Abstract:

Initial solution:

EDIT: link now available

http://maemo.org/community/brainstor...improvement-s/

Supporting materials:

http://www.usabilitynews.com/news/article1008.asp

How feasible/practical would it be to add an option to the power button menu(?) below "End Current Task" that says "Submit Feedback" which would launch the above mentioned website for users/developers/testers to submit their bug report, feature request, praise, or complaint?

Great question! I don't know the answer, but you're thinking like I've been thinking!

I'm beginning to feel GeraldKo's pain. So many people asking for improvement here, so little engagement so far...

I myself am waiting to see the beginnings of the API mentioned above to gauge whether or not I would be able to actively contribute or simply offer suggestions as I have above.

"If you build it, they will come."

Understood-- but I'm also hoping to 1) see other suggestions and 2) see if anyone else has ideas on such a framework/API. I'd like to harvest ideas before I start writing and diagramming...

Hmmm.. this thread came up when I went to start a new one, and I think my thunks are near enough to be part of this brainstorm.

What set me thinking was seeing people in t.m.o proudly declaring that they'd d/led something from garage and it works a treat. My problem is that if that's all they do by way of feedback, the app will remain in garage and people like me (reluctant to install from garage via xterm) are kept waiting unnecessarily for good quality apps. Not to mention that devs are kept waiting for feedback unless they trawl through the talk threads. And talk feedback doesn't count in votes.

So a couple of thoughts:

1) Make garage d/ls account-holder only, and two days after the d/l send an email to the account asking the user to give feedback with a link (much as amazon marketplace or ebay solicit feedback)

2) some sort of app-specific feedback page made easily clickable from t.m.o. so someone posting how great an app is can be easily directed to a vote on it.

3) Make two levels of feedback: the simple vote - did it work or not? - and then offer "Would you like to provide fuller feedback via bugzilla?" with a link. In fact, I'd be tempted to make the app's bugzilla entry the automatic output of a 'no' vote.

If any of those make sense to anyone, say and I'll add them to the brainstorm.

The first idea, in particular, i like.

The others are more general and are probably covered by the first proposal in some way.

I was going to add another solution proposal of my own, and then realized that it, too is covered by the ambitious original proposed solution. I guess it could be seen as a requisite first step to the completion of the main solution.

Here's what i had started to say.

Fix what's already there

We need single login and a fixed search feature on m.o. Beyond that...

Currently, an app requires a bugtracker link to get through Extras-Testing. While this is good in theory, in practice it is not very useful to a typical user, who will not have the motivation or courage to venture into bugtracker. The most casual user will not use any feedback mechanism but one that is integral with the device itself, and for that demographic, Texrat's proposal is the best.

However, there is a large demographic not currently optimally engaged: those that actually do come to m.o to browse the forum etc. For these, an official talk thread that is also supported by a control file entry (like the bug tracker) would be useful. Obviously we'd like to see all of this integrated, but this seems like a much more practical interim step.

This has even greater potential than just a means of getting feedback: it can be an "automatic" source of documentation for maemo apps (my only feedback on the N900 from users i know personally is "I can't figure out how to use this." and they are continually amazed at how much it can do once I show them how). The maintainer can put the "manual" into the first post of the thread, and with a simple addition HAM could automatically load up the page in MicroB at the conclusion of an app installation.

Well, you get the idea.

Awesome! Some of this can go into the whitepaper, thanks! And more please-- I will be including contributor credits.