Testing team - how to deal with in Forum

[deeplow]

@unman

A notification on the forum would not be adequate.
Announcements will need to be sent out to the mailing lists, including
the testers list.

Ah! I see. The announcement is to be sent out to the mailing lists. Makes sense. For that I guess it will be @adw’s task if you don’t mind.

@adw

@deeplow

Soft launch or hard launch?

Either are fine with me. We could do a soft launch Qubes-project-wise and a hard-launch on the forum, pinning the topic globally for a few weeks.

I’m also fine either way. Might get more uptake by publishing a Qubes news post and usual syndication via social media venues, or might not if all would-be participants already see it here and on qubes-testers. If you want to do it, let me know. (We could probably just use an amended version of this post with you as the author.)

I’ll let @unman decide that. I feel like announcing on the mailing lists and the forum as a pinned post will do the job well.

With no major objections to the modified joining instructions, everything ready on my side. So let’s just set a date for sending out the “email” blast and we’ll go ahead with it.

[adw]

@deeplow

@unman

A notification on the forum would not be adequate.

Announcements will need to be sent out to the mailing lists, including
the testers list.

Ah! I see. The announcement is to be sent out to the mailing lists. Makes sense. For that I guess it will be @adw’s task if you don’t mind.

No problem. It’ll simply be a copy/paste of your message with a note stating that it’s from you.

The idea is simply to inform anyone who’s still subscribed to qubes-testers and/or who doesn’t watch the forum.

[unman]

The idea is simply to inform anyone who’s still subscribed to qubes-testers and/or who doesn’t watch the forum.

And people who read qubes-users, qubes-devel, maybe qubes-announce, and
qubes-project.

[adw]

@unman

And people who read qubes-users, qubes-devel, maybe qubes-announce, and
qubes-project.

Hence the “and/or who doesn’t watch the forum.” All such people either watch the forum or they don’t. If they do, then they’ll see it anyway, and if they don’t, then they fall under my second category.

[deeplow]

@adw how do we proceed about announcing it. Other than that I think we have everything ready.

[adw]

It sounded like the announcement wasn’t completely done yet. Is it? If so, just provide me with a copy of the finalized announcement, and I’ll send it out for ya. (Or you could simply email the lists yourself, if you prefer.)

[unman]

Some changes:

What’s the testing team?

It’s a group of users who help make Qubes better.
They commit to testing updates and releases of Qubes OS, and are willing
to provide test results, confirm issues, and identify particular edge cases.
This is key to detecting issues early on, and stop them affecting more users.

What’s the risk?

For those willing to enable the testing repositories for the current release
the risk is minimal, because the packages will end up in current anyway.

If security is crucial to you, you should use the current stable release,
not enable the testing repositories, and not join the testing team.

How to join the testing team?

1. Request to join the testing team

• Via forum (preferred): request to join here (requires JavaScript and a forum account)
• Via email: send an email to register-testing-team at forum.qubes-os.org saying you’d like to join (does not require JavaScript or a forum account)

2. Follow the instructions for the kind of testing you want to help with (testing updates / releases)

Testing Type	Instructions	Description
Testing Updates	see here	Enabling the testing repositories (e.g. 4.0 testing)
Testing Releases	part 1 & part 2	Running the upcoming Qubes version (e.g. 4.1) and enabling the testing repositories.

3. Report issues in the appropriate category:

• If testing updates, post in the ‘4.0 Testing’ category, or email 4.0-testing at forum.qubes-os.org .
• if testing releases, post in the ‘4.1 Testing’ category, or email 4.1-testing at forum.qubes-os.org .

You can leave the group at any time by following steps similar to the ones in 1.

Packages move through the testing process quite quickly. Ideally you
would be able to update at least once a week.

When 4.1 moves toward release, we will see if we can test some of the
open issues in 4.0, and confirm they have been closed.

[deeplow]

@unman’s version above looks alright to me. Then I guess we’re ready to move forward, I think.

