Article on our end-users

[Vincent Untz <vuntz gnome org>]

Hi all,

So, I'm sorry to be so late. I hope it's not too late...

Here's a real first draft of an article on our end-users. It probably
needs some work (especially since my English is far from being
perfect...).

The core of the article is there, but I've a hard time being satisfied
on how it is written. Improvements & comments are welcome. If there's
still time to modify it, I'll probably do so...

(I've cc'ed Thomas who was kind of interested in this article.)

Vincent

-- 
Les gens heureux ne sont pas press�

===================================================
Defining the GNOME community, Part 1: the end-users
===================================================

There are many visions of GNOME: the GNOME desktop probably is what most people see, while some think of GNOME as a more general project which also delivers, for example, a developer platform. However, to the "what is GNOME?" question, really few people will answer that GNOME is a community. A community creating a project, improving it, promoting it, but also a community using the project: included in the broader GNOME community lives the user community, which is too often forgotten.

The user community nevertheless forms a central piece in the GNOME world, as it probably does for every project: without any users, the work done within the GNOME project would be considered useless by a lot of contributors, if not all. In the GNOME case, there are at least three types of users:

 + end-users using our software, sometimes without even knowing what GNOME is,

 + distributors integrating our software in a bigger set,

 + developers using our platform to create a software.

While only an indicator, the size of a user community helps gauge the success of a project.

In this article, we'll focus on the end-users. Future articles on the GNOME community will discuss the other types of users, and take a look at our contributors.

Why Mr. User is important
=========================

It could be argued that spending time to figure out what end-user think is costly and it is simply easier to not do this. After all, end-users don't even know what they're expecting and how things should work, do they?

You probably can't imagine how wrong it is from a community point of view. Users are the basis of every community, if only for a simple reason: all contributors were users before starting to contribute. Moreover, nobody should forget that an user loving GNOME will, one way or another, directly or indirectly, contribute to the project. Also, do not assume the user is stupid: if something doesn't work for one user, there are good chances it doesn't work for a lot of users... But there are more pragmatic reasons explaining why users are important.

While evident to many, the availability of some volunteer support is important to users since it brings confidence that a solution will be found and well-known for the small issues everyone is facing. Everybody can easily help here, since it is most often only a matter of answering questions. But the benefits of this support is much higher than what it looks, since it also helps extending our community: someone who sees his problems resolved might himself try to help other users, therefore creating a virtuous circle. More and more users will contribute to this specific task, improving the support, which helps showing potential users that GNOME is not only great, but also well-supported, and that maybe they should give it a try.

The satisfied user is also a good advocate. He will promote GNOME when it makes sense, explaining why it works well for him and why it would work equally well for most people. We should encourage everyone to advocate GNOME, and to want to advocate GNOME. Imagine someone who is well-known and respected, or is highly visible by many many people. Imagine this person trying GNOME, only to evaluate it, and reporting how great it is. Imagine all the people learning about GNOME this way. Such a promotion is worth a lot: this is how trends are created, this is one way to make GNOME even more successful. Think about it: fixing a bug that is low priority for GNOME contributors, but which is deeply annoying for some users, can provide a real boost to GNOME. A satisfied user is our best advocate.

The user can do some support, can advocate and can also do even more little tasks (reporting bugs, proposing features, etc.). Do you see what this means? It means the user is a contributor, but he ignores this fact. If one day he discovers it, then he will contribute even more and become an even more active contributor. That's how all contributors started.

Mr. Contributor, please meet Mr. User
=====================================

It's worth noting that people working on GNOME have less contacts with end-users than what could be believed. Here is a typical example of what this near-lack of contact can result in: while a contributor presenting GNOME on a booth would expect to answer some general questions about the organization of the project, its future and some interesting features, users coming to the booth often ask about specific issues they have with GNOME, or they just want to learn what is GNOME. The user is interested in what is available now, or what will be available soon, but the contributor generally looks at the future.

How can this be explained? Reading comments on many news sites will make you believe that this is happening because contributors are ignoring users. This explanation however sounds totally unfair to most contributors. One more realistic explanation can be found in the communication channels used by users and contributors. An usual GNOME contributor will use mailing lists, IRC and bugzilla to discuss how to improve GNOME, but a normal user will not use IRC, will not subscribe to mailing lists and will be afraid when loading a bugzilla page.

Another explanation can be linked to what most users are really using: they are using an operating system. When they look for help, they search for Fedora, Ubuntu, SuSe, etc. If you're not convinced about this, just take a look at the GNOME user forums and at the Ubuntu user forums. And see the difference of scale.

This leads to the question of where to find end-users. The quick answer is "where they are". This answer might sound stupid, but it is deeply true: it will not be possible to make end-users change their communication habits only to discuss with contributors. Contributors have to take the first step, have to show they are willing to listen to the end-users. The online user forums is one place where users are meeting, and this is a place that contributors should be watching for feedback. This is a place where you can see how one small bug is really annoying lots of end-users. This is a place where ideas are being proposed by users. But there are other places where contributors can find users: if you go to some events or conferences, you'll meet users; even if you only look around you, in your family or maybe at work, you'll find some other users. Finding users is not difficult, but taking the time to listen to them is difficult.

Let me ask you a favour
=======================

Whether you're a GNOME contributor or a GNOME user, try to do this: use ten or twenty minutes per day to help a user, to answer questions on the user forums, to write a blog entry about what you love in GNOME or what should be improved, or to promote GNOME in any other way. Do this for a month. And then look back at the results: you'll be amazed to see growing the user community. If you're a contributor, try to help fix an issue that was directly pointed out by a user (an issue is not always a software bug, but can be an error on a webpage...). If you're an user, just be aware that the contributors do not ignore you. And stay with GNOME.

Showing to the users that they are loved will help them love even more GNOME. Love creates more love.