Hi there,
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to include a job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely with the Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time to meet on Monday?
Best, TC
Tommy Collison:
Hi there,
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to include a job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely with the Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time to meet on Monday?
Best, TC
Thanks for starting this thread Tommy! Just to be clear, if we get this funding, this would be a person available to help with work that Colin is doing currently. I'd love to have someone else on hand to cover answering RT tickets, giving some support help on social media, and helping get our support portal content together.
As for Monday, I can meet at any time.
Alison
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
On 6/23/17 4:10 PM, Alison Macrina wrote:
Tommy Collison:
Hi there,
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to include a job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely with the Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time to meet on Monday?
Best, TC
Thanks for starting this thread Tommy! Just to be clear, if we get this funding, this would be a person available to help with work that Colin is doing currently. I'd love to have someone else on hand to cover answering RT tickets, giving some support help on social media, and helping get our support portal content together.
As for Monday, I can meet at any time.
Alison
Great stuff. Does 12 noon EST suit people to meet?
tor-community-team mailing list tor-community-team@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-community-team
On 6/23/17 4:41 PM, Tommy Collison wrote:
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
On 6/23/17 4:10 PM, Alison Macrina wrote:
Tommy Collison:
Hi there,
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to include a job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely with the Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time to meet on Monday?
Best, TC
Thanks for starting this thread Tommy! Just to be clear, if we get this funding, this would be a person available to help with work that Colin is doing currently. I'd love to have someone else on hand to cover answering RT tickets, giving some support help on social media, and helping get our support portal content together.
As for Monday, I can meet at any time.
Alison
Great stuff. Does 12 noon EST suit people to meet?
To clarify -- how does meeting in #tor-dev or #tor-project on IRC at 16:00 UTC suit people?
tor-community-team mailing list tor-community-team@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-community-team
This meeting time works for me.
On June 23, 2017 4:00:15 PM CDT, Tommy Collison tommyc@torproject.org wrote:
On 6/23/17 4:41 PM, Tommy Collison wrote:
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
On 6/23/17 4:10 PM, Alison Macrina wrote:
Tommy Collison:
Hi there,
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to
include a
job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely
with the
Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time
to
meet on Monday?
Best, TC
Thanks for starting this thread Tommy! Just to be clear, if we get
this
funding, this would be a person available to help with work that
Colin
is doing currently. I'd love to have someone else on hand to cover answering RT tickets, giving some support help on social media, and helping get our support portal content together.
As for Monday, I can meet at any time.
Alison
Great stuff. Does 12 noon EST suit people to meet?
To clarify -- how does meeting in #tor-dev or #tor-project on IRC at 16:00 UTC suit people?
tor-community-team mailing list tor-community-team@lists.torproject.org
https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-community-team
Colin Childs Tor Project https://www.torproject.org/ Twitter: @Phoul
On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 04:41:57PM -0400, Tommy Collison wrote:
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
Thanks Tommy.
Georg, Pastly, Taylor, it will be really useful to get your insights and preferences here.
Here are some thoughts to get us going:
Step zero, where do we provide support now? In Valencia I made a list:
"What are our current places for user interaction / users to get their questions answered?" https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2016WinterDevMeet...
Another interesting paragraph from those notes:
"Suggestion: get one person funded who will prioritize and tend the community channels. A person that wants to help. We as the community must help this person. They don't have to answer all the questions themselves, so long as they create an atmosphere where people get answers. We'd pay them to get up to speed in Tor. We need to figure out what characteristics this person must have (technical, non-technical etc)."
A support person whose job is to "tend the community channels" is quite a bit different than a support person whose job is to "assist in getting the support portal up and running". Where on the spectrum do we want to be?
I think there are two priorities we should keep in mind, and they appear to contradict each other but I argue they actually don't:
A) User support that scales is way better than user support that doesn't scale. So, we should put high value on the websites, social media, and stackexchange -- activities that reach a lot of people, and activities that teach other people how to help people. And aim less for private helpdesk responses, irc responses, mailing list responses, and other transient non-scalable approaches.
B) Our support person is going to need to learn many things, especially what problems people are experiencing *today*, and getting up to speed and staying there will involve interacting with users in many different contexts. One of the most important ways we find new bugs and usability issues we should address is by interacting with people in the blog comments, or talking to people on irc, or working with confused people on trac. We need our support person to be engaged and active in these interactive venues, with the #1 goal of learning how to help people better, and the #2 goal of (as a nice side effect) helping people.
That is, while the focus should be on support that scales, the way to get there is to participate in the more interactive, more transient places, in order to know what to write in the places that reach more users.
Corollary #1: we need a person who never regards any pieces of the Tor world as "set in stone" or "out of scope". If the person is hunting for a workaround for a Tor Browser bug, but not involving the Tor Browser people in the discussion "because they're busy developing", that's never going to be best. All website text is waiting to be improved, all user support requests should be examined to find software/documentation bugs that can be fixed so the next user doesn't have the problem, all workflows and support channels have inefficiencies that we can examine and discuss and resolve. Everything can be made better.
