Hi David,
Hi André,
I think the magic ingredient to getting non-devs involved in feature
implementations and bug fixes is to actively reach out to other teams
via the mailing lists when there's a specific need - like you did in
this case.
This won't work. As told in the other mail - it took twice the time to go to several mailing lists and ask for contributions than learning how to implement things and finally do the implementation.
If people want to change this situation we must do something - and we need to do more than telling developers to go to other mailing lists. I want to see more people at e.g. ux-advise list coming up with their own ideas an leading a work item (instead of just following the developer's suggestions).
For instance, speaking for myself, I'm more than happy to help out.
All you need to do is buzz me with a specific request.
And I'm very thankfull for that.
I can't think of a better way of doing things than this, but the
general initiative of involving non-devs in these things is good. It's
probably not always necessary, so outreaching on a case-by-case basis
is maybe the best solution?
We should not be over-formalized with all this. It's really case-by-case.
But it is dangerous to have knowledge split across several mailing lists and non-developers not monitoring ongoing development. E.g., at some point I was in favour of removing the grid color option. The rationale was that there is an other place to define that color. Fortunately Regina made me aware, that we will face compatibility options with OOo.
regards,
André