[Ambassadors] The fedora project and local forums

[Rahul Sundaram]

Sebastian Vahl wrote:
> Hi.
> 
> I've described in my "hello"-mail that I want to start a discussion about the 
> status of local forums inside/outside the project and also the contact with 
> them. There are many international community websites out there [1]. But ATM 
> their only relationship to the project is that they use fedora. That's a 
> point you have also noticed in a FAD last year [2].
> So I would like to talk about how to integrate them more into the project, 
> talk to them and so on. In my opinion forums and esp. local forums are the 
> users first touch with fedora (besides the installation itself). Of course 
> only for those that like forums - if they like IRC or mailinglists more they 
> can use the _official_ irc channels and mailinglists (and also in their 
> language). But the forums are normally called "community websites" - for 
> different reasons. But if we (as fedora project not as a lonely ambassador) 
> can get in contact with them and they get more involved in the project (as a 
> forum, not as a normal person) this could be a benefit for all of us. 

Sure.

> The first question here is if you have already discussed this in the past? If 
> not it would be a good start to discuss the advantages and disadvantages of 
> this. I have some ideas for this but first I'd like to hear your opinion. :)

This has been discussed multiple times before here and on 
fedora-websites list from a conversation initiated by me. Some website 
administrations have joined the project as ambassadors, translators etc 
but there is definitely more coordination required.

  * If these websites carry content that is useful they should try and 
merge the documentation into the fedoraproject.org website and 
documentation project as long as it fits in (nothing about proprietary 
software etc)

  * People actively involved in any of these community websites can be 
interested in doing translation work. Website, documentation and packages.

* These regional websites sometimes host their own packages which could 
be avoided. There is usually no reason why they cant be merged into a 
bigger repository. Either the official one or with a standard third 
party repo.

* Any promotional or marketing ideas should be shared and worked within 
a global team.

* Feedback from users can be shared. Bug reports and enhancement 
requests should be made to Red Hat bugzilla instead of these forums so 
that developers can deal with them directly. Ambassadors who are already 
active in these regional websites need to bridge efforts.

* Website team might have periodical meetings with other local forum and 
website administrators to enable this kind of coordination.

Rahul