Corollary #2: we need a support person who has enough of a technical clue to know what's likely to be easy or hard to change, and understand how to ask the right questions to developers, and understand their answers and work toward a solution.
Corollary #3: we need a support person who can stay on track with the support mission, rather than e.g. thinking the developer side is really cool and getting bogged down trying to be a developer in all of our projects at once.
--Roger
Hey all. I don't think I'm going to be able to join this morning's meeting due to technical difficulties, so I'm adding a couple of comments below.
On Jun 26, 2017, at 12:08 AM, Roger Dingledine arma@mit.edu wrote:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 04:41:57PM -0400, Tommy Collison wrote:
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
Thanks Tommy.
Georg, Pastly, Taylor, it will be really useful to get your insights and preferences here.
Here are some thoughts to get us going:
Step zero, where do we provide support now? In Valencia I made a list:
"What are our current places for user interaction / users to get their questions answered?" https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2016WinterDevMeet...
Another interesting paragraph from those notes:
"Suggestion: get one person funded who will prioritize and tend the community channels. A person that wants to help. We as the community must help this person. They don't have to answer all the questions themselves, so long as they create an atmosphere where people get answers. We'd pay them to get up to speed in Tor. We need to figure out what characteristics this person must have (technical, non-technical etc)."
A support person whose job is to "tend the community channels" is quite a bit different than a support person whose job is to "assist in getting the support portal up and running". Where on the spectrum do we want to be?
This position is NOT for tending the community channels. At least not at first, and it shouldn't be in the job description. I think this is a full-time job without that.
We thought of this position as an extension of the communications team. The comm team gets lots of questions on social media and from the press that require an ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people. That's what this position is supposed to be. This person will also help with the support portal.
I think there are two priorities we should keep in mind, and they appear to contradict each other but I argue they actually don't:
A) User support that scales is way better than user support that doesn't scale. So, we should put high value on the websites, social media, and stackexchange -- activities that reach a lot of people, and activities that teach other people how to help people. And aim less for private helpdesk responses, irc responses, mailing list responses, and other transient non-scalable approaches.
B) Our support person is going to need to learn many things, especially what problems people are experiencing *today*, and getting up to speed and staying there will involve interacting with users in many different contexts. One of the most important ways we find new bugs and usability issues we should address is by interacting with people in the blog comments, or talking to people on irc, or working with confused people on trac. We need our support person to be engaged and active in these interactive venues, with the #1 goal of learning how to help people better, and the #2 goal of (as a nice side effect) helping people.
That is, while the focus should be on support that scales, the way to get there is to participate in the more interactive, more transient places, in order to know what to write in the places that reach more users.
Corollary #1: we need a person who never regards any pieces of the Tor world as "set in stone" or "out of scope". If the person is hunting for a workaround for a Tor Browser bug, but not involving the Tor Browser people in the discussion "because they're busy developing", that's never going to be best. All website text is waiting to be improved, all user support requests should be examined to find software/documentation bugs that can be fixed so the next user doesn't have the problem, all workflows and support channels have inefficiencies that we can examine and discuss and resolve. Everything can be made better.
Corollary #2: we need a support person who has enough of a technical clue to know what's likely to be easy or hard to change, and understand how to ask the right questions to developers, and understand their answers and work toward a solution.
Corollary #3: we need a support person who can stay on track with the support mission, rather than e.g. thinking the developer side is really cool and getting bogged down trying to be a developer in all of our projects at once.
+1! We really need someone who wants to stay doing support work! Shari
--Roger
tor-community-team mailing list tor-community-team@lists.torproject.org https://lists.torproject.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/tor-community-team
Hi,
I know I am late, but maybe not too late...
Shari Steele:
Hey all. I don't think I'm going to be able to join this morning's meeting due to technical difficulties, so I'm adding a couple of comments below.
On Jun 26, 2017, at 12:08 AM, Roger Dingledine arma@mit.edu wrote:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 04:41:57PM -0400, Tommy Collison wrote:
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
Thanks Tommy.
Georg, Pastly, Taylor, it will be really useful to get your insights and preferences here.
Here are some thoughts to get us going:
Step zero, where do we provide support now? In Valencia I made a list:
"What are our current places for user interaction / users to get their questions answered?" https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2016WinterDevMeet...
Another interesting paragraph from those notes:
"Suggestion: get one person funded who will prioritize and tend the community channels. A person that wants to help. We as the community must help this person. They don't have to answer all the questions themselves, so long as they create an atmosphere where people get answers. We'd pay them to get up to speed in Tor. We need to figure out what characteristics this person must have (technical, non-technical etc)."
A support person whose job is to "tend the community channels" is quite a bit different than a support person whose job is to "assist in getting the support portal up and running". Where on the spectrum do we want to be?
This position is NOT for tending the community channels. At least not at first, and it shouldn't be in the job description. I think this is a full-time job without that.
We thought of this position as an extension of the communications team. The comm team gets lots of questions on social media and from the press that require an ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people. That's what this position is supposed to be. This person will also help with the support portal.
