Re: Q to Chris: improving our onboarding process
Hey Lucas,
> > I will improve our onboarding process for new users and developers
[…]
> It seems that you are mixing two different issues here: new users, new
> developers. Why is it relevant to merge them together?
I merged them mostly for brevity within my platform - you are right to
imply that attracting "pure" users and developers are distinct cases.
On the hand, Debian attracts a relatively bigger share of technically-
inclined folks where the distinction between terms such as "user" and
"contributor" is especially blurred.
I would tackle these cases somewhat independently, bearing in mind that
it will always be easier to convert users into developers than to attract
them from scratch.
> Also, you give usability testing as one example of things you would like
> to try, and quality of documentation as something that should be
> improved. Are there other examples of things you would like to try [..]?
Definitely. As a caveat, I always try to avoid examples here as much as
possible in this area — the discussion can switch from the abstract to its
specific details, often bringing in some unnecessary baggage and history
that distracts from the real topic at hand.
However, as you asked (!) one example I would be especially interested in
improving is the "pre-Debian Installer" installation experience,
particularly in terms of getting Debian onto a USB stick after hearing about
it in passing.
Whilst it is *grossly* unfair and misleading, my go-to tease/factoid on this
topic is that on my laptop only 0.69% of <https://www.debian.org/> is used
for a download link.
> As DPL, how do you plan to be involved in all that? (Which can range
> from "saying that it's important and hoping that people will follow" to
> "I'm prepared to do all the work myself if necessary")
Somewhere closer to "doing some of the work" than the former; I'm sure we
can all say that it's important! I'm quite interested in and motivated by
this area in general & believe we have substantial low-hanging fruit.
> how do you think that we should transform our developers documentation?
This is indeed a situation where improvements lack a concrete metric of
success; simply counting the number of new developers would be highly
misleading, for example.
In addition, the idea of transforming our developer documentation in one
fell swoop is incredibly daunting and likely impossible. Therefore, my
idea would be to first identify the areas causing the most friction and
prioritise efforts around that, even if (!) that results in yet more
development documentation. Removing existing documentation is, as you
might have experienced yourself, incredibly difficult both from a
technical and and political point of view.
Regards,
--
,''`.
: :' : Chris Lamb
`. `'` lamby@debian.org / chris-lamb.co.uk
`-
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