2011/1/20 Daniel Kinzler daniel@brightbyte.de:
So, I would like to propose to have a Q/A session where the community can
ask
questions to developers. I'd like to do this during Wikimania proper, so everyone has a chance to attend.
The question is: are people interested? Or is it just my silly idea?
It's an excellent idea, but it may be a bit hard to implement.
There are a dozen or so bugs in Bugzilla which are very important to me, and i think that they are quite important for the whole WM community and i keep wondering when will they finally be fixed. But dozens of other people have dozens of other bugs which are important to them. Put them all in one room with a few developers, and most likely a very little fraction of the people's questions will be answered.
It doesn't mean that such a session shouldn't be held, but this problem should be kept in mind. One idea is to prepare the people who will participate in it that it will be a very "first-come-first-served" thing and to tell the people to prepare their questions precisely (e.g. to have the bug number) or maybe even to submit their questions in advance. Also, there can be a kind of a preparatory lecture explaining how the developers work in general, how do they decide on which bugs to work, etc.