What's going on here???

Talk about stuff specific to the site -- bugs, suggestions, and of course praise welcome.
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Frank Lion
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Post by Frank Lion »

Chris, I have a better idea. :)

If Mozilla does anything that affects MozillaZine, please tell MozillaZine here. Don't assume someone has nothing better to do than read Mozilla's endless 'brainstorming' sessions, just to get a simple update.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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old np
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Post by old np »

Daifne wrote:
ChrisI wrote:If anyone has any feedback, questions, concerns, or complaints about the support.mozilla.com project, please tell Mozilla in mozilla.support.planning (newsgroup/mailing list/Google Group). Don't assume someone will pass anything on for you.


If we are supposed to be a community, why wouldn't they pass things on to us? If they won't, then I can only assume that there is no community.

I think what Chris is saying is that if you want to give feedback, the most visible way to do it would be to post to that newsgroup, otherwise you're relying on someone else to convey what you have to say to them.

Mozilla was assuming that everyone who was interested in the project knew about it, which obviously isn't the case. I've suggested, based on malliz's suggestion, that they write up a news item and post it to the mozillaZine front page and/or the Announcements section on mozilla.org.
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Frank Lion
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Post by Frank Lion »

Phil Bridger wrote:
Phil Bridger wrote:Do you mean that there should have been a thread like this one?

Or this one?

Isn't this passing things on?

Er, Phil, maybe time passes differently once you have retired, but those are old threads. No good you waving those links around every time you post, things have moved on a fair bit since then.

If those threads were as relevant as you seem to think, how come Kerz, one of Admin of this MozillaZine site, doesn't seem to be fully aware of what is going on? You going to wave those links at him, as well?
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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Phil Bridger
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Post by Phil Bridger »

The second link is 8 weeks old, and alerted us about discussion that was going to take place in May. This was exactly the discussion that so many people seem to be saying that they would like to have been involved in but didn't know about.
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Frank Lion
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Post by Frank Lion »

Phil Bridger wrote:... that so many people seem to be saying that they would like to have been involved in but didn't know about.

I counted just two on this thread like that. Three, if you want to include Kerz. That's the nice thing about coding - teaches you how to be exact, haha.
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Post by Guest »

ChrisI wrote: Don't assume someone will pass anything on for you.


Why not? It took you all of how long to post that? Two minutes?
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Frank Lion
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Post by Frank Lion »

Hmm, was just reading this thread and noticed this -

Phil Bridger wrote:Isn't it blindingly obvious that it is better for Firefox users (the people that matter) if support comes from the same organisation that develops the product?

Er, yes, Phil, that is what I was saying on that very link you were waving about. Did you read it?

Phil Bridger wrote: thread like this one?

Frank Lion, 7 weeks ago wrote:When I thought about this afterwards, I have to say that there is something in this. Mozilla is no longer the geeky fledgling organisation that it once was, it has grown and now has support from other friends apart from MozillaZine, such as Google, etc. Perhaps then, the time has come for Mozilla to directly take a much larger responsibility for providing Support of Mozilla products and rely much less of the MozillaZine forums to provide this service for them.

Certainly, apart from anything, this should reduce the criticism of MozillaZine by Mozilla people as the Support services would then be run directly by Mozilla.

So, I propose that Mozilla should set up an official Mozilla site for this purpose with immediate effect and we can then direct Mozilla product users directly to it.


So yes, it was blindingly obvious to me...7 weeks ago. Not only that, but I would like you to find me one regular MozillaZine member here who has ever said that Mozilla should not have it's own Support side.

The point under discussion here, is not whether or not Mozilla should have it's own Support and KB side, but how Mozilla has and is going about achieving this and the role that MozillaZine plays in all this. I would also add, that fascinating as your reasons for being a MozillaZine member here are, they have damn all to do with this thread!

Moving on...

My point to the Mozilla people is a simple one. Do not assume that we are all against you. Yes, Lucy's input here has been far from helpful, but Mozilla is bigger than just Lucy, isn't it?

You are all giving the impression of creeping about like guilty men/women on all this and I have no idea why. Just be open and clear about what you want from us. If you want to, and I think it's time you did, to run a parallel Support/KB then fine. If you want feedback for your own KB, then ask for it. Just don't get np asking for feedback on the MozillaZine KB, if the idea was to get ideas for your own. I have no idea if it was...you've haven't communicated that to us.

Talking of communication. Mozilla people been working on all this for a while now? Why didn't you open lines of communication with this guy, right at the very start?...

The Kerz wrote:
> - Kerz is working/in communication with JT on these changes.

I have talked to JT, but I'm not in communication with anyone really
past the point of "this would be interesting, what are you thinking/
how can we help"
> - Kerz has stated that Mozillazine will drop features e.g support
> forum or knowledge base. See the thread that np posted.

I've stated we will /NOT/ drop features.

Jason


What? months and months in, and no one at Mozilla thought it might be a 'real good idea' to get the main man at MozillaZine actively involved in all this?

I have read that Google Groups stuff, you know. No good coming here saying 'Wow! give us your feedback, it would be great to get your input, man!' ... if when people like Ken Saunders and David McRitchie do just that...you immediately slam into them! If you already know what you are doing, then don't ask. If you are not quite sure? then, at least, try to damn well listen and take on board the responses that you, yourselves, have asked for. No one is going to offer 'feedback' to you, if you immediately get all defensive and rip every idea to shreds.

