It's all about community!

There have been a lot of hallway conversations on the p&p team lately and the state of our community infrastructure is one of the popular subjects. Customer feedback influences our guidance more than anything else ... period ... and since our communities are one of the primary ways we interact with customers, you can imagine how important it is to us that they be happy with the experience.

GotDotNet, as it exists today, is not a long-term solution. By the end of the fiscal year, I will have a plan in place to transition off of it and on to ... well, that still remains to be decided. These hallway conversations have been about how we can improve the community experience. Unfortunately, we don't have a very good understanding of how our customers WANT to interact with us - seems strange to hear that, huh? So right now I'm drafting a document that lists all of the capabilities (stacked and ranked) we feel are necessary for our community infrastructure to have - independent of anything that may already exists. 

I fully intend on making this document publically available, but first, we would really like to know how YOU would like to interact with it. First, think about the communities you've seen and use today: gotdotnet.com, channel9.msdn.com, codeplex.com, forums.microsoft.com, sourceforge.net, netfx3.com, blogs, etc. Think about the things you like, and don't like. Think about the things you use and don't use. Feel free to read the following questions to stimulate some brainstorming even though it is a far-from-comprehensive list.

Membership

• What are your thoughts about "joining" a site?
• What do you prefer for member credentials (username/password, hotmail/passport account, other)?
• What is needed as far as roles go (owner, contributor, member, anonymous)?

Release Management

• How do you want to get new drops (zip, exe, msi)?
• Do you want a source code tree to sync with?
• What is the right frequency for releases (weekly, forthnightly, monthly)?
• What is the right quality bar for releases (just builds, no exceptions, very stable)?
• How far back do you want to be able to go? Realistically?

Issue Tracking

• Do you want to be able to submit bugs? And track them (priority, status, etc.)? How?
• What kind of queries do you want to run against the bug database?
• What would you use the issue tracking feature for?

Two-way Communication

• Is a forum (message board) the most appropriate mechanism? If not, what is?
• What features are needed (sticky posts, creator control, post popping, quoting, etc.)?
• What metrics are you most interested in (e.g. number of [unread/answered] posts)?
• How do you want to provide feedback to the team?

One-way Communication

• Is wiki the most appropriate mechanism? If not, what is?
• Will you edit pages (like written guidance) if given the choice?
• Would you contribute new topics if given the opportunity?
• How can the team communicate to you more effectively?

Like I said, this is FAR from comprehensive, but hopefully it generated some sparks. I can tell you that any direction you can give us will influence our decisions in a big way. Think of what the perfect community site would let you do - and let us know. Thanks!

Comments

• Anonymous
  September 04, 2006
  These are my thoughts (don´t demand too much, it's monday :P )
  - no problem at joining a site
  - generic, even if that means hotmail/passport ;)
  - i'd prefer new drops as msi
  - i'd like access to a source code tree
  - the right quantity for releases is when there is a stable point
  - bugzila o similar? :P
  - 2w > i'd prefer a mail list
  - 1w > wiki would be a nice experiment....
  
• Anonymous
  September 06, 2006
  Don Smith, a Product Manager here at p&p, is asking for input on how we (p&p) should communicate...
• Anonymous
  September 06, 2006
  Some quick replies:
  * No problem joining a site, but I don't think you should need to join just to download the releases.  Perhaps for submitting bugs/feedback etc.
  * Source code would be great - I find it useful to get latest drops of other open source products  especially when there is new stuff that I need.  I hate getting the message that's it's "in the next release" when I could be developing with it now!  
  * Access to a bug list would be useful too.
  * Forums are good, but only if they have a decent notification system
  * Wikis are great - I tend to search Google rather than look at docs as it's usually easier to search.  There's lots of good info on blogs too.
• Anonymous
  September 06, 2006
  Don Smith, Product Manager at Patterns & Practices is asking for your feedback about how p&p...
• Anonymous
  September 06, 2006
  The patterns & practices team is looking for your help to help them define what sort of community infrastructure...
• Anonymous
  September 06, 2006

• Passport preferred.
  - Read only access to source tree.
  - Bug list access (e.g. via Team System) would be a secondary priority but still usefull.
  - Forums as opposed to email. RSS is a must here so that messages can still be viewed in Outlook. I would base your feature requirements on popular forum software like ASP.NET forums.
  - Use Wiki's even if you don't want external contributors. At least the P&P team can easily evolve the entries and that evolution will be immediately visible to the community.
  - Formal releases should be MSI's and at least twice a year for active projects.

• Anonymous
  September 06, 2006

• Passport preferred.
  - Read only access to source tree.
  - Bug list access (e.g. via Team System) would be a secondary priority but still usefull.
  - Forums as opposed to email. RSS is a must here so that messages can still be viewed in Outlook. I would base your feature requirements on popular forum software like ASP.NET forums.
  - Use Wiki's even if you don't want external contributors. At least the P&P team can easily evolve the entries and that evolution will be immediately visible to the community.
  - Formal releases should be MSI's and at least twice a year for active projects.

• Anonymous
  September 07, 2006
• Minimal registration
  * Perhaps owner, contributor, member, anonymous?
  * EXE's, please (not crucial)
  * Releases as frequently as possible, perhaps as often as twice a day
  * Build quality only
  * Bug-tracking by severity, progress, etc
  * Forum sounds good
  * Wiki for documentation, etc; yes, I would contribute, probably
• Anonymous
  September 09, 2006
  The comment has been removed
• Anonymous
  September 14, 2006
  I visit C9 regularly. Imho, which is biased, C9 should be the hub that provides spokes to each area of focused interests.
  A very easy to understand and use site map is essential. Users need a starting place and that place needs to link en masse.
  Membership is no problem, Windows Live is fine, and I would require that for posting if I were in command. I am in constant learning mode and don't use sourceforge, fwiw.
  I find new information but not easily, I really want an easy hub/spoke navigation control.
• Anonymous
  November 19, 2006

• Membership signup is generally a pain, but if it provides everyone with other benefits then Passport is good.
• Releases - if you give us access to source tree to get quick fixes, that would be cool. If you don't then zips are OK. If you do online installer that is OK too but you need to maintain backups for at least the last big release in case I don't have time to move up to newest release and learn new ways to do things or potentially break my code. Whatever you provide, let me know in detail how stable it is.
• Issue tracking. I've reported issues thru Microsoft forums and found it a somewhat painful process. It's a good idea, just make it easy and fast. Searching on priority would let me look for potential problem areas that I have not stumbled into yet and wasted time reinventing a workaround. A post to a forum on big issues when they are discovered would be good.
• Forums are good. Fast ones. With GOOD search capabilities. Some of these types of sites are pitifully slow which is frustrating. And when the search can't find subtle variations in spelling they waste time and I miss what I'm searching for.
• I don't use RSS. Daily interruptions distract my thought processes. I like going to a comuunity site and catching up on recent stuff about once a week. A common blog is OK for all of you guys to talk to us. If you use individual ones, make the links to them easy to get to in a common area so that I know I'm reading all of them.
• To me, wikis are more of a reference mechanism - Wikipedia is outstanding. The ones I've seen for communication don't turn me on. Communication has a thread to it, even if it's just a series of time sequenced posts (the sequence could be important) and wikis just don't seem to fit that bill well. Forum Announcements sections or blogs are better. You can still link from one post to another but you don't lose the sequence.
• I would not edit wikis. As for communicating with us, I like the blogs I've seen. I'm not sure I've found them all yet, though.