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Re: [Debconf-team] Some thought: Pentabarf



Hi,

On Tuesday 19 August 2008 18:57, Margarita Manterola wrote:
> These are my suggestions (which I might submit to rt if there's
> consensus about them):

I'd say, please do!

> 3) Make "I want to attend this conference" default to true.  This is
> supposed to be a technical problem.  So, I suggest making it a
> drop-down with "Yes", "No", "Maybe" and default to Yes.

"I want to attend this conference" is a misleading wording, I think it should 
be reworded to "I will attend.." and I would also make this default 
to "Maybe".

> All in all, I think that these ideas just make the problem slightly
> less, instead of actually solving it.  I can't think of how to
> actually solve the problem (which is: most people won't fill in all
> the important data, unless you ping them over and over again), but it
> would be nice if it were possible, so, if someone has a suggestion
> that would help solve the problem, please make it now.

I think this is a social problem which cannot be solved in Pentabarf. People 
simple dont know if they will be able to attend (due to personal, job and 
money reasons). 

And if you force them to enter dates, they will choose bogus ones. (And forget 
updating the right ones when they know.)

Adding to this comes the fact, that so far we never punished people who 
registered and didnt show up. We could+should probably give a hint in the "i 
will attend" checkbox, that checking it and not attending will have 
consequences for next year and how long (un)checking it, is fine. But this 
information needs to be placed next to the checkbox, having it only in a mail 
is not enough. (You are dealing with humans here, humans are stupid, even if 
they managed to become DDs.)

I think the only solution to this problem is some human going after them. 
Technology can help here, but not solve it.

If only 5% of the people fail understanding (parts of) the pentabarf user 
interface properly (which I think is a great quote), with 400 people we still 
have 20 people who need handholding in one form or the other.

> Also, from the admin side, there were lots of reports that I needed.
> Most were done by sgran (THANKS), some where done by des (THANKS too),
> and some by Ganneff (THANKS as well).  But I really felt crippled by
> not being able to do the queries I wanted when I wanted them, and
> having to have some of the admins work for me.  I think that a better
> solution needs to be found for this.

Please submit rt tickets for each of the reports you needed, so that next year 
they are available from within Pentabarf.


regards,
	Holger

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