it ?

>   As with support, if people make suggestions for improvements to our
>   scripts and they are just ignored, then it makes us look bad.
>
> Ok. So those are the problems. Here are some suggestions for solutions.
> 
> I need to delegate responsibility for the development and support for the
> scripts. Already Nick pretty much controls FormMail and TFMail, but we
> need to take that further.
> 
> I suggest that Nick gets a group of about four or five volunteers to help
> him develop and support FormMail and TFMail. This group will be 
> responsible for handling all support email on these scripts and for making
> new releases available.
> 
> We'll also create smaller groups that do the same for the other scripts.
> We'll probably need separate groups for wwwboard, search and guestbook as
> (after formmail) they are the most commonly used. The other scripts can
> probably all be dealt with by a single group.
>
> These groups will also be responsible within themselves for assign rotas
> of people who will deal with support issues. These will designate a
> "first line support" person. This person will be able to call on other
> people within the group to help them solve problems that they can't work
> out on their own.

That would be a good idea if we all did this 9 to 5, but given that we
don't, internal escalations are really going to kill support turn around
times.

Anything that moves away from the existing scheme (first person who
both sees the question and knows the answer replies) is going to
extend turnaround times as far as I can see.

If people are ignoring support requests to which they know the answer
because they aren't in the right group then turn around times will be
even worse.

> I also intend to make the developers mailing list closed. So that only 
> people who are in one of these support groups will be subscribed to the
> list.

I don't like that.  Lurking on the dev list is a nice way to get into a
project, and I wouldn't like to see us close that door.

If this is meant to encourage people to join support groups, I would
have though it would be better to take commit privileges away from
those who won't.

> In order to foster more of a feeling of responsibility towards the 
> scripts I'd like to introduce a "team bios" page on the web page so that
> people can see who's who on the project.
>
> And speaking of the web site, it needs an overhaul so I'd like to create
> another group that is responsible for that. Amongst the things I'd like 
> them to look at are:
> 
> * Team bios page
> 
> * Script documentation on the web site
>   (even better if it's auto-generated from the README files as a
>   script is released).
> 
> * Script demos on the web site
> 
> * More FAQs
>   Perhaps even some kind of "knowledge base" or wiki.
> 
> * Announcements
>   I'd like to encourage people to sign up to a new announcements list
>   when they download our scripts. They will then get automatic emails
>   when a new version is released. This announcements should also be 
>   listed on the web site.
> 
> * Articles
>   Useful articles for CGI beginners. Things like "idiots guide to 
>   debugging a CGI script".

The website changes sound good to me.

--
Nick

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Olivier D. <dr...@sh...>]

On Mon, Jan 13, 2003 at 08:44:22PM +0000, Nick Cleaton wrote:
> Our current standard of support is less than perfect, but I hope you'll
> agree that it's a lot better than none at all, so it's still a big win
> over Matt's scripts.

I agree to this. Yes there are unanswered support requests. I used to
work in customer assistance and even with several people answering the
phone, we would sometimes get wait times of above 1h and people as you
would imagine would hang-up before they would even get answered.

But as Nick says, for a non-profit group of volunteers we're not in such
a bad situation.

> Any objections to the OO module based scheme I described in my
> previous post to nms-dev ?

I love it. It think it'll definetly go with NMS's philosophy to teach
better programming practices. It might also prove useful for code reuse
within the scripts or if we decided to create more script (ie. have more
user support request, yay!)

> Anything that moves away from the existing scheme (first person who
> both sees the question and knows the answer replies) is going to
> extend turnaround times as far as I can see.
> 
> If people are ignoring support requests to which they know the answer
> because they aren't in the right group then turn around times will be
> even worse.

I agree with that too. I think we just need to get a few people to at
least read the emails. Most of the requests aren't too hard to deal
with and most people with Perl knowledge who have read the README files
can answer them.

