Idea about Ideas

users
#1

To Whom It may Concern

I've been a user of OpenOffice for the past several years and I loved that software. I used it at work in school and at home. Since the Oracle Corporation purchased Sun Microsystem I lost the desiger to use the OpenOffice. And then several weeks ago I found out about your foundation and I fell in love with the foundation and LibreOffice. You are the best think that happened to the OpenOffice and open source community in the last several years.

The reason I am contacting you is because I'd like to tell you about how I am feeling about your fundation and LibreOffice and to give you my idea "Idea about Ideas" how you/we can improve the product. I have imagined a website where users can enter their ideas about diffrent extentions, GUI, how to improve the product, how market the product, etc. And also have a ranking system on the website where users can vote for different ideas that they would like to see in the next release. What I would do I would have an extension built into the LibreOffice where users, connected to internet, could log Ideas quickly and efficiently without leaving application.

I think the website would provide a place where users and developers could come up with Ideas and share them with the rest of the world. This place, the website, would be central for creating, sharing and grading and determining which functionality, aspect of the LibreOffice is the most crucial, importat for the users to be changed or incorporated.

The users would have a greater influence in which direction the software would go which in the end would satisfy greater number of people.

Thank you very much for your valuable time. I hope my "idea about ideas" will find a positive reception. And if it does I'd like to offer my help in creating the website.

Please let me know any thoughts, concerns or comments about the "idea about ideas".

V/R
Pawel Jarosz
Email: pawel.yarosz@gmail.com

#2

This is an excellent idea. Direct input by the users would help the
devels, IMO anyway. They have been known to listen to user input in
the past, and I expect its still the same.

Thank you Pawel

Kate

PS Cool Name

#3

I count three elements to Pawel's suggestion:

- a collection point for ideas
- a ranking/voting system for the ideas
- an easy (seamless) way for internet-connected users of LO to add ideas/votes

The first two I've seen done at Ubuntu and Get Satisfaction. The last suggestion would be very, interesting, if well done. All together, this idea about ideas is a solid package. Something I know I'm comfortable with.

Thanks,
-Craig

#4

Craig excellent breakdown, Spot on thinking.

#5

FYI, this was answered on the marketing list by Michael Wheatland, our Drupal LibreOffice website lead developer:

#6

Thank you for the follow-up, Marc.

-Craig

#7

OK;

After reading the brainstorm document, a couple of observations:

1) Ubuntu Brainstorm: Please consider the differences in layout between Ubuntu's Brainstorm and Getsatisfaction's Ideas page for Mozilla Messaging. I don't know about everyone else, but I find Getsatisfaction's UI much easier to digest on any regular basis. As a result, the UX is more pleasant and I end up participating there more regularly.

http://brainstorm.ubuntu.com/
http://getsatisfaction.com/mozilla_messaging/ideas/popular

2) Launchpad Blueprint: Of the two projects on Launchpad that I've referenced, one doesn't use blueprint, the other uses it for tracking bugs (or feature sets listed as bugs). In other words, I'm not sure what the value proposition is in using Blueprint. I do use Bugzilla, however, to track issues which are important for us and I find it very easy to do so.

https://help.launchpad.net/Blueprint
https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/index.cgi

Thank you very much to the entire LibreOffice community for your time and efforts. Best wishes to you & yours over the Holidays.

-Craig

#8

Dropbox has a very interesting system (called Votebox) where each user is
granted a number of votes which can be used to select the feature which will
have priority for the developers (of course the decision is theirs,
independently of the number of votes :slight_smile: ).

The user can suggest new features/ideas and can use all the votes on the
same idea or one vote on one idea...

#9

nice idea, It will help keep the devels from going insane

#10

Hi :slight_smile:

I found Ubuntu Brainstorm very dis-satisfying. The main problem with it (imo)
is that the first few pages are all old ideas that have received a lot of
votes.

If the first page had the most easily viable ideas along with the most
innovative and interesting ideas then it would work a lot better. The problem
is how could that be automated??

