I'm note sure about this.

From every mirror admin, I simply expect to be subscribed to the mailing list,
as this is our main communication media. For confidential stuff, Tora and I are
listed as project leads, so people can contact us offlist.

If we open up such a mail address for users, I promise we will get lots of
e-mails from people asking how to download, and it will be impossible to reply.
I monitor the webmasters@ooo account and from day to day, we even there get
questions from users regarding downloads, and most of them are simply related to
end-user mistakes, not errors on mirrors.

Looking at that, I'd prefer to leave things as they are, but I'm open up on
being convinced :-)

Hi Florian,

you have better overview than I have about the existing ways to get in contact. I had a feeling that it might be too obscure. I think 
we all agree that reachability is crucial for us - in order to run a successful service. User input is indispensable - right?

Maybe I should have brought up the issue as two separate issues maybe:
  (a) users who want to get in contact
  (b) communicating with mirror admins

However, my suggestion would solve both issues... so, I'll try to convince you. Read on :-)


Regarding (a), you say there's webmaster@ - fine. If that's the obvious place for users to turn to if they encounter problems, fine with 
me. I won't be directly reached under that address, but if you regularly monitor the address and share relevant reports, that'd be 
fine. Is that also an address that we officially recommend and publish for that purpose? Or is it just for the poor souls that don't 
know better (and for those that _always_ write to webmaster, whatever the reason ;))  ?

Or, maybe, are there other ways to get in contact that I'm not aware of?

I notice that the "contribute" redirection page links to http://www.openoffice.org/contact.html (it suggests to go there in case of 
problems). There I find the webmaster address near the top; it doesn't mention download as a possible topic, but when I look 
around on the page, as a user I would probably pick that address, because it's the only thing on the web page which comes near it. 
It's not rather obvious though, and not evident whether that contact will handle problems with downloads and mirrors. I think it 
would be good to explicitely mention that this would be the place to turn to. -Do you happen to know who one could talk to, 
regarding that page?

(At this point, it probably doesn't make sense to discuss further in this bugzilla issue - it would be something to discuss with the 
web team, rather)


Regarding (b), the mailing list is fine for those people that are there, and for issues that are best discussed in the open, but I won't 
use it for the following purposes:

* notifying a mirror admin that there's a little problem in his file tree
* asking a mirror admin whether he's aware of outages that we are seeing, or that users reported
* letting a mirror admin know that we would like to send him requests
* discussing details about his setup with a mirror admin
* sending or receiving private details (e.g. rsync passwords) from a mirror admin
* other communication that is merely chit-chat (thank you's, general nurturing)

In addition, I think that mirror admins won't use the mailing list for

* enquiries about mirroring
* talking about internals of their setup
* private data (rsync passwords)
* sending logs when debugging issues

These are examples where neither me nor the mirror admin would deem the mailing list appropriate, and I think that's for obvious 
reasons. Now, I know well enough how I can get in contact via private mail, because I am collecting the mail addresses of mirror 
admins whereever possible. However, it doesn't scale if they talk only to me, and if I talk to them in private, which is why I am adding 
you, Tora, and possibly Stefan to Cc. Vice versa, when I'm contacted, I want you guys to be involved/informed as well, so I have to 
make sure the Cc is maintained. It's tiresome to do so, which is why I am requesting a mail alias that points to the involved people. 
It means I'll only have to add one address into Cc. (Instead of an alias, it could in fact be a mailing list, or a ticket system; that 
doesn't matter.) It is important to avoid private communication, because someone else might have to take over, step in, or simply 
help with difficult decisions. For instance, there seems to be communication between mirror admins and you or Tora and I don't see 
anything about it. I can say that a mail alias works very well for the purpose - I have been using one for the last three years, which is 
why I'm convinced that it works, and why I suggest that we establish the same.

Quite conveniently, this mail alias can be published as contact address that not only serves (b), but also (a).