Reading the text in "What are your goals and desired outcomes for the person hired through the Technology Exchange? Be specific." it seems to me the second paragraph is about the extension of the communications team and the support portal you are talking about. This matches to Stephanie being the immediate supervisor.
But I am wondering what role the first paragraph plays here. What additional work is the applicant supposed to be doing that is not covered by the second paragraph? I read "This person will be a bridge between Tor’s non-technical users and Tor’s development team" and was excited because I thought "Finally someone is helping with all our users having questions/issues, be they mentioned on IRC, mailing lists, the blog etc." But that seems pretty close to "tending the community channels" which it should not be according to you. What is its purpose then (assuming that first paragraph is not redundant)?
Georg
On 7/6/17 4:24 AM, Georg Koppen wrote:
Hi,
I know I am late, but maybe not too late...
Shari Steele:
Hey all. I don't think I'm going to be able to join this morning's meeting due to technical difficulties, so I'm adding a couple of comments below.
On Jun 26, 2017, at 12:08 AM, Roger Dingledine arma@mit.edu wrote:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 04:41:57PM -0400, Tommy Collison wrote:
+Georg +Pastly +Catalyst +Steph
Also -- this grant is now due the 7th, so we have a whole extra week!
Thanks Tommy.
Georg, Pastly, Taylor, it will be really useful to get your insights and preferences here.
Here are some thoughts to get us going:
Step zero, where do we provide support now? In Valencia I made a list:
"What are our current places for user interaction / users to get their questions answered?" https://trac.torproject.org/projects/tor/wiki/org/meetings/2016WinterDevMeet...
Another interesting paragraph from those notes:
"Suggestion: get one person funded who will prioritize and tend the community channels. A person that wants to help. We as the community must help this person. They don't have to answer all the questions themselves, so long as they create an atmosphere where people get answers. We'd pay them to get up to speed in Tor. We need to figure out what characteristics this person must have (technical, non-technical etc)."
A support person whose job is to "tend the community channels" is quite a bit different than a support person whose job is to "assist in getting the support portal up and running". Where on the spectrum do we want to be?
This position is NOT for tending the community channels. At least not at first, and it shouldn't be in the job description. I think this is a full-time job without that.
We thought of this position as an extension of the communications team. The comm team gets lots of questions on social media and from the press that require an ability to explain technical concepts to non-technical people. That's what this position is supposed to be. This person will also help with the support portal.
Reading the text in "What are your goals and desired outcomes for the person hired through the Technology Exchange? Be specific." it seems to me the second paragraph is about the extension of the communications team and the support portal you are talking about. This matches to Stephanie being the immediate supervisor.
But I am wondering what role the first paragraph plays here. What additional work is the applicant supposed to be doing that is not covered by the second paragraph? I read "This person will be a bridge between Tor’s non-technical users and Tor’s development team" and was excited because I thought "Finally someone is helping with all our users having questions/issues, be they mentioned on IRC, mailing lists, the blog etc." But that seems pretty close to "tending the community channels" which it should not be according to you. What is its purpose then (assuming that first paragraph is not redundant)?
Georg
Hey Georg,
Thanks for your note on this. Wasn't too late -- am submitting today.
I reread those paragraphs and edited them for clarity. The first paragraph is a high-level look at what the job is. It uses vague language (what does being a bridge between users and devs even mean?) and broad strokes. The second drills down into the day-to-day -- they'll be working with Steph, and taking some weight off devs who don't have the cycles to follow up on press stuff.
In terms of support -- I expect this person not to be full-time on support, but sometimes there are technical questions that need a developer to answer properly, and that's where this person will step in. As Shari said, tending the support channels is a full-time job in itself, and we want this person to do more than that.
TC
On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 01:59:57PM -0400, Tommy Collison wrote:
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to include a job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely with the Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time to meet on Monday?
Hi Tommy,
In addition to Colin and Alison, I think we should get Georg from the Tor Browser team, and Taylor and Pastly from the network team, involved too.
Collectively these are the people who have either been doing the support, or recently expressed interest in making sure we do the support better.
That's because part of the process here should be prioritizing what we would want the support person to focus on, and that involves knowing what all we're doing right now.
--Roger
Roger Dingledine:
On Fri, Jun 23, 2017 at 01:59:57PM -0400, Tommy Collison wrote:
I'm working on a grant to get a Support person, and we have to include a job application with the grant. Since they'd be working closely with the Community team, I'd like to get your help drafting it.
The grant is due this day next week, the 30th. Do people have time to meet on Monday?
Hi Tommy,
In addition to Colin and Alison, I think we should get Georg from the Tor Browser team, and Taylor and Pastly from the network team, involved too.
Collectively these are the people who have either been doing the support, or recently expressed interest in making sure we do the support better.
That's because part of the process here should be prioritizing what we would want the support person to focus on, and that involves knowing what all we're doing right now.
--Roger
Great idea Roger. And I understand that this deadline has now been extended to July 7, so there is some more time. Maybe Tommy can get us all on an email thread?
Alison
tor-community-team@lists.torproject.org
-
Alison Macrina -
Colin Childs -
Georg Koppen -
Roger Dingledine -
Shari Steele -
Tommy Collison