Porteus

We have decided to make a change to the way the forum and development is run for Porteus. We would like to hand the forum over to the community so devs can focus more on fixing bugs and maintenance/development.

The idea is that moderators can take care of the forum with advanced members posting solutions where possible. If a problem can not be resolved it will be marked FAA (For Attentions of Admins) and entered into a bug tracking system. This will free up a lot of time for us and better utilize the expertise of our community.

Moderators will be expected to answer questions on the forum, remove spam, mark threads as FAA, move topics to relevant categories when posted incorrectly and finally to enter bug reports into our system when they are confirmed as bugs.

If you are interested in becoming a forum moderator please send me a PM stating so. Preference will go in this order:

1) Active members
2) Technical ability
3) Duration of time you have been with the project

Thanks for your continued loyalty and commitment.

Over 100 views. Zero answers or PM's.

???????

No one thinks that he qualifies. And maybe some pretedants would like to do it part time with a lot of holidays.

brokenman wrote: Moderators will be expected to answer questions on the forum, .... mark threads as FAA, ... finally to enter bug reports into our system when they are confirmed as bugs.

IMHO to be seen as demanding in-depth knowledge of Porteus, which a lot of us can't claim to have.

moderator needs to posses two attributes only:
- free time (plenty of it)
- willingness to learn

process is simple:
unanswered threads are flagged to us -> we resolve the bugs -> moderator remembers how to solve the problem -> if the same bug is posted once again then moderator (or other forum member) points the OP to the solution.

forum is given to the community which means it is for you. you have to help each others and treat devs as a last resort. situation when admin answers basic ("how to create a folder in cli") or repeated ("persistence does not work") questions should not be addressed by us anymore.

if porteus is meant to be alive then we must focus on development and bugfixing. each admin posted over 3k of times on this forum and i'm sure that about 75% of posts is just answering the same questions over and over again .... - this is not the way to go.

i see two ways to resolve this problem:
a) make the community active in resolving issues
b) limit number of features offered by Porteus to make it stupid simple (like kiosk where bootloader issues does not exist, lack of persistence makes the kiosk unbreakable, user is limited to features offered in the wizard only - easy to maintain so they always work, etc .., etc..)

lets try 'community activation' approach first.

If you are already answering questions on the forum then you have one qualification.

To paraphrase a bit it reads more like:

moderator needs to posses two attributes only:
- free time (plenty of it)
- willingness to learn
- read all posts and flag unanswered threads
- remembers how the problem was solved then if the same problem is posted points the OP to the previously posted solution.
- treat devs as special people. The devs will no longer bother with questions they consider to be beneath them.

i see two ways to resolve this problem:
a) make the community active in resolving issues
b) limit number of features offered by Porteus to make it stupid simple (like kiosk where bootloader issues does not exist, lack of persistence makes the kiosk unbreakable, user is limited to features offered in the wizard only - easy to maintain so they always work, etc .., etc..)
c) find another hobby for the devs to work on. Basically close down Porteus.
d) find other people to develop Porteus and we continue to be the face of Porteus on the forum.


Those things indicate that the devs don't understand that they are what make Porteus useful, fun, growing and connected to the user base. I've tried several Linux releases over the years. If I like them I use them for a while, if I don't I use them for even a shorter period of time. Porteus I like and have used for almost 2 yrs. Because it's a great OS and constantly being enhanced? No, because it's a good system, fit's my needs and the devs are great at answering my questions and guiding me as I learn Linux. They know Linux and their system. They don't post canned answers to questions that others have asked previously, not really knowing if the answer fits the problem posted. I've visited forums that respond that way, guest what, I don't stay there long, I don't support them, recommend them or in most cases even remember them.

If the devs drop off the forum Porteus will die.

BTW I don't disagree with the use of moderators just how you want to use them. Other forums I'm familiar with use moderators differently.

Those things indicate that the devs don't understand that they are what make Porteus useful, fun, growing and connected to the user base.
wrong thinking.
Porteus should be great because of a high quality product and not because of a people who makes it. i really see nothing special about the devs here.

