[FORUM] is it time to look at the Forum support?

[virtuoso]

<-- Particular new user finding this necessary forum archaic.

They get my votes, too!

Thanks for lowering the search timeout... now please make it zero (if that's possible in phpBB2)!

[TerryE]

With phpBB there are really 7 tiered roles:

1. Guest. Can visit the forum in read-only mode.
2. Registered User. Can visit the forum and post once logged on
3. Moderator. Accesses forum as a user, but phpBB also provides additional privileges to move, delete or correct topics, to flag topics as "sticky", to warn users for abuse.
4. Administrator. Accesses forum as a user, but phpBB also provides additional privileges to act as moderator, do user management, configure forums, etc.
5. Founding Administrator. Accesses forum as a user, act as an administrator, do basic configuration changes to the forum itself. This is a God role.
6. Interactive user. (With R/W access to forum code tree). Can modify the forum code and have direct SQL access to the D/B. Can do patches etc.. This gives you a God role in the D/B if you are a competent php / MySQL programmer. Doesn't need Linux sudo access (though you might want to set up sudoers to allow restart of Apache and MySQL.)
7. Box Admin. Has full sudo access to box.

Now I am a (5) and a (7) on OOo but I can entirely understand why the VBox team might want to limit non Sun employees to (2), (3) and perhaps (4). That would work.

What I have also created on OOo is 2-tier model for system admin model based on one of my work models and also using the fact that we automatically backup the forums to second repository (These are bz2 compressed incrementals to keep the WAN traffic down). I keep a VBox LAMP configuration (based on Ubuntu Hardy JeOS), and a couple of scripts (1) to unpack the 7zipped system image and set up the VBox VM; (2) From the bootstrapped guest automatically provision a copy of the live D/B as at last night's backup. This batch process takes about 30mins. What we use this for is to develop and test any changes to the forum before moving them into the live forum. We can also use this as a data warehouse to do batch analysis of posts, posting patterns etc. without hitting the live system.

But the idea was that any Volunteer could be given access to this (with the D/Bs sanitised to remove user email details and password hashes) to do similar warehouse analysis or develop their own proposed mods. (In practice they don't because they find it easier just to post a request to Drew or me.) We could easily replicate this model for VBox if it would help.

[Technologov]

As far as I'm concerned, I'm happy with the current forum.

But I support the idea of having community managers/forum moderators, so real developers can concentrate on their jobs.

-Technologov

[TerryE]

When we agreed with Sander and Frank that Sasquatch, Technologov and I would take on the moderator role, I think that the aim was to improve the service to the end users and yes, as Technologov says, to free up the developers from spending lots of time answering the simpler "howto" questions from the newer VBox users.

However, I am becoming quite concerned that it in practice what is happening is that the development team are now hardly ever visiting or contributing to the forum. They've basically "walked away". In doing so, they loose contact with end-user feedback. Instead of acting as a filter and a rapid response we three are being used as barrier. This is not a good direction to move in.

[sandervl]

Terry, that's not true. Both Frank, I and other members of the team visit the forums on a regular basis. Our input has dropped, but that doesn't mean we've 'walked away'.

[piedoggie]

I'm a reasonably high level IT consultant (no matter what the quality of my sleep derived post of late may indicate) and I usually consider user forums to be the resource of last resort. in general the quality of answer is low or non existent. I ask hard questions and I'm not surprised that I get nothing back and am delighted when I get a helpful person. I would rather spend 50$ to get my answer in 10-30 min. than spend nothing and be left hanging like I was this weekend. I also hate taking when I don't have time/energy to give.

as for helping out, I try to answer 2-3 q's a week on irc because it helps focus my general knowledge on vbox so I can give targeted answers. but helping more than that is outside my OSS volunteer budget. I need to focus on making money because the bank does not take oss bucks as payment.

maybe monetizing help by 3ed parties could be a way improve support quality. In the same line of thinking, I'd love to be a consultant for any of sun's virtual systems.

btw folks, after having been burned by the vware server 2.0, I've migrated to vbox foa small (3-5 vm server) and so far, so good (crosses fingers)

[TerryE]

piedoggie, I am not sure what your point is: bitch, constructive feedback or self-advertising (or a blend of all three) I agree that the standard of forums is variable, particularly ones like this one where over 95% of responses are currently provided by community members on a pro-bono basis.

As far as this forum goes, over the last quarter just over 10% of new topics go unanswered and some of those are issues or observations which don't expect an answer. So I think that as a community we are doing reasonably well. Yes I feel that we could promote more active participation of our supporters such as yourself, but that requires a better sense of community involvement with the Sun VBox team, and that in turn requires leadership commitment from the Sun team.