> I don't like that.  Lurking on the dev list is a nice way to get into a
> project, and I wouldn't like to see us close that door.
> 
> If this is meant to encourage people to join support groups, I would
> have though it would be better to take commit privileges away from
> those who won't.

Makes sense to me too. Lurking doesn't hurt anyone and doesn't make the
project worse. Removing commit privileges would probably help keep
control on who checks-in code and it is sound that only those who have
spent some time working with the script can commit.

-Olivier

-- 
                  __-/|    ? ?     |\-__
             __--/  /  \   (^^)   /  \  \--__
          _-/   /   /   \ / ( )  /   \   \   \-_
         /  /   /  /     ~(  ^^ ~     \  \   \  \
         / Oli Dragon    dr...@sh... \
        /  Sfwr Eng III  (  McMaster University  \
        /  /  /     __--_ (   ) __--__     \  \  \
        |  /  /  _/        \_ \_       \_  \  \  |
         \/  / _/            \_ \_       \_ \  \/
          \_/ /                -\_\        \ \_/
            \/                   -)         \/
                                *~
 ___--<******************************************************>--___
[http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=olivier+dragon&op=index]
 ~~~--<******************************************************>--~~~

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Simon W. <es...@ou...>]

On Mon, 13 Jan 2003, Nick Cleaton wrote:

> On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 04:35:41PM +0000, Dave Cross wrote:
> >
> >   One of the things that is supposed to differentiate between us and Matt Wright
> >   is that we have a good support system. For some people that doesn't
> >   seem to be true currently.
> 
> Our current standard of support is less than perfect, but I hope you'll
> agree that it's a lot better than none at all, so it's still a big win
> over Matt's scripts.

Definitely but I think that Dave is right to consider how we organise the 
group to go forward in a sustainable fashion and to do it before it 
becomes really critical.

> >   There are enough of us that the support effort doesn't need to be very 
> >   onerous for a small number of people. If we spread it out, each of us
> >   would only need to deal with a very small number of emails.
> 
> Very true, it would be nice to see more people looking through the
> support list and answering any questions that they feel able to deal
> with.

[snip]

> > These groups will also be responsible within themselves for assign rotas
> > of people who will deal with support issues. These will designate a
> > "first line support" person. This person will be able to call on other
> > people within the group to help them solve problems that they can't work
> > out on their own.
> 
> That would be a good idea if we all did this 9 to 5, but given that we
> don't, internal escalations are really going to kill support turn around
> times.
> 
> Anything that moves away from the existing scheme (first person who
> both sees the question and knows the answer replies) is going to
> extend turnaround times as far as I can see.
> 
> If people are ignoring support requests to which they know the answer
> because they aren't in the right group then turn around times will be
> even worse.

I put my hand up to this one. I've found that I tend not to answer 
requests because I know that Nick is likely to do it. This has two 
explanations.

1. I don't think we should be sending multiple, possibly contradictory 
messages to new users. I would prefer a more consistent approach.

2. I don't think it is a good use of resources to duplicate the support 
effort.

I would rather know that it is my $timeperiod to respond to support calls 
and that I should be paying attention to the list. When $timeperiod is 
over i would carry on with any open calls but someone else would take over 
the new ones.

As it is, it is all too easy for me to slack-off knowing that the calls
will probably get answered by Nick. This isn't good but as you say, we all
have other demands on our time. If you're going to answer the call anyway,
why do I need to spend the time ? It's human nature but it is bad for the
long term development of the project.

In respect of escalations, I feel bad that when I had reached the end of 
my knowledge there was no backup to help get the call resolved. Giving 
explicit ownership to individuals helps to encourage that support. 
Handled correctly with the user, they should understand that more help is 
needed and the developer should actually have more time to help with such 
things if they are not busy answering lots of other calls.

> > I also intend to make the developers mailing list closed. So that only 
> > people who are in one of these support groups will be subscribed to the
> > list.
> 
> I don't like that.  Lurking on the dev list is a nice way to get into a
> project, and I wouldn't like to see us close that door.
> 
> If this is meant to encourage people to join support groups, I would
> have though it would be better to take commit privileges away from
> those who won't.

I'm not sure that closing the dev list will help establish a community but 
I do think there needs to be an invite-only list of people that drive the 
development of the project.

