Re: [Debconf-team] Some thought: Pentabarf
Holger Levsen dijo [Tue, Aug 26, 2008 at 12:59:17PM +0200]:
> I think this is a social problem which cannot be solved in Pentabarf. People
> simple dont know if they will be able to attend (due to personal, job and
> money reasons).
>
> And if you force them to enter dates, they will choose bogus ones. (And forget
> updating the right ones when they know.)
This might be somehow mitigated if, some days (a week?) after each
deadline, we sent mass-mails telling people, "you chose to come from
day x to day y, but have not yet confirmed - This is your last chance
to do so!". Yes, sounds spammy... But we _do_ have several deadlines
(i.e. accomodation, sponsored travel, even assassins and such!), it
would make people realize their mistakes on time, and would lower the
overall frustration.
> Adding to this comes the fact, that so far we never punished people who
> registered and didnt show up. We could+should probably give a hint in the "i
> will attend" checkbox, that checking it and not attending will have
> consequences for next year and how long (un)checking it, is fine. But this
> information needs to be placed next to the checkbox, having it only in a mail
> is not enough. (You are dealing with humans here, humans are stupid, even if
> they managed to become DDs.)
Yes, important. I expect the "greylisting" Marga talked about in an
earlier mail to set an example. We just cannot ignore people leaving
their beds and meals (our resources) unused.
> If only 5% of the people fail understanding (parts of) the pentabarf user
> interface properly (which I think is a great quote), with 400 people we still
> have 20 people who need handholding in one form or the other.
This year I was practically not involved in organization - I hope to
come back to the team, as I greatly enjoy it :) But still, the one
point I had contact with was the travel sponsorship. It
was... Massively painful. Many people mistook the labels. Don't ask me
why, but the questions asked are just not right. We need help not only
in humanizing the Pentabarf interface (I say kill the tabs... they are
often more distracting than helpful. It would be better to have
separate blocks of information in the same page, probably, with
anchors and all - but no hidden information), but in phrasing the key
questions. Many people lost because of wrongly understanding the
amounts they were expected to enter.
Greetings,
--
Gunnar Wolf - gwolf@gwolf.org - (+52-55)5623-0154 / 1451-2244
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