I had a look through your posts and you got some reasonable responsive answers. I think that you'd end up spending a lot more than $50 to get quality technical answers at a 10-30min SLA.

[piedoggie]

piedoggie, I am not sure what your point is: bitch, constructive feedback or self-advertising (or a blend of all three) :) I agree that the standard of forums is variable, particularly ones like this one where over 95% of responses are currently provided by community members on a pro-bono basis.

It was intended to be mostly constructive feedback. Self-promotion? Believe me, I've been a consultant for over 15 years. You haven't begun to see self-promotion. :-)

As far as this forum goes, over the last quarter just over 10% of new topics go unanswered and some of those are issues or observations which don't expect an answer. So I think that as a community we are doing reasonably well. Yes I feel that we could promote more active participation of our supporters such as yourself, but that requires a better sense of community involvement with the Sun VBox team, and that in turn requires leadership commitment from the Sun team.

My interpretation of what goes unanswered is slightly different. On the surface, some of them might seem like rtfm type questions and are justifiably ignored and others are truly difficult questions that will take more time and energy to solve than a volunteer may have. Both sets of questions deserve a response of some type. The first says that there is some gap between the pre-developed answer and the customers perception of their problem. Why does that gap exist and how can we best close it? how can we help of volunteers to build a list of pre-answered questions so that they can point the end-user to that question as a short form answer.

I suspect at this point, at least someone is jumping up and down and waving a hand yelling "knowledgebase, knowledgebase". While knowledge bases can be useful, more often than not they suck. I've never found any knowledgebase more valuable than an experienced person who can point me in the right direction. Why? It's because to humans can have a conversation clarifying the nature of the problem and I will have a higher confidence in the response I get from a person than I will from any program.

The the problem and the solution for the second set of questions comes out of the reward system for volunteers. The last time I was heavily involved in supplying support for a free product, was with the IP cop firewall. I was one of the original developers and I spent literally 10 hours a week on mailing lists and IRC answering just questions and after awhile, I stopped and gave the excuse of needing to make money. Money was only a small part of the truth. I think the real reason was I got tired because ego feed was not a sufficient reward for doing what I was getting paid to do for my other customers. Here I was getting paid a very good rate for solving system plus network problems and at the same time, I was giving the same type of work away for free in the IP cop forums. this is not a thumping of my own drums but is an example of the conflict that may exist for volunteers who really know what needs to be shared.

I had a look through your posts and you got some reasonable responsive answers. I think that you'd end up spending a lot more than $50 to get quality technical answers at a 10-30min SLA.

yes, I have gotten reasonable answers in this forum for most of my questions. There are a few that should have been answered that weren't and one that I wasn't entirely happy with the answer on but, I will solve the problem myself and document it for you (host-Guest-Guest private networking). But, in all fairness, I have had many questions answered from a variety of companies within that 10-30 minute range for a $50 trouble ticket. I also have come up with questions that has had first, second and sometimes technical staff scratching their heads going "huh".

the primary product of a consultant is knowledge. That knowledge is often hard-won and valuable to yet denigrated by the customer. Think of a way to reward experts for their knowledge. Maybe offer a private forum where they can talk about problems they are trying to solve for themselves and others. Give them more direct access to developers through the same form. Make it a way of earning advertising credits and raising their visibility as a consulting outfit supporting virtual box as a virtualization solution. Set up a for fee support forum where the end user/customer is assigned someone and can if the first can't answer the question. The person giving support that provides the right answer gets paid.

I'm not claiming that any of these ideas are a solution to the issues facing this forum but, a consultants ego likes to think their ideas have some value. :-)

And yes, I know this is off topic but, after having worked with VM Ware for the past couple of years, I am much happier with virtual box in the past few days than I have ever been with VM Ware. Now I've drunk the Kool-Aid for two Sun products (virtual box and ZFS). Now I need more experience with them so I can flog them as solutions to my customers.

--- piedoggie

(Speech recognition in use, it makes mistakes, I correct some)

[TerryE]

piedoggie, thanks for your considered response. It’s nice to get your teeth into a constructive debate.