Also the Ubuntu Brainstorming requires a moderator to decide whether or not any
new idea makes it to the list at all. I feel that contravenes the OpenSource
philosophy. Although it makes "common sense" that all things should be
moderated we keep repeatedly finding that being more Open works better because
people almost always start to take responsibility even if they start out in a
way that embarrasses themselves later.

I have not tried GetSatisfaction or Blueprint so i can't comment. Bugzilla
seems fine even tho it looks a little dated nowadays it does the job very well
imo.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#11

Hi friends, i installed the LibreOffice on my ubuntu 10.4. It
installed but when i launch the application from the menu. It is
showing two errors:

1)Missing vcl resource.This indicates that the vital files related to
localization are missing.

2)The program cannot be started.iso resource could not be loaded by
SfxApplication.

Please help me.

Thanks
Arun Kumar

#12

I found Ubuntu Brainstorm very dis-satisfying. The main problem with it
(imo)
is that the first few pages are all old ideas that have received a lot of
votes.

If the first page had the most easily viable ideas along with the most
innovative and interesting ideas then it would work a lot better. The
problem
is how could that be automated??

That is quite simple. If the ideas are outdated they should simply be
dismissed by the devs as Outdated :slight_smile:

The voting process is the most democratic (anyone can suggest an idea) and
the most meritocratic (the best ideas climb to the top independently of who
suggested them)

Of course this "forces" the devs to take a look at the list, say once a
month, discuss the top 10 items and classify them as Planned, Outdated,
Portponed, Rejected, etc (this is a mix of options available in Dropbox and
Sourceforge)

As soon as an idea is classified as Completed it is archived and the next
most voted idea will rise to the top 10 "automagically" :wink:

#13

So, if an idea is new and has not received any votes yet it will be far far down
the list. Hence only fairly old and well marketed ideas reach anywhere near the
top.

Some obsolete ideas 'may' have been removed by a person working through 'some'
of the list. This still leaves many old ideas much further up the list than
newly suggested ideas.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#14

So, if an idea is new and has not received any votes yet it will be far far
down
the list. Hence only fairly old and well marketed ideas reach anywhere
near the
top.

Dropbox solves this by having four tabs (which are basically sort
criterias): by Popularity (i.e. vote number), Newest (by date), In Progress
and Completed.
(Actually Mozilla has the same filters and more, except for Newest)

In any case that is the base of the democracy/meritocracy: the ideas with
more votes (and hopefully merit) stand out
Of course this deprecates excellent ideas which go un-noticed because they
were poorly tagged or described.
There are no perfect systems...

Some obsolete ideas 'may' have been removed by a person working through
'some'
of the list. This still leaves many old ideas much further up the list
than
newly suggested ideas.

That is why I suggested that the devs discussed the topten monthly so that
no single person would dismiss an idea.
If the topten remain the same because none has been added/dismissed, the
following ten should be discussed..

New ideas just need to have supporters, which means many people agree that
the idea is good...

Regards,
Pedro

#15

I have been wondering if these ideas could be "sorted" by newest well as
top 10 for each month.
This was stated before, but there needs to be more options to the
sorting process.

The voting idea is fine, but as stated earlier, there needs to be some
weight to the problem of
the oldest ideas getting more votes due to the time on the "forum".

One of my user groups for a community based network computing system
changed forum
scripts. When they did that, they took a look at the categories of the
threads and made the
new forum to be divided into groups based on the thread subjects. Is
there a possibility to
have the discussion system allow for an administrator to look at the
ideas and group them
based upon some subject? Group Writer, Calc, etc., ideas in different
sections. Group the
look and "feel" of the software in another section. With each section,
you have sub-groupings.
Then have some type of sorting so you can view the new ideas for each
group, or major group,
along with "user rating" and such that were discussed before.

If you really want to have a discussion web page system, you must do it
right from the beginning.
There are a lot of forum and discussion site scripts out there. Find
one that does what you want
and need, then find the lowest costing web hosting system that supports
that scripting.

My hosting account supports the following.