I think the creation of a support wiki (or other favoured collaboration 
tool) and the public acknowledgement of contributors and developers will 
do more towards that aim.

> The website changes sound good to me.

Me too, now where did I put that round tuit... ? :)

Simon.

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Nick C. <ni...@cl...>]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 12:32:49AM +0000, Simon Wilcox wrote:
> > Our current standard of support is less than perfect, but I hope you'll
> > agree that it's a lot better than none at all, so it's still a big win
> > over Matt's scripts.
> 
> Definitely but I think that Dave is right to consider how we organise the 
> group to go forward in a sustainable fashion and to do it before it 
> becomes really critical.

fair point.

> > > These groups will also be responsible within themselves for assign rotas
> > > of people who will deal with support issues. These will designate a
> > > "first line support" person. This person will be able to call on other
> > > people within the group to help them solve problems that they can't work
> > > out on their own.
> > 
> > That would be a good idea if we all did this 9 to 5, but given that we
> > don't, internal escalations are really going to kill support turn around
> > times.
> > 
> > Anything that moves away from the existing scheme (first person who
> > both sees the question and knows the answer replies) is going to
> > extend turnaround times as far as I can see.
> > 
> > If people are ignoring support requests to which they know the answer
> > because they aren't in the right group then turn around times will be
> > even worse.
> 
> I put my hand up to this one. I've found that I tend not to answer 
> requests because I know that Nick is likely to do it. This has two 
> explanations.
> 
> 1. I don't think we should be sending multiple, possibly contradictory 
> messages to new users. I would prefer a more consistent approach.
>
> 2. I don't think it is a good use of resources to duplicate the support 
> effort.

Both valid points, but are those considerations important enough that we
should be sacrificing turnaround times to meet them ?  Maybe they are.

> I would rather know that it is my $timeperiod to respond to support calls 
> and that I should be paying attention to the list. When $timeperiod is 
> over i would carry on with any open calls but someone else would take over 
> the new ones.

Having a single person follow each call through is nice for user
comfort, but not optimum for a quick turnaround.  IMO the speed at which
users get a satisfactory answer is the most important thing, as that is
what stops them giving up and using another (maybe less secure) script.

Many times, one of us has answered an initial query with a request for
further information, and another has answered the reply with the
solution.  This is a good thing IMO.

> As it is, it is all too easy for me to slack-off knowing that the calls
> will probably get answered by Nick. This isn't good but as you say, we all
> have other demands on our time. If you're going to answer the call anyway,
> why do I need to spend the time ?

Because you answering it now is better in terms of turnaround time than
me answering it later.

> In respect of escalations, I feel bad that when I had reached the end of 
> my knowledge there was no backup to help get the call resolved. Giving 
> explicit ownership to individuals helps to encourage that support. 
> Handled correctly with the user, they should understand that more help is 
> needed and the developer should actually have more time to help with such 
> things if they are not busy answering lots of other calls.

You're talking about the TFmail upload problem, right ?  I looked at that
(quite hard) but I couldn't think of anything that you hadn't already tried.
The escalation method of posting to nms-dev *didn't* let you down there - I
would have failed just the same had it been escalated to me via a fancy
ticketing system.

> > I don't like that.  Lurking on the dev list is a nice way to get into a
> > project, and I wouldn't like to see us close that door.
> > 
> > If this is meant to encourage people to join support groups, I would
> > have though it would be better to take commit privileges away from
> > those who won't.
> 
> I'm not sure that closing the dev list will help establish a community but 
> I do think there needs to be an invite-only list of people that drive the 
> development of the project.

We could do that with CC in email with our leader posting the outcome to
the dev list as a policy announcement, couldn't we ?

--
Nick

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Simon W. <es...@ou...>]

On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Nick Cleaton wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 12:32:49AM +0000, Simon Wilcox wrote:
> > 
> > 1. I don't think we should be sending multiple, possibly contradictory 
> > messages to new users. I would prefer a more consistent approach.
> >
> > 2. I don't think it is a good use of resources to duplicate the support 
> > effort.
> 
> Both valid points, but are those considerations important enough that we
> should be sacrificing turnaround times to meet them ?  Maybe they are.

I believe so. As you already noted, we are far in advance of any 