As you can see from my post volumes I spend a lot of time answering Qs on this forum and I broadly agree with your analysis. One of the subtle dynamics which effect the quality of a forum is the subtle supply and demand relationship between those that largely ask Qs and those that largely answer them. I’ve analysed the stats on a couple of busy forums (this and OOo) and the structure shows a common and extreme Pareto relationship:

1. The vast majority of Qs are from members who post on a single or few topics. They post to resolve their own specific issues and once resolved do not return except when facing a new issue. Through lack of confidence or knowledge they rarely attempt to respond to other topics.
2. The next group are knowledgeable VBox users who visit the forum in bursts but when they do visit they both ask Qs and attempt to answer questions: usually from the first category. They often use answering Qs not only in return for the value they get out of VBox, but to sharpen their own skills.
3. The smallest group are those who as a hobby contribute to the forum by regularly logging and answering questions on forum. There are two Sun guys who post consistently Frank Menhert (916 posts) and sandervl (514). The top community posters in this group are sasquatch (3058), stefan.becker (1179), me (1618), Ingo (730), Technologov (713). Another dozen members have over a hundred posts. The top 100 cut is at roughly 30 posts.
4. (Also from the topic search and view statistics there is also a large silent membership who find what they are looking for by searching the forum and therefore don’t bother posting.)

I can only give my personal view on the quality of answers. For Category 1 perhaps half the Qs are naïve and could be answered by doing a simple search of the UG or googling the forum to look for relevant posts. The current documentation is really targeted at IT professionals and lacks the simple sort of step-by-step Howto information that novices find more digestible. Where practical I give the search key as a pointer e.g. see Linux Guest Additions in the User Guide. We also maintain a forum FAQ for the tediously frequent Qs. Often the posters' Qs don’t provide enough information to allow a detailed response. We’ve created the Forum Posting Guide to advise on these issues, and in such cases we often refer the poster to this. Sometimes the Q requires specific knowledge which I don’t have (e.g. VBox on Vista or Mac) so I leave it to others.

If the Q involves research because I don’t know the answer off the top of my head then I apply two main filters: am I interested in extending my VBox knowledge in this direction; and could the poster do this research as easily as me? What I am also keen on doing is to encourage members to move from the 2nd to the 3rd category, so I do keep a watching eye on any posts originating from this list to ensure that when they do have issues or questions then they get value from posting.

What we don’t have and what I want to set up when we migrate to phpBB3 is to set up a restricted sub-forum where we can develop a proper community between our forum supporters and work out how we can provide a wider community.

Reward is a difficult issue. To be honest you really have to be committed and willing to do this pro bono. The Sun team seem very reluctant to value this contribution. In my case I was flattened by illness about a year ago and do this to keep my mind active; I was a CTO for one of the IT majors before this illness, so it’s quite nice to have the time to give back to the wider community rather then spending my days in major bids, service improvement and getting flamed by Fortune 500 CEOs and their teams.

[tshann]

Hi,
I'm a newbie - sort of. I've posted a few questions and thanks for the helpful people who've answered. I've also gone without an answer or two. But overall, I'm VERY impressed by the how supportive the power users like Terry and Sasquatch are. I think it would be a wonderful thing for Sun to support some of these suggestions. In fact, to me they all look sound. So Here's my vote for Terre E, Sasquatch and anyone else that is qualified. I'm just learning about the open source community and have been blown away by the generosity of people involved. So this looks like a no-duh to me.
Peace

[TerryE]

I think a lot of this has been about building sound relationships between the Sun dev team and the community supporters. I think that we've done this over the last year or so. Perhaps we are now at a stage were we can start to move this forward. But we can't blame the Sun guys for being slightly cautious, because they are right to do this. After all they are ultimately responsible for this product and service.

Though thanks for the praise -- much appreciated.

[TerryE]

Piedoggie, PMed me to pick up this thread; it was a PM so I won't quote it, but it was also a trigger which brought me back to this post. I first raised the topic "Is it time to look at the Forum support?" was about 10 months ago, so a quick checkpoint on this topic is now appropriate. Since the OP, the brunt of the expert responses has moved from the Dev team to the User community itself with 5 of us now acting as moderators and taking in the bulk of the forum management. We have move the forum to a new H/W platform (it is in fact running in a VBox VM, so the guys are "eating their own dog-food" and a new S/W major version (phpBB 3.0.4) — hence the new look and feel.

Meanwhile the development team have focussed on driving through a lot of new functionality and I feel that there is an implicit sub-text in many posts about reaching the correct balance between pushing forward on driving in new functionality and one unfortunate and unavoidable consequence which is to reduce the product stability. This is always a difficult call and one for which there is no 100% correct answer.

Still, I hope that the service that we offer the community through the forum will continue to improve, as does the development team's drive for new functionality and improved performance, as well as improving product stability. If I look forward to the next 12 months or so my greatest wish would be to introduce some more effective community resource: the Q&A format of a forum makes a poor knowledge base and I just feel that the introduction of a community wiki would be a better vehicle here.