In a previous life, I never received substantial amounts of erroneous mails from users. Maybe one every two weeks. (with an 
astounding user base of 1.5 million users). So I don't think it'll be a problem. Of course it depends on where the address is 
published. Well, and if there are many reports about download problems, yes, that's exactly what we need to know about ;-)
The webmaster address however got everything that you can think off...


So right now there are two concerns that I personally have:

1) that I won't get feedback about problems (and consequently, I can't fix them)  

2) that I can't conveniently (and efficiently!) communicate with mirror admins

And there's actually a third concern that I have:

3) the mailing list is currently drowning in noise about little details about housekeeping of metadata of individual mirrors. That's 
stuff that is of no interest to the other mirror admins at all, but it keeps the list busy and may decrease the interest of mirror admins 
in following it. The list is only shared medium that exists so far. However, since all mirror admins are requested to be subscribed 
there, it's not exactly fair to spam them with meaningless information. I think it would be very good (and friendly to them) if we 
could keep noise off the list. 

If there was a means to communicate with those people that it actually affects, we could efficiently communicate about the issues 
without spamming the list.

Remember that many of the mirror admins don't only mirror OOo, but also other projects - sometimes many. Each comes with its 
own funny rules, mailing lists, and so on. If we want to communicate well with them, let's be considerate, and careful to not annoy 
them too much. All of us get enough mail already, no? ;-)

I can certainly arrange with other setups, but I hope that the above makes my request at least somewhat comprehensible.

Thanks for your input and suggestions, Peter! I suggest to continue the
discussion on the mailing list, as IssueTracker is not really the right place
for it to do - no threading and not so many people read it. ;-)

Nontheless, some thoughts of mine:

I'm always a little bit hesitant of giving out a contact address for the average
user. I know that lots of e-mails come in and how many resources they bind - I
really don't know who could answer users with their normal download problems
that mostly are not mirror-related. Looking at webmasters@, I think there is a
lot of stuff going on and Sophie (putting her in Cc now) has a lot of work with
these requests.

I personally will definitely be unable to either monitor or reply to these
individual requests, and as long as no one volunteers on doing so, I'm simply
hesitant of setting up a dedicated e-mail address.

Depending on what Sophie thinks (and I would totally accept if she's hesitant
due to the problems mentioned below) we can simply use webmaster@ and someone
monitors it. But again, it won't be me, I simply don't have any more resource
available for that. If Sophie is happy with that, she could also filter out
download-related resources and forward it to us, maybe to a new mailing list
(see below). However, I know she already has a lot of stuff to do, so that might
be no option. :-)

Regarding the internal communication, I'm happy to set up a private mailing list
like mirrorteam@distributions.oo.o where everyone can write to, but only some
people can read. This would work as internal communication for us with informing
the mirror team of updates, as well as a contact alias we can use for sensitive
information, problem reports etc.

If someone volunteers to reply to incoming user support mails, we can as well
use this list as contact address for end-users.

Would that be the address that should be used on the mirrors/all.html page?
Then I'm all for it ;-)

I have to revise my opinion, but only for the mentioned page. I would like to
avoid an email address as the first feedback channel. Users will send requests
of any type unrelated to mirrors.
I recommend to guide people to the contact us page by linking to it. I'm happy
to add a section about downloads/mirrors there including the contact address if
appropriate.

That sounds like the most useful suggestion to me.

I was looking again at this issue today, because I wondered if it could be closed somehow (as worksforme, 
even), but just before I reached the last comment of Stefan I was just thinking something along those lines.

I agree that users might not immediately be able to distinguish which form of help they need. If 
installation "does not work", they are not clear (as I would be) if the download went wrong, if they maybe 
picked the wrong download anyway, or if something else is wrong. Thus, a more generic point of contact 
seems to make sense. It's just that we need to route the requests that are download-related to the mirrors 
list and me and the other mirror-managing folks, who can look into it.

obsolete