alternative and I'm not convinced that raw speed needs to be our goal. 
Perception is important too.

> > I would rather know that it is my $timeperiod to respond to support calls 
> > and that I should be paying attention to the list. When $timeperiod is 
> > over i would carry on with any open calls but someone else would take over 
> > the new ones.
> 
> Having a single person follow each call through is nice for user
> comfort, but not optimum for a quick turnaround.  IMO the speed at which
> users get a satisfactory answer is the most important thing, as that is
> what stops them giving up and using another (maybe less secure) script.

Are we providing support for them or for us ?

User comfort is as important as speed. In most cases a delay of a couple 
of hours is not a problem, indeed your posts are often delayed by your 
batching so I don't understand that point.
 
> Many times, one of us has answered an initial query with a request for
> further information, and another has answered the reply with the
> solution.  This is a good thing IMO.

The solution is a good thing, the confused message is not IMO. I think
that it has the potential to make the problem (of not enough support)  
worse not better as people decide not to answer queries because they
expect that someone will come through with a correct answer.

This is part of the reason why a knowledgebase of some sort is a good 
idea, it will provide people with a better resource of solutions to 
provide on the first attempt.
 
> > As it is, it is all too easy for me to slack-off knowing that the calls
> > will probably get answered by Nick. This isn't good but as you say, we all
> > have other demands on our time. If you're going to answer the call anyway,
> > why do I need to spend the time ?
> 
> Because you answering it now is better in terms of turnaround time than
> me answering it later.

Except that human nature suggests that all that will happen is that 
everyone will leave it to you to answer the question. Look at the list 
traffic - this is already happening. I don't believe it is sustainable for 
very long.

> > In respect of escalations, I feel bad that when I had reached the end of 
> > my knowledge there was no backup to help get the call resolved. Giving 
> > explicit ownership to individuals helps to encourage that support. 
> > Handled correctly with the user, they should understand that more help is 
> > needed and the developer should actually have more time to help with such 
> > things if they are not busy answering lots of other calls.
> 
> You're talking about the TFmail upload problem, right ?  I looked at that
> (quite hard) but I couldn't think of anything that you hadn't already tried.
> The escalation method of posting to nms-dev *didn't* let you down there - I
> would have failed just the same had it been escalated to me via a fancy
> ticketing system.

I don't care about me, I do care about the user who didn't receive a 
solution to his problem. He will now tell 10 of his friends about the 
failure of NMS to run on his system. The fastest turnaround in the world 
will not help us if people perceive the support to be shoddy.

I don't care about fancy ticketing systems either. I did consider the 
merits of something like RT but they don't provide much over what we have 
in the list so it's not really worth the effort.

The list DID fail me though. Not one person responded to me, even to say 
that they couldn't find anything either. People don't like living in a 
vacuum. The collective mind of NMS was unable to go back to this user with 
even one further question. Not very impressive.
 
> > I'm not sure that closing the dev list will help establish a community but 
> > I do think there needs to be an invite-only list of people that drive the 
> > development of the project.
> 
> We could do that with CC in email with our leader posting the outcome to
> the dev list as a policy announcement, couldn't we ?

If that's the way that works best for everyone then yes but I'd suggest 
that you would lose the group memory that comes from having a list archive 
and that getting new members up to speed would be that much harder. YMMV.

As an aside, to hopefully illustrate my feelings here, this mornings 
examples of double posting perfectly encapsulate what I've been saying.

Having taken a few minutes to respond to overnight emails, mostly by 
requesting further information, Nick then delivered his batch of emails 
answering the same questions, generally in ways better than I managed.

I've spent about 30mins so far on composing this reply. Where is my 
motivation to continue answering support requests ?

If I had not responded, the answers would have been forthcoming at about 
the same time. No speed improvement there.

If I had not responded, the answer received would have been less confused 
than it was by me responding.

My conlusion seems to be that my contribution is superfluous.

My question is, how long can one man continue to support the entire list ? 
At first it was Dave, all we've done is move the burden onto Nick. I just 
don't see how that is sustainable so I've suggested ways to spread the 
burden and provide Nick with more support. I guess it's up to you how you 
choose to use those ideas.

Simon.

RE: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Wizard <wi...@ne...>]

