I have been involved in this project UbuntuNewbie after the UOS-1411. My involvement in the Ubuntu Online Summit was I had an opinion that the Ubuntu community can be divided into developers and End-users. There was too large a gap between them. The original discussion can be followed here. However, after that I seemed to have gained a bit of traction and have been attracting the attention of some developers who are taking my side in the list of reforms that I have proposed. There has been a lot of discussion on my ideas in the otherwise serene Ubuntu-community-team mailing list.
The biggest and the most proud moment was when Daniel Holbach, an Ubuntu developer has created for me a work item in the Ubuntu launchpad blueprints. It was a welcoming surprise. The link to this is
So now, here is the mockup that I present in front of you.
First things first, the colour scheme of the side bar has to be changed to include some pale and non-catchy colours as many of you would notice. But then, this is a picture of the concept. Bear with the color scheme of the side bar for now. I am sure that it will not be like this in the revamped website. There is an extra slot in the side bar that is empty where "help" should go.
Now, to the actual part of the discussion. Since we are living in the modern world where time is moving so fast, we simply do not have the time to read pages (atleast the end-users do not have time to read, I don't care if the developers prefer more text because they are already a part of this community and this is meant to attract newbies). Hence following the trend of minimalism. Less text, simple videos, easy to use side bar which is intentionally made similar to Unity.
If you scroll down the page (which is not possible because it is a mock up image and not a html), the wiki part would come into focus. Notice the background colour of that icon in the side bar is the background color of the topic under discussion. So, it is the least confusing.
A suggestion would be the addition of some mechanism to highlight the topic selected in the side bar (which is not visible here but should be there. I just did not implement it). This suggestion is debatable because we have already got a colour co-ordination system. Hence the non-inclusion in the mock up.
Every topic of discussion would have it's own video i.e the wiki topic, if you scroll down to it will have the same layout as introduction to Ubuntu community with an introductory video ( it might carry a different theme) with some text in the side telling briefly what this is about.
And the last empty slot would be for help. Of course this might be considered as a template and the final website may have more buttons in it. But, let us go through the initial discussion of the template so that we can discuss the particulars.
For people who were waiting for the video in the mock up, here it is.
I am glad to announce the completion of my first video. I have published it under my own account rather than UbuntuNewbie because I did not want to impose the video onto people. Hence, I am open to comments. Once I get some opinions on that from you, I will make it official by posting it with the UbuntuNewbie profile on YouTube.
Until then, here is a full set of instructions for how you can contribute to the project.
For people who use Launchpad
I guess that all the developers are more comfortable using Launchpad more than google plus. Hence, I have divided the workload accordingly. This part of the contribution requires that you have an idea of all the sub-sections of Ubuntu like Ubuntu-on-air, Ubuntu QA, Ubuntu community council etc. And this is known mostly to the developers. Hence you can do that. Go to the bridging-gaps launchpad page and to the list of blueprints. There is a exhaustive-list-dev where all the ways you can contribute to Ubuntu and all the facilities are listed.The list is incomplete. So, please put all the ways you can contribute in the work items. An example item going into the list would be Ubuntu Classroom. Or Contributing ideas in Launchpad. (which I realized just now during the chat). That is the reason why I need your input on that because i don't know all the things to do with ubuntu.
Then there are individual items which need a few pre-requisites. These are listed in the individual blue prints. For example, get into translations blueprint. There in the work item, you can find out that there is a work item called "configuring a foreign keyboard". But, you also have to go into Launchpad for giving the actual contributions. So, a new work item would be "intro to launchpad". Get even the most silly things you can ever think of. Because they are silly because you know them. And we don't. I found that Rodney Dawes told me that we could show the mail sent in the mailing list via a link. Me being an avid user of the internet did not know this. Hence my point.
I have already tried telling you before and it was here, here and here. But never mind, it is never too late.
