Date: Fri, 26 Mar 1999 14:32:04 -0600 (CST) From: Licia <licia@o-o.org> To: Mark Ovens <marko@uk.radan.com> Cc: "Jordan K. Hubbard" <jkh@zippy.cdrom.com>, Donald Wilde <dwilde1@thuntek.net>, freebsd-advocacy@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Is there a "how did you hear about us?" form on www.freebsd.org? Message-ID: <Pine.BSF.4.05.9903261418270.3071-100000@o-o.org> In-Reply-To: <36FB92CA.187A0C3@uk.radan.com>
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On Fri, 26 Mar 1999, Mark Ovens wrote:
> Licia wrote:
> >
> > On Thu, 25 Mar 1999, Jordan K. Hubbard wrote:
> >
> > > > The install process registration has made me wonder too. Would it be possibl
> > > e
> > > > perhaps to offer a "print this out and mail it in" registration for people
> > >
> > > The registration process everyone is currently seeing now really need
> > > to be ripped out and replaced. Why? Several reasons.
> > >
> > > One, as you've noted, there's no way to do the registration when you
> > > haven't got email set up yet; a good percentage of the registrations
> > > we get are actually bounced back by freebsd.org's spam filter, which
> > > doesn't deal with sites without proper DNS. When you've set the
> > > machine up before the DNS entry, as many do, that's clearly not going
> > > to work.
> > >
> > > Secondly there's the fact that email, even though clearly imperfect,
> > > is the only way to go. We don't deal well with web site registration
> > > (at least not in a way which weeds/prevents duplicates or allows
> > > someone to change their existing entries) and we don't allow people to
> > > postal mail their stuff in to some counter person.
> > >
> > > The idea of having people register at installation time is a good one,
> > > don't get me wrong, but my initial "proof of concept implementation"
> > > there is clearly showing many cracks now. Who'd like to take over
> > > registration at this stage?
> > >
> > > - Jordan
> > >
> >
> > Would you be interested in the possibility of a standalone TCP registration
> > server? A simple protocol could be used to create/edit/delete registrations.
> > With a simple whois style 'handle' system and basic authentication it would be
> > possible to allowe users to maintain their own entries in the system, with
> > virtually no added effort from staff or such. I'd personally also like to see
> > the possibility of users snail mailing in their registrations, if they simply
> > have no way of getting online to do it as well.
> >
>
> If you decide to run with this idea then may I make a couple of
> suggestions?
>
> 1) When designing the registration form (whether it's a printed
> form to go with the CDs or an ASCII file for printing out)
> then please don't forget that FreeBSD has an international user
> base and non-US addresses often don't fit well into a US-style
> address template.
>
This is a good point. I run into this problem now and then with various
applications I've worked on, and a similar problem with phone numbers. I'm
not much of an international person though. Can you show me a simple template
for addresses and phone numbers that will work clearly and simply for US and
international users? If so, even if this project isn't approved, I'll
incorporated those templates into other things I work on :)
> 2) To encourage more people to complete and send in the form why
> not try and get volunteers to handle the forms in their country?
> This would spread the workload and should hopefully more people
> would send the forms in because they wouldn't have the inconvenience
> of having to go to the post office to find the cost of mailing to
> the US. The volunteer could then enter the details from the forms
> onto the registration database on behalf of the non-connected
> users.
>
I personally think this would be a Good Idea. Would that person accept
responsibility for snail mailing confirmation back to the user with their
'FreeBSD Handle' for future reference? I could handle doing so in the US,
with no difficulty if need be...
> Before you ask, yes I am volunteering to do this for the UK (and
> Western Europe if necessary)
>
(applauding!)
> OK it's not a great contribution to the project, but every little bit
> helps, or so they say.
>
I personally think it's a good contribution, and if this project works out
could be a benefit to the entire community... Imagine actually having better
numbers as to how many people are installing FreeBSD, and on how many
computers :)
[ licia@o-o.org ] [ http://www.o-o.org/~licia/ ] [ Alias : Ladywolf]
[ Telnet to o-o.org and log in as bbs ] [ ssh -l bbs -C o-o.org ]
[ A happy user of FreeBSD : http://www.freebsd.org/ ]
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