OK, here's my two cents. Please let me know if I'm blowing smoke (or any
other noxious gases ):

I was recently asked by a friend to attempt to fix his Phillips Pronto
remote control. Phillips apparently offers little or no support for this
device (I have yet to receive a response to my support request posted last
week sometime). What I did do, was to go to www.prontoedit.com/forums which
is a self-help bulletin board by end-users, where questions are posted by
and support is offered by the users themselves. This seems to me to be an
excellent means of supporting our products, and might even be able to be
done with WWWBoard & SimpleSearch scripts to manage it. If done correctly, I
suspect that over time this sort of system could dramatically reduce the
number of support requests that get directed to the list (under the "Getting
Support" section, we ask the user to try the self-support first, and if that
fails then email the support list). This would also act as the knowledge
base that someone else mentioned.

Just a thought,
Grant M.

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Neil W. <li...@co...>]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

On Tuesday 14 Jan 2003 1:47 pm, Wizard wrote:
> OK, here's my two cents. Please let me know if I'm blowing smoke (or any
> other noxious gases ):
>
> is a self-help bulletin board by end-users, where questions are posted by
> and support is offered by the users themselves. This seems to me to be an
> excellent means of supporting our products, and might even be able to be
> done with WWWBoard & SimpleSearch scripts to manage it. If done correctly,

That will certainly speed up the development of wwwboard and in particular 
wwwadmin! I joined the list to learn about these two and to possibly get 
involved but since joining, other areas have become far more pressing and 
there simply hasn't been time, even to keep up with the recent updates. So my 
experience of wwwadmin, in particular, is behind the times - however, I 
haven't seen a lot of discussion on wwwadmin either. 

(end lurk)

I have multiple local copies of wwboard on varying Linux distros (and even 
Windoze) that I can use for testing but the live site needs to have a 
reliable (i.e. not testing mode) installation at all times so I can test 
locally but the tests cannot be on the main site. (Other hostspace I have 
uses a lot of adverts - freebie ISP stuff - and isn't much use for HTML 
testing, only binary storage.)

- - - -- 

Neil Williams
=============
http://www.codehelp.co.uk
http://www.dclug.org.uk
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Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Dan K. <da...@ke...>]

Neil Williams wrote:
> On Tuesday 14 Jan 2003 1:47 pm, Wizard wrote: ...
>>is a self-help bulletin board by end-users, where questions are posted by
>>and support is offered by the users themselves. This seems to me to be an
>>excellent means of supporting our products, and might even be able to be
>>done with WWWBoard & SimpleSearch scripts to manage it. If done correctly,
> 
> 
> That will certainly speed up the development of wwwboard and in particular 
> wwwadmin! 

Um, how's that different from a mailing list with a searchable
archive?  Do people hate mail that much?
- Dan

-- 
Dan Kegel
http://www.kegel.com
http://counter.li.org/cgi-bin/runscript/display-person.cgi?user=78045

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Olivier D. <dr...@sh...>]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 07:27:39PM -0800, Dan Kegel wrote:
> Neil Williams wrote:
> >On Tuesday 14 Jan 2003 1:47 pm, Wizard wrote: ...
> >>is a self-help bulletin board by end-users, where questions are posted by
> >>and support is offered by the users themselves. This seems to me to be an
> >>excellent means of supporting our products, and might even be able to be
> >>done with WWWBoard & SimpleSearch scripts to manage it. If done correctly,
> >
> >
> >That will certainly speed up the development of wwwboard and in particular 
> >wwwadmin! 
> 
> Um, how's that different from a mailing list with a searchable
> archive?  Do people hate mail that much?

It's for the users, not for us. It's easier for users to drop-in and
post a message on a board than going through a sign-up process and
getting your mailbox clogged-up with tons of emails. It's also easier to
reply to than an archived list for those who aren't signed up.

I also like the fact that we could use our own wwwboard and wwwadmin to
give it some rigourous testing.

-Olivier

-- 
                  __-/|    ? ?     |\-__
             __--/  /  \   (^^)   /  \  \--__
          _-/   /   /   \ / ( )  /   \   \   \-_
         /  /   /  /     ~(  ^^ ~     \  \   \  \
         / Oli Dragon    dr...@sh... \
        /  Sfwr Eng III  (  McMaster University  \
        /  /  /     __--_ (   ) __--__     \  \  \
        |  /  /  _/        \_ \_       \_  \  \  |
         \/  / _/            \_ \_       \_ \  \/
          \_/ /                -\_\        \ \_/
            \/                   -)         \/
                                *~
 ___--<******************************************************>--___
[http://pgp.mit.edu:11371/pks/lookup?search=olivier+dragon&op=index]
 ~~~--<******************************************************>--~~~