For normal users
This is for people who do not use Launchpad. New topics, videos and scripts will be posted on the UbuntuNewbie community. Please comment or better, make new scripts, topics etc and post it or google+ in either Ubuntu Community or simply tag them to me at +Aveem Ashfaq or +UbuntuNewbie or videos or mail me at aveemashfaq@gmail.com I will be posting requirements on the websites. So, make sure you follow +UbuntuNewbie I just hope people would be enthusiastic about this.
I would like to start off by thanking people for showing their interest in the project. I really appreciate the point of people showing enthusiasm towards this. I need some positive energy to work on this and the response I have got is positive. But frankly speaking, I am a bit heart broken that I have posted the scripts and got no comments whatsoever. I have deliberately chosen a half-baked script so that people might start a thread of discussion or give some input so that I know who are with me. But, if the word is not spread, then spread it. Or else I just have to soldier on by myself. Maybe, time will tell about everything. Until then, my part of the story of what I have been doing.
Before I begin, I would like to say that people have a lot of misconceptions about my project and my motives. Please make sure that you read the link below that ends with "110.html". That should clear things up. I will be making a new blog post on "How to contribute to this project" soon. Until then, read the below paragraphs to find out why I have not made the posts already.
I have been hung up on the developer side of the project. There is this Ubuntu community team which I have got into and I have been pushing my plans into the community team. Let me give you a testament of what has been going on.
This is in no way the only effort that I have made. I have been in the recent community team Q&A session. A more comprehensive effort of what I have done is recorded in the community team mailing archive. You can follow the conversations here.
So, the outcome of my interaction with the developers is as follows. Daniel Holbach is supporting me and likes the idea behind the project. He is pushing it into the minds of the developers which is a good news. Former community team manager Jono Bacon also made a comment telling that the general direction of heading of the proposal is good, Though he also remarked that this discussion is often being side-tracked. There is a Scott Kitterman and a Svetlana Belkin currently in favour of my idea being implemented. No idea or any clue about the others. David Planella is still in the process of giving it a thought and is mostly going to agree with me on that.
As you might have read those mails in the post above, I have explained to the Ubuntu community team in the most clear way that is humanly possible that this project will be undertook by me. They just had to put a small amount of input in filling out some survey form like things(Launchpad work items). I will be making a blog post about how anyone can contribute. But long things short, I explained to them in the mailing lists on exactly what they have to do. The point is that everyone including the developers and the users alike are giving likes to the project. But, everyone is reluctant to make any contributions which are useful.
It is not like I cannot be doing this on my own. I am perfectly capable of making videos on my own and publishing them in my name. It is just going to take a bit longer. But the point is you don't have to start with the manufacturing of petrol when you want to race a car. It would be easier if petrol was supplied and the race driver had to bother only about the race.
One more thing which is incredibly funny is that in the Q&A session that was going on, when I asked about the project, I got a message back in IRC saying, please give me the links to it. From Daniel Holbach (dholbach) which was strange considering he and David Planella were the ones who told me that I could do and encouraged me to do that in the first place.
But I did get a valid point from Daniel Holbach. He and the others were working overtime in the Ubuntu Online Summit and got tired. They had their weekend when all this development was taking place. So, no one replied or has been active in that aspect. So, I am going to make an effort to put these things into place once again and pray to God that atleast this time people could spare their time and listen to me.
Putting these things aside, the reason why there has been no developments in the project UbuntuNewbie are the following
I was giving it sometime with the half-baked scripts expecting to see an inbox flooded with messages about comments made on my document.
I was waiting for the developers to have an opinion on my project. But it seems that they are not aware.
I was waiting for some developer to go in a fill up a form sort of thing (to be precise, creating a work item in Launchpad) so that I could realize that this is a part of Ubuntu and I could maybe learn for myself and work on it.
I was waiting for an Ubuntu user to tell me that +Aveem Ashfaq, I just wanted to tell you that I made a music which might be helpful to your project.
And I was really waiting for UbuntuOnAir session to happen to officially know what the developers thought about my idea.