[adw]

Ok. @deeplow, could you update your pinned post with the final version and make it public so that I can link to it from the email announcement?

Also, don’t we need to make the whole category public?

[deeplow]

@adw

Ok. @deeplow, could you update your pinned post with the final version and make it public so that I can link to it from the email announcement?

Done. Link: Joining the Testing Team

@adw

Also, don’t we need to make the whole category public?

Will do that now. I’ll ping you when I’m ready. And rename “User Support » Testing 4.1” to “User Support » 4.1” as explained before

[adw]

Sounds good. To avoid potential problems, let’s proceed like this: You fully announce everything within the forum. Once you’re satisfied with how things stand, we can proceed to echo the announcement on the mailing lists.

The reason for this is that emails can’t be taken back after they’re sent, but things on the forum can be modified and edited. We may find that we want to tweak various things in the course of rolling this out on the forum, so it makes more sense to get everything situated on the forum before announcing via email rather than the opposite.

[deeplow]

I can set a “Custom template to display to users when sending a membership request”.

I was thinking of something like (feel free to suggest changes/corrections)

I have read the “about the testing team” post and would like to join it.

This could also be useful as an email template. Should we have anything else there?

@adw

Sounds good. To avoid potential problems, let’s proceed like this: You fully announce everything within the forum. Once you’re satisfied with how things stand, we can proceed to echo the announcement on the mailing lists.

I agree.

[adw]

@deeplow

I can set a “Custom template to display to users when sending a membership request”.

I was thinking of something like (feel free to suggest changes/corrections)

I have read the “about the testing team” post and would like to join it.

This could also be useful as an email template. Should we have anything else there?

So, a user sends a membership request to join the testing team, and we show this message to them? I don’t understand. This is the sort of message that a user would send to us as a way of requesting to join the testing team. Also, how does email figure in here?

[deeplow]

@adw

So, a user sends a membership request to join the testing team, and we show this message to them?

When sending the application this is the pre-typed text. It’s a template.

[adw]

Oh, wait, after re-reading a few more times, I think I understand. A user wants to join the testing them. They hit some “join” button. This is the pre-filled message that they can modify before sending it to us. Makes more sense now.

[deeplow]

Now I need to set a group owner. Basically the person who’ll be approving people. @unman I feel you’ll be best fit for this job. I don’t know how this works via email, but my assumption is that you receive an email with the application message. And you reply for example “approved” and then we on the forum add that person manually.

I’ve added @adw as well and well as myself (myself mostly to keep an eye on process to see if its going well). And we can add more people as group owners in the future to reduce the “review burden”.

Sounds good?

[deeplow]

Just updated the emails @adw. This is because in the future the upcoming releases will change and it would be annoying for all email users to change the address, I think. The new one are:

• If testing updates , post in the ‘4.0 Testing’ category, or email testing-updates at forum.qubes-os.org .
• if testing releases , post in the ‘4.1 Testing’ category, or email testing-releases at forum.qubes-os.org .

[unman]

Gerat work.

[deeplow]

@adw

Sounds good. To avoid potential problems, let’s proceed like this: You fully announce everything within the forum. Once you’re satisfied with how things stand, we can proceed to echo the announcement on the mailing lists.

On the forum all seems to be setup now.

Signup Flow

I used my testing account (@deeplow-testing) to follow the signup process. (sorry @unman, this has images, but you should be able to follow with just the text)

1. First the user goes to the group page (as indicated in the instructions) and then they click + Request

   

2. After that they see the template I mentioned above and hit Submit Request

   

3. Group owners get a notification / email with the application:

   

4. Then the group owners click on the “handle membership request” link which takes us to a page where users can be accepted to the group:

This last step is the one that can’t be fully followed without running javascript. So we can handle it on the forum side for @unman. (you can also do a PUT request to https://forum.qubes-os.org/groups/44/handle_membership_request.json with the payload user_id=848&accept=true and the forum cookie – But this is not practical…)

Chose a category icon

Also, the beaker font-awesome icon seemed appropriate for the testing team. But I can change it.