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Nick C. <ni...@cl...>]

On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 10:02:21AM +0000, Simon Wilcox wrote:
> On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Nick Cleaton wrote:
> 
> > Having a single person follow each call through is nice for user
> > comfort, but not optimum for a quick turnaround.  IMO the speed at which
> > users get a satisfactory answer is the most important thing, as that is
> > what stops them giving up and using another (maybe less secure) script.
> 
> Are we providing support for them or for us ?
> 
> User comfort is as important as speed. In most cases a delay of a couple 
> of hours is not a problem, indeed your posts are often delayed by your 
> batching so I don't understand that point.

I agree a delay of a few hours is OK, I was just worried that with
different people checking their email at different times, these
internal escalations could add up to much longer delays.

[ SNIP MUCH GOOD SENSE ]

OK, you've convinced me - I withdraw my dissent.

The only thing in the plan that I still don't like is making nms-dev
closed - I would prefer the creation of a new closed list.

--
Nick

Re: [Nms-cgi-devel] nms project - moving forward

[Simon W. <es...@ou...>]

On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Nick Cleaton wrote:

> On Tue, Jan 14, 2003 at 10:02:21AM +0000, Simon Wilcox wrote:
> > On Tue, 14 Jan 2003, Nick Cleaton wrote:
> > 
> > > Having a single person follow each call through is nice for user
> > > comfort, but not optimum for a quick turnaround.  IMO the speed at which
> > > users get a satisfactory answer is the most important thing, as that is
> > > what stops them giving up and using another (maybe less secure) script.
> > 
> > Are we providing support for them or for us ?
> > 
> > User comfort is as important as speed. In most cases a delay of a couple 
> > of hours is not a problem, indeed your posts are often delayed by your 
> > batching so I don't understand that point.
> 
> I agree a delay of a few hours is OK, I was just worried that with
> different people checking their email at different times, these
> internal escalations could add up to much longer delays.

I agree and as long as it is handled back to the user in an open fashion I
think they will acept the delay. i.e. it will be important to let them
know what is happening, that it has been escalated and there might be a
delay in the response.

> [ SNIP MUCH GOOD SENSE ]
> 
> OK, you've convinced me - I withdraw my dissent.
> 
> The only thing in the plan that I still don't like is making nms-dev
> closed - I would prefer the creation of a new closed list.

I agree with you there too, adding extra things is easier than taking them 
away from people.

S.