Anyways, this is a true hand on heart account of events that have taken place. I was also offered a place in the LinuxPadawan project which is also awesome. LinuxPadawan has goals similar to mine but in a way, it is better. They want to help people fix their linux systems and introduce people to all kinds of stuff that has to do with linux. Please check their page. It is better than how I described them.
From what I have seen going on the ubuntu community, I can divide
the user base into two categories.
Developers
novice users
and the fact is that there exists a too stark contrast between the
tools used by the developers from the tools used by the novice users.
Hence the users who are willing to contribute to Ubuntu have to scale
the big barrier of new tools and information to get into the category
of developers. This task is not so easy. I recently conducted a
survey on Ubuntu google plus community asking how many people are
interested in development and how many know how to develop ubuntu.
These are the results.
The reason behind this is that the novice users are not aware of the existence of websites and tools. Even if they know how to do that, they are scared of the prospectus of entering the alienating environment. Furthermore, this fear is magnified by the prompts and the description provided in the website. For example, if a user wants to provide a translation and he mustered up the courage to do that, he is directed to launchpad project where the welcoming message is that you can contribute to the translation if you have good knowledge of the language. This makes him fear that the post is open only for language professors.
The people who voted "I want to do but it is not my cup of tea" are those type of people who think that Ubuntu is all about coding and I have to learn to use GTK and kernel and all of these to start contributing.
The people who voted "I am an enthusiastic novice, so no clue" are typically those people who think that one should be hired by Ubuntu to do some modification. Or there is a mysterious group of people whose identity remains undisclosed who are monitoring our progress and pick the worthy amongst us and offer us work to do ( I am just joking, but it is partially true). They expect that when a survey turns up or a simple theming or wallpaper making challenge turns up, it is surely put up on the Ubuntu google plus community. But, I know for a fact that there is no team which makes sure that every new development is posted on G+. It is people out of enthusiasm who do that.
People do not know that there exists a website called qa.ubuntu.com or atleast half the people do not know the existence of askubuntu.com. The fact is that people are ignorant and frightful of contributing something terrible which might end up being released and they being blamed for it. People make all kinds of assumptions unless they are cleared off. And one thing that developers do not realize is that the novice users have the attention span of an housefly. And this is the generation of videos.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, a video is worth a whole documentation.
- Aveem Ashfaq (That's me)
People do not know about all of this and they will not make an effort
to spend hours finding out everything so that they could start
contributing.
So, here is what I am proposing to do. First of all, create an official YouTube channel which would explain the basics of Ubuntu, how the team is structured, how can one contribute, how to report bugs, how to do translations, what websites are available, what is IRC and explain the fact that developers hangout in IRC rather than g+ or facebook etc.
Some video that looks like this.
I know that this is a video not at all related to this subject. But try to understand my point. The series of videos should outline things without necessarily spoon feeding the information. And it should be something like this rather than a screencast because screencast is too technical and boring.
And of course, since I spoke to David Planella and Daniel Holbach, we have come to a conclusion that modifying the websites might not be a good idea. So, instead, I propose that a new extension website is created. Something like newbie.ubuntu.com where you can create and place all this stuff. So, a website to make them confident enough. And then, they can soldier on and do things by themselves.
And one more change would be to edit the firefox start page and make the links below the search more visible and focused. And add newbie.ubuntu.com to the set of links.
If you are angry of the fact that people who can't read a man page by themselves will be the worst of contributors, you might want to re-think. Because most of the new ones come from Windows, they know that a lot of things can be done in windows. The proof that they have seen it in someone's laptop and the fact that Windows is the widest used OS in the world is a reason why they have complete faith in it. On the other hand, they keep on speculating whether things can actually take place in Ubuntu. There is no point in taking a massive quest to find out whether a thing happens in Ubuntu or not if the outcome would be "no". Hence their reluctance. We have to show that things happen and the outcome is sweet. Then, people will start doing "hijra" for Ubuntu..
