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Improving Quality through Community-Driven Feed...

Improving Quality through Community-Driven Feedback: Lessons from LibreOffice CJK Users

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Shinji Enoki

August 09, 2025

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  1. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0

    License. Improving Quality through Community-Driven Feedback: Lessons from LibreOffice CJK Users Shinji Enoki [email protected] in COSCUP 2025 2025-08-10
  2. 2 Shinji Enoki (榎真治) • From Settsu City, Japan (near

    Osaka) • Member, LibreOffice Japanese Team (2011-) • Member, Membership Committee of The Document Foundation • Activities: organizing events, building communities, occasional Q&A, QA work, and translation
  3. 4 Importance of Multilingual and Multicultural Support • Software used

    all over the world must support many languages and cultures • This is very important for software like LibreOffice that has features for languages and cultures • In open source, local users can help improve the software by themselves • Including issues like vertical writing, ruby text, encoding, UI, and cultural customs
  4. 5 Why Local Feedback is Important in FLOSS • Developers

    cannot fully understand all language and culture needs • To improve quality with small resources, we need feedback from local users • Local community helps connect users and developers and find problems
  5. 6 Approach to User Feedback • Today, I will talk

    about how our community works to improve software quality, even with small resources and many problems • These examples come from working with the Japanese LibreOffice community • I think some ideas can help other open-source projects too
  6. 7 Agenda 1. Overview of Global QA Activities 2. Methods

    of Collecting and Using Feedback 3. Case Study: Japanese Community Efforts 4. Summary and Lessons for Other Projects
  7. 9 Community-Driven Testing Strategy • Rapid releas cycle and user

    feedback loop • Focus on continuous integration(CI) and automated testing (out of scope for this talk) • Self-managed, distributed structure for global contributors
  8. 10 Main Activities • Time-based / rolling release, and daily

    build • Open patch acceptance process • Bug report and bug triage from users • Feedback from user forums • Help and documentation to clarify specifications
  9. 12 Bug reports and issue tracking • What they are:

    Direct problem reports from users or testers • Importance: Foundation for quality improvement • Example tools: Bugzilla, GitHub Issues • Notes: • LibreOffice customizes Bugzilla by adding fields • GitHub Issues usually provide templates to help users submit clear reports..
  10. 14 Example of Prioritization and Triage • Critical issues (crashes,

    data loss) are given high priority • Confirm bug reproducibility and clarify the problem • Add reproduction steps and environment details • Use Bibisect tool to identify the commit that caused the problem
  11. 15 What is Bibisect? • Bibisect is a tool to

    find which code change caused a bug • It works by testing versions between a known good and a bad one • This helps pinpoint the exact commit that introduced the problem
  12. 16

  13. 17 User forums and discussions • What they are: Community

    Q&A support • Importance: Captures diverse user needs and informal feedback • Example: LibreOffice forums(Ask LibreOffice), mailing lists
  14. 20 Crash reports and automated telemetry • What they are:

    Automatically collected crash data and usage info • Importance: Helps detect issues even without user reports • Considerations: Privacy and setup complexity • Example: LibreOffice also has the option to send crash reports
  15. 22 Surveys and User Studies • What they are: •

    Collecting user opinions through questionnaires or interviews • Importance: • Provides direct feedback on user satisfaction and needs • Considerations: • Can be time-consuming and costly • Less common in FLOSS but useful for targeted insights
  16. 25 Additional feedback sources • User testing • Very effective

    for identifying usability and UX issues • Involves observing users performing real tasks • LibreOffice does not do this now • Social media • Sometimes useful, but requires much effort • Information is often incomplete, and communication can be difficult
  17. 27 Bug report coordination from ASK site • Identify and

    file bugs based on questions posted on ASK • Often add details to existing bug reports • ASK more efficient than Mailing List or Telegram • Only consistent working process now • Recently active members: Saburo-san, Sudo-san, Ironami- san, and others also appreciated • More details in the next talk by Sudo-san
  18. 29 Hackfests and Knowledge Sharing • Online hackfests use mob

    work style, effective for sharing knowledge • Sessions are streamed on YouTube • Viewers sometimes give comments and feedback
  19. 31 Improving UI and Help Translations • Anyone can suggest

    translations • Review required by reviewers (review shortage is a challenge) • Previously held translation-focused online hackfests (mob- work style) • These hackfests are currently paused due to no lead person • Active contributors: Sabro-san, AAAA-san, and others (thank you!)
  20. 33 CJK Community Cooperation • Collaboration among Japanese, Chinese, and

    Korean communities on bug identification and triage • Bugs reproducible only in specific language environments can be found • We track issues via a CJK meta-bug • CJK Telegram channel exists for communication • One TDF team member focuses on multilingual support and investigates/fixes CJK bugs • We want to increase such collaborations
  21. 36 Gathering Feedback at FLOSS Events • We set up

    a booth at about 7–8 open source events in Japan every year • We get direct feedback from users and participants • Through these exchanges, we identify issues and gather improvement ideas • We also communicate actively with community members and other FLOSS communities
  22. 37

  23. 38 Sustainable Community Activities • Regular online events • Weekly

    Japanese team meetings for task review and urgent work • Weekly online hackfests • LibreOffice Kaigi (annual conference) • Organized remotely • New contributor recruitment at online and offline events • Incentives such as gifts for event speakers • Moderation and review of announcements by mailing list moderators
  24. 40 Key Lessons Learned • Small communities can improve quality

    with steady effort • Diverse roles—translation, review, bug reporting—are all important • Community size matters; growth is essential to sustain feedback quality
  25. 41 Broader Implications • Collaboration and creativity can overcome challenges

    even without many experts • Multilingual and multicultural support is vital for FLOSS quality worldwide • Local communities play a key role in addressing language- and culture-specific issues • These lessons apply to many open-source projects
  26. 42 LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025 • The conference will be

    held on December 13–14, 2025, at the IIJ office in Tokyo. • We are currently accepting CfP submissions. • Through this event, we aim to foster community interaction and discover new people interested in our activities. • Joint event : GNOME Asia Summit