Features that would be great for Fedora 10

[Jeff Spaleta]

On Thu, Jun 12, 2008 at 12:30 AM, Valent Turkovic
<valent.turkovic at gmail.com> wrote:
> 2. RFE: Desktop shortcut for joining Fedora IRC (aka "Get Live Help"):
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=430217 and
> https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=179703
>
> Fedora is about freedom+communication, right? Why not make this
> statement more that just a nice slogan. If you installed sabayon linux
> you could experienced for yourself what this really means. I as a new
> user to gentoo (sabayon is based on gentoo) was really blown away with
> this feature. It is really, really simple to implement and gives a
> real meaning to a communication friendly linux distro.

This isn't a particularly new idea.. in fact I was active in exactly
this sort of channel back when Ximian produced a gnome 2 desktop that
lived on top of rhl 7.x as an add-on.  What I have to say next is
grounded on lessons learned from multiple years of personal experience
with helping in irc help channels.

I will support adding a live help button or equivalent if and only if
there is an effort to identify and organize expert 'helpers' who can
agree to a code of conduct and to lead by example in interactions with
new users and less experienced helpers. Additionally this group would
need to make an effort to organize how they will spread themselves out
to cover as much in-channel time as the group is able to cover.
Having all available expert helpers volunteer to be in channel from 4
to 6 pm EST, isn't going to create a pervasive culture of right
action.
If we are going to put the live help in users faces with the
expectation to use it, then I expect a group of people in our
contributor base to stand up and be accountable for how well such a
channel runs and to make sure users are getting the help they need.
This group would also need to make an effort to service not just the
main English channel but also other language specific channels as best
they are able. Greg's translator service idea could help with that.


-jef