[Perryg]

I have been on this forum for a while now and read all kinds of posts and responses. For the most part they are informative and helpful. I would have to agree with TerryE that the forum has gotten to a point to where it is difficult at best to find the answers that some posters need unless they go to Google and enter their question and submit it by using the site:forums.virtualbox.org. For a new user that is just starting out this can be a resolution that is not achievable due to lack of knowledge. I see a lot of this and sometimes because of the overwhelming volume that the moderators are forced to answer, plus the fact that they are providing the same answer over and over they are becoming short and at some points rude. I understand this as human nature and the fact that they feel no one is listening to them, but at some point the really good teachers will just give up and stop beating their head against the wall. Especially in a free for service environment. There is just so much a person is willing to do for self gratification after which they give up.

With that said, is a community Wiki the answer? Maybe, but do you really want everyone putting their thoughts as to what is the right way to do something into the definitive here is how to do it? I would not. While a Wiki does have its good points it would need to be regulated and tested for errors on a continuing basis. I would suggest that you look at implementing a Wiki that is limited as to whom is allowed to input data. This Wiki should also be presented in a way that the beginner can understand it. One of the problem areas that I see with this forum and others as well as the purveyors is that they are technical based and not easy for a new user to understand. Let’s face the facts that 90% or more of the posts here are from people that need help in the understandings of the basic concepts. People that are knowledgeable rarely ask questions unless there is a problem with the product.

What I would like to see (in addition to some type of Wiki) is a way that people that have knowledge and are just stuck can post their question and get a reasonable answer from others that have knowledge. This section would be a private section that would be assigned by merit and would be presented by invitation only. One could apply for consideration and be granted by the moderators if they deem the applicant would be able to give constructive input. You could also use this area for testing different problems and solutions that I am sure the VBox DEV’s would appreciate because it would provide useful information to them at a centrally located place. Section users could also put information here from the general forum that has been determined important as well. This would also provide a place for the DEV’s and Sun to be able easily find and respond to various topics if they so desire, cutting down the area that they have to search through.

Anyway these are just my thoughts on the matter.

[TerryE]

Perryg, thanks for your thoughtful response. The whole community based FLOSS model is very different from the commercial model as exemplified by companies such as Microsoft. Some companies seem to be able to "walk the line" and create a viable commercial business model whilst finding the time to support FLOSS initiative, and I would suggest that Google and Sun are two good examples. The people who support Open Source initiatives and communities (like this forum) are an odd bunch. OK I know that VBox in its PEUL format is not FLOSS, but the reality is that this forum wouldn't exit in its current form without (a) the PUEL version being effectively free for individuals, educational institutions, etc. and the existence of OSE version which is current to the PEUL one.

Speaking personally, I have been in IT now for over 30 years and pretty much reached to top technically in one of the IT majors. I have been an invalid and largely bed-down as a result of CFS for the last 16 months. My brain works and thanks to Laptops and Wifi, I can still be productive on the Internet. However, my company wants as a mobile and troubleshooting CTO and does have a use for me with my current disability, so I reckon that by giving freely to the wider community, I can both do something constructive with my expertise and keep my mind active. I want to be as productive as possible, hence I support this forum and the OpenOffice.org community forum, but as you say answering the same Q for the 10th time can get very frustrating. Especially when you answer and use the odd technical term only to have the OP reply with what is XYZ when if they only followed my standing advice and google XYZ (possibly as you say with the site:forums.virtualbox.org qualifier), then the information you need is in the first few hits.

So I am looking more effective ways for me to make my knowledge available. As you also say many of the simple Qs can be answered by our regular supporters, and therefore think that as you suggest we should have a proactive method of returning the contribution to those regular supporters by the experts listening to and constructively discussing their contributions. Especially as these Qs tend to be the interesting ones.

As you suggest I have been lobbying for a "community volunteers" forum to offer such a support service.

[vbox4me2]

Hmmm, yes I am holding my hands up, guilty as charged, I do get irritated/agitated by 'dumb' questions for the lack of better wording. But lets think about solutions, one way is quite simple, one locked topic with only shortcuts, easy to find, easy to read, easy search and click, ea.
Making a VDI larger.
Cloning a VDI.
Cloning to enlarge a VDI.
Shared folders issues / linux to windows
USB Issues 1
USB Issues 2
USB Issues 3
A simple ^F will locate the problem and a single click will give a solution. Its all here already(the knowlegde), it just needs a simple flat 2d index.