Hopefully, some of the above suggestions will be useful to the Mozilla guys, which is how they are intended.

Oh, and call your spin doctor off...he not only sucks at it, but has watched just one too many White House press conferences, I reckon, haha -

np wrote:I think what Chris is saying is that if you ...
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Post by old np »

Frank Lion wrote:No good coming here saying 'Wow! give us your feedback, it would be great to get your input, man!' ... if when people like Ken Saunders and David McRitchie do just that...you immediately slam into them!

I don't see any "slamming" happening. Is Chris Ilias getting slammed here? Is choffman getting "slammed" here? Of course not. If someone gives an idea that I think is bad, I'll argue with them, no matter if they're in charge of the whole thing or some guy I've never heard of. I expect that others do the same. The alternative is to follow or ignore every suggestion without discussion.
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Frank Lion
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Post by Frank Lion »

np wrote:... If someone gives an idea that I think is bad, I'll argue with them, no matter if they're in charge of the whole thing or some guy I've never heard of. I expect that others do the same.

Has it ever occurred to you that some of the best ideas, often come from some of the quietest people? Quiet people who just wish to voice their opinions, have them noted and not get into an endless upsetting argument about it.

Has it ever occurred to you that the best decisions are not made by basing them on who has the loudest voice and who can go on and on and on and on, until the other people give up through not having limitless time to argue about it?

Of course not.

The alternative is to follow or ignore every suggestion without discussion.

Says you. I rely heavily on the advice of some very good, quiet people. I simply listen and go away and think carefully about what they have said. Later, I will quietly discuss their ideas with them and not once has that resulted in an argument, whatever the final decision was.

You want to endlessly argue with me here? Tough, I'm busy with other things.
"The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil, is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke (attrib.)
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the-edmeister
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Post by the-edmeister »

1. It would be nice to have someone directly employed by the Mozilla Foundation thus representing their interests communicating that information with us in our "home".
2. What has kept the Mozilla Foundation from stepping up and covering the cost of a new server, support software, & related expenses to help MozillaZine handle the surges in demand for support of their products?
3. IMO, MozillaZine is integral with support for the products of the Foundation (at least in English). If it wasn't for the presence of MozillaZine back in 2002-2003, and the help I received from other users I would have never gotten over the initial hurdles in using the Suite and Phoenix/Firebird. I am pretty sure the same would be said by many other users.
4. Personally, I don't think Mozilla is up to handling their own Support forums, witness the repeated debacles that their extensions/themes website efforts degenerated into on two separate instances over the last three years.
5. The transfer (what? - two years ago, or was it three years ago) of David Tensor's old knowledge-base type of website into official Mozilla Foundation/Corp web pages didn't exactly go smoothly, plus the articles weren't edited with updated content. I would expect the same thing to happen again.
6. After reading the Support:Overview and the Support:PRD pages, all I can say to Mozilla is, good luck trying to achieve those goals.


Ed
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

I don't think Mozilla would be where it is without this forum. At the very least, we bought them a lot of time while they fixed bugs. On the other hand, this forum wouldn't be where it is without Mozilla! Mozilla sends people here for support, and if they remove that link, you can expect the volume to drop way off.

Is that bad? It depends on whether they can pull it off. Can they support users? Some of you want to know if the community will still exist. Valid questions. Will they welcome all the help they can get? No one knows.

There's a huge potential payoff if they do start to support users. They might actually <i>fix</i> certain problems instead of saturating the Internet with warnings. With professional attention they might even be able to clean up the Knowledge Base. Actually, I do hope they can pull it off, without any hard feeling if possible. I sure don't want them to stumble.

But if only Mozilla people would only communicate. At least talk to Kerz! Or communicate a little gratitude once in a while. Or inform us about something. Anything! And do listen occasionally. We really could prevent a lot of foot injuries.

And I think I can see what's happening. It's not malice. They live somewhere else and don't get over here very often. Between 385,000 bug reports, competing with MS and the rest of the world, making decisions and sticking with them, and laying their own grandiose plans, it's kind of hard to spend time with the folks who drove them to the ball. I'm willing to give them slack. A LOT of slack. Meanwhile, we'll just keep waiting for the phone to ring.
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kerz
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Post by kerz »

Let's back up a bit here, before this gets out of hand. Mozilla has been very helpful to us in a number of ways, and I don't really view this as any sort of "Attack" or whatever at all. They want (and need) an official place to point people for support. Folks who are involved here, as well as those who are not, are working on that. Let's not jump all over them for that, as that's just silly. They have a business and a project to run, and they're finally including support in with that, which is a good thing for sure. They have their own ways of doing things at Mozilla, which typically don't involve posting updates in our forums, for better or worse, but not out of spite. Again, let's give them a chance to do this right (I know they will, chofmann will make sure of it) before we jump all of them.

As far as mozillaZine, it's business as usual, we're working behind the scenes to help the site scale, in a few different ways. I'm hoping we have the first part of this at least ready for testing by the weekend, so stay tuned. The state of our union is good.

jason
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Post by VanillaMozilla »

That's great news, Kerz.
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Post by Phil Bridger »

kerz,

Thanks for that post. I was starting to think that I was the lone voice of sanity around here amidst all the tribalism.
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Post by ChrisI »

What will it take to get most MozillaZine KB contributors to warm up to the Firefox Support KB?
(I won't do xxx.)
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