Content Management
    anyInventory, Drupal, Joomla!®, Mambo, MODx
    Moodle, Nucleus, PostNuke, SilverStripe, Xoops
   
Forums
    phpBB
    SMF (Simple Machines Forum)
    Vanilla Forum

Project Management

    Brim, dotProject, Mantis, phpCollab, PHProjekt
   
Social Networking
     Elgg

Tools/Scripts
    jQuery
    Script.aculo.us

plus many other options such as many languages supported.

#16

I count three elements to Pawel's suggestion:

- a collection point for ideas
- a ranking/voting system for the ideas
- an easy (seamless) way for internet-connected users of LO to add
ideas/votes

The first two I've seen done at Ubuntu and Get Satisfaction.

In OpenSuSE too
http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Openfate
https://features.opensuse.org/

a system I discover since a few weeks.

  The last

suggestion would be very, interesting, if well done. All together, this
idea about ideas is a solid package. Something I know I'm comfortable with.

We at Italian OOo Language Team (lead Andrea Pescetti) have had a similar idea (that we are still refining) to create new versions of Italian Dictionary, with new words, synonyms, and so on.

It's a useful mechanism to evolve with user needs in mind.

Thanks,
-Craig

Carlo

#17

Hi :slight_smile:

Brilliant :)) It sounds as though DropBox makes the system about as perfect as
possible.

For getting rid of out-of-date or obsolete ideas it would be great to have some
swift triage done perhaps by only 1 or 2 people to swiftly remove old ideas that
may have been already implemented or are only relevant to systems
no-longer-in-use or to have some sort of vote-to-remove-this-item or something?
Obsolete ideas may be quite obvious in a few cases. If in doubt, leave it in.
Removed items on this basis would ideally be stored for a couple of weeks in
case a mistake had happened? I am not sure about any of this but old items that
block newer ideas are a bane in Ubuntu Brainstorming (dropbox cures the main
problem tho!)

Many thanks for reassuring me about this and many regards for the Christmas
'break' from
Tom :slight_smile:

#18

For those of you who are interested, here are the different areas that the Drupal site has in the works as well as the "Ideas" system. If you are adept at Drupal or for that matter quite passionate about this particular area feel free to volunteer to help and insert your name. You will find it here: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Website/Drupal_Strategy

Cheers

Marc
Drupal Web Dev Team Membmer

#19

Carlo Strata wrote:

We at Italian OOo Language Team (lead Andrea Pescetti) have had a
similar idea (that we are still refining) to create new versions of
Italian Dictionary, with new words, synonyms, and so on.

Yes, but that project has a much more specific scope, it's merely an
interface to suggest words for our dictionaries, not ideas about the
product in general. See
http://www.ooocon.org/index.php/ooocon/2010/paper/view/262 for more.
As such, it won't have most of the features of the "Ideas collection"
pages (voting, feedback) discussed in this thread.

Regards,
  Andrea.

#20

Grouping ideas and possibly allowing duplicated ideas to sort themselves out
sounds good. i like the idea of an "aged" score in an automated way either;

1. Something like accountants might use for "aged debtors", something like the
sum of votes older than 2 years gets reduced by 75%, the total over 1.5 years
(but less than 2) reduced by 50% and the total over 1 year (but less than 1.5)
getting reduced by 25% or

2. Perhaps by simply dividing the number of votes by the length of time.

I prefer the first method because it allows old, unpopular ideas to get quietly
dropped without anyone's intervention while allowing ideas a fair time to build
momentum. It is easier to tweak and develop some finesse with it too.

Incidentally, Drupal looks good. It is completely contrary to the way it was
described to me (not a huge surprise there). I still haven't been able to play
around with it and have only just got used to joomla so i would still find it
difficult to compare the 2 myself. I still tend to write in html in gedit and
copy&paste into article pages or templates and let joomla sort out the fancy
stuff. I'm fairly certain this is not the perfect way but it's better for me
than using the wysiwyg gui. Please post comments about this paragraph to me
off-list if required. Many thanks to those people that did respond to my first
questions about this.

Regards from
Tom :slight_smile: