QMO has always had a lot of potential, but its always been a little bit lacking. We have always understood it is a community site that allowed our new and old community members to get more information about opportunities within our sphere of work, but nothing much past that. There were ideas, but no real cohesive strategy or vision about what it should have been and how it made Mozilla’s products better. It’s a whole lot cleaner and simpler than what it was previous, it’s also a very static site that doesn’t get updated as much as it should, provide a low bar to join our community and identify the people within the QA community that are really doing some good for the Mozilla project (and the Internet as a whole). So, Al Billings and I have been churning through ideas and plans on how to fix this and make it something that our community is really proud to be a part of. Here’s the mission and roadmap we’ve come up with and plan to execute:
Mission
* To become the source of updates and activity within QA’s teams and community members
* To identify and elevate the level of involvement of QA community members
How We’ll Get There
QMO 3.0
Purpose: Lower the bar for users to interact with the QA community and offer a method to better identify themselves within it.
Desired Results:
* Team Forums
* User accounts
QMO 3.5
Purpose: Add support for a reward system onto quality.mozilla.org that will help build growth and strengthen retention of community.
Desired Results:
* Reward system for users
* Team blogs
QMO 4.0
Purpose: Integrate statistics from Bugzilla on a per-user basis to better identify community member involvement around quality-related tasks.
Desired Results:
* Relevant Bugzilla statistics related to users and teams are exposed on their home pages
* Support for surveys within blogposts
* Users can join events
* Localization of static content
QMO 4.1
Purpose: Integrate statistics from automation efforts on per-user basis to better identify community member involvement around “pushes” for the Automation team.
Desired Results:
* Relevant Mercurial/GitHub statistics related to users and teams are exposed on their home pages
* Community moderation support
QMO 4.2
Purpose: Integrate statistics from our next-generation Test Case Manager to identify community member involvement around testcases ran, failed and invalidated.
Desired Results:
* Relevant TCM statistics related to users and teams are exposed on their home pages
Hi Aakash,
I would have liked to be a better contributor but couldn’t as there is/was not a good motivating factor. The reward system in QMO 3.5
“QMO 3.5
Purpose: Add support for a reward system onto quality.mozilla.org that will help build growth and strengthen retention of community.
Results:
* Reward system for users ”
is a good idea. If its something like mozilla schwag like Mozilla Cups, T-shirts, bags etc. it would make it compelling for sure. Some sort of automated transparent point system or something should make it more compelling. Having that in a very indirect way would be like playing in a RPG or something. It would and should involve more people into filing bugs or giving feature suggestions and stuff like that.
One of the things you would have to take care of and which hindered me possibly is the use of technical language where it isn’t needed. If I were to put a bug say for e.g. “the search function in the address bar doesn’t work right” and give a detailed description with steps to mirror it or atleast how it works on my system, somebody technically superior comes with a better technical jargon comes and owns it or says hey it was a duplicate of mine or this is better for the developer to look at. I don’t remember or care to remember what those instances were like but this is something you would have to also look at.
You could also entice people to have some intrusive addons or some sort of automatic screen grabber/caster thing so when bugs happen, they can use the screencast or whatever tool on, duplicate the scenario and upload the video with the required file.
I don’t know how much of the above suggestions and ideas may be fruitful or be in realism but that’s the thought.
Hi Aakash and Al,
I’d like to tell you I’m gaby2300 in IRC (so you know who I am) and, as you know, I don’t need any enticing nor a motivating factor to help testing pre-release builds. I do it because I love to help making the best browser ever even better.
I have been twice nominated Friend of the Tree for my help, I’ve been very proud about it and I’ve always thought that was reward enough.
That said, I wouldn’t mind a reward now and again, even if just to show or tell my friends about it and how proud I am to be able to help!
I really like how you guys are thinking about engaging users, and I’m really interested to see how the BuddyPress rollout goes and how that effects user participation. Looking forward to future about:mozilla update…
Gabriela, we’ll try our best to continue giving the just rewards you deserve for your great contributions so far!
Dan, thanks for the compliments and we’ll make sure there’s something portable to other projects in the Mozilla community!
aakash, you’ve just done that so many thanks!
I wouild also like how you guys are thinking about engaging users
I really like how you guys are thinking about engaging users, and I’m really interested to see how the BuddyPress rollout goes and how that effects user participation. Looking forward to future about:mozilla update…