Hi all,
In the past few weeks I've attended a *bunch* of talks on open source communities, testing, and so on, and at the same time have noted the growth of the Inkscape community over the past few months, most especially evident from the growth of list traffic with the 0.42 release.
At the same time, I've noticed that the project has been simultaneously gaining some better testing approaches while it has faced some QA challenges, most tangibly evidenced by the need for a 0.42.1 release to correct some errors due (it appears) to insufficient package testing.
About a year ago, we budded off the inkscape-users community, which has proven to be quite effective. The list surpasses inkscape-devel in membership, and has helped foster our user community to get involved in doing things like setting up the deviant-art sites, help with the about screen contest, spread PR, conduct testing, and assist other users.
Anyway, yesterday I heard a talk about how the Mozilla project similarly divides into sub-communities like we've done with -devel and -user, and have seen similar benefits (the NYT article organized by the Mozilla marketing community being an excellent case in point). I was particularly interested to learn that one of their most vibrant groups is their testing community, which organizes its focus specifically around making the browser better, collecting useful information from users, and ensuring there is sufficient test coverage of areas under development.
I think that given the strength of interest in the Inkscape 0.42 release, and the need for better testing that it's shown, that right now would be an opportune moment to form an "inkscape-tester" community.
The project definitely could benefit strongly from such a community. The purpose of this group could include:
* Package testing. As mentioned above, this was a challenge in the 0.42 release, and we need organized help here.
* Usability analysis. On the list recently has been a number of discussions regarding usability and the need for increased critique/analysis. Doing this within a community distinct from the development group may help focus it, and reduce the distraction of the debate that it generates.
* Automated testing. Several people have been working on establishing automated ways of testing (including nightly builds and packages), so this community would give these efforts a home.
* Platform compatibility. Inkscape is being used on an increasing diversity of operating systems and hardware. It's difficult to filter through the development and usage discussions to identify how to make it work on a certain platform. inkscape-testers would provide such a forum and a way to organize the collection and distribution of this information.
In general, the inkscape-tester group would stay at a higher level then core coding, focusing more on finding and analyzing problems, and helping to show Inkscape will work well for all users.
I've also thought a bit about some other communities that may be worth forming, such as a documentation community and perhaps a marketing community. Mozilla has both of these communities and finds them successful. There definitely is a need to help the various people working on documentation to become better organized and to have their efforts more recognized. If someone would be interested in organizing a documentation community, I think we have enough interest and participation to make it viable.
For a marketing community, I don't think the time is quite right; our marketing efforts are already meeting and exceeding our expectations, and the amount of resources needed is limited and generally only comes into play for the short period around a release.
Of the three, I feel the inkscape-tester community would be the most valuable to form right now, and would give us the most bang for the buck. I'm willing to put effort into getting it organized and started. Are there people who'd like to see this formed and/or participate in it?
Bryce