If the devs drop off the forum Porteus will die.
why? cant community address the problems? we are still available on the bugtracker for issues which cant be solved by moderators/experienced forum members.

the devs are great at answering my questions and guiding me as I learn Linux.
you would learn Linux within 2 years while answering the problems on this forum as a moderator. you are offered a quickest way to become a Linux pro. once you posses a knowledge you would be ready to take over the project in the future or maybe start your own fork if you like.

Porteus development can go in three ways:
a) community is inactive, developers keeps answering the questions on the forum (development stalls, barely anything is improved)
b) community is active, answers the questions on the forum and devs focuses on new features/bugfixing (project moves forward quickly)
c) community is inactive, porteus is made simple stupid so no bugs are reported on the forum (project moves forward in a moderate speed)

its your choice now which way the project goes.

fanthom wrote:Those things indicate that the devs don't understand that they are what make Porteus useful, fun, growing and connected to the user base.
wrong thinking.
Porteus should be great because of a high quality product and not because of a people who makes it. i really see nothing special about the devs here.

Sorry to disagree, but IMHO it is the devs who make Porteus what it is. That is why have volunteered to give up of my time to help keep things ticking over, and take pressure off devs. 8)

P.S. It is attitude of devs, which is important factor entering into subjective evaluation of distro.

To paraphrase a bit it reads more like:

moderator needs to posses two attributes only:
- free time (plenty of it)
- willingness to learn
........

Your paraphrase makes it sound like a ton of work and guess what. It is! Imagine how it is for two people to handle. That is why we are requesting a type of load balancing. If it is 2 moderators then 'plenty of free time' will be required. If the community pulls together then the time is spread out among many and becomes easier.

treat devs as special people. The devs will no longer bother with questions they consider to be beneath them.

It's not this at all. I hope others didn't read it like this.

That is why have volunteered to give up of my time to help keep things ticking over, and take pressure off devs.

Thank you. Here we hit the crux of the problem. What we are asking is for is exactly this, to take some pressure of the devs. Please remember when we say 'devs' we are talking about Fanthom and myself on the front of Porteus and Hamza on the backend of the server. In terms of the operating system we are two. Now consider that one of these devs only has around 2 hours per day to work on it. As you know, browsing the forum and answering questions can easily chew up an hour. We give almost 100% of our free time to Porteus. If you can think of a model that satisfies everyone then I am all ears.

As Fanthom said, and from experience I can verify, the best way to learn something is to start teaching it. Mods will learn from answering questions. We will make the Porteus build procedure known and available. Porteus will continue in one way or another. We have always rightfully claimed that it is a community project, so it is now time for the community part. Fanthom has laid out 3 scenarios and democratically left the decision to the community.

I have two rhetorical questions.
1) Did the forum survive in January?
2) Did the devs answer many questions?

It would be my pleasure to be Porteus forum moderator, so I agree and want to be it.

fanthom wrote:you would learn Linux within 2 years while answering the problems on this forum as a moderator. you are offered a quickest way to become a Linux pro. once you posses a knowledge you would be ready to take over the project in the future or maybe start your own fork if you like.

A forum moderator on the forums I'm active in in addition to frequenting it often and reading posts, usually deletes spam postings, either actually deletes them or hides them for an admin to ban the IP address, can move posts and threads to other sections and has a knowledge of the app(s) and can answer some questions. What your looking for is a dev apprentice, which is fine but should be classified as such rather than a moderator. imo.

brokenman wrote:Over 100 views. Zero answers or PM's.

???????

BTW If I'm not mistaken I volunteered as a moderator, forum type, back in December, after Christmas. Check your PMs.

i'm happy to see that some users are interested in this role:)
posting 'somewhere one the forum' or 'sometime in the past' does not count so please follow the rule and send PM to brokenman stating that you would like to become a moderator.

thank you

They have my vote.

Heavy Stuff...
Porteus Community is a growing pyramid; at the beginning the pyramid was small with two devs and two moderators on top of it.
Then it grew a little, and there were three devs and three moderators....

Seems to me you need more from the Class

Regards!