The problem is - so far there has been no place except the forums for non-techies to participate and make their voices heard. I see four main categories of users:
1. Developers. If they see a problem, they can code a patch if necessary. 2. Technical users - these can test alpha and beta releases, and help locate bugs etc. 3. Non-technical but internet-savvy users - if they report an issue, it's often a big, missing feature (like, "I want my webcam to work") 4. Users that won't comment online in any case.
There is currently no place for the third category. Dell realized that, and it's really a shame that the FOSS community took this long to realize that there is a need for structured feedback from category three.
I don't think you're considering how diluted the help from the third category will be... For every accurate and truly missing feature request, you'll get 10 requests for "better myspace support" or get a bug report for some program because "I get a 'Permission Denied' error when I try to run 'make install'".
Category three users are much more likely to report n00b questions than actual bugs/missing features.
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I don't think you're considering how diluted the help from the third category will be... For every accurate and truly missing feature request, you'll get 10 requests for "better myspace support" or get a bug report for some program because "I get a 'Permission Denied' error when I try to run 'make install'".
Category three users are much more likely to report n00b questions than actual bugs/missing features.
Self-realization. I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, when he said, "I drank what?"
I've seen both at least 10x and they just get funnier.