Building an Ombudsdroid

Getting Android Answers Beyond Programming Stuff

Long-time readers of this column will know that one of my big gripes with the Android project is communication, or the lack thereof. I have not complained as much about that recently because, in some areas, things are steadily improving. Getting technical answers, in particular, is working out about as well as can reasonably be expected, particularly given the growing size of the Android developer community.

What has not improved, though, is the ability to get any questions answered outside of pure programming issues.

These sorts of questions will continue to increase over time, and their importance cannot be overstated. For example, the past few days' explosion in the “modder” community might have been avoided, or at least dealt with better, if there were any reliable way to ask Google the question: what are modders allowed to distribute? I have been involved with Android for ~18 months and I have no idea where I could get a definitive answer for that. Yet, not having that answer available may have just cost Google a chunk of its most enthusiastic end users, which seems like a steep price to pay.

Similarly, the various Android Google Groups are replete with questions like:

• Where does the prohibition on "collecting payments through your application” imposed by the Android Market truly end? Can you collect payments through a Web site?
• What are the plans in terms of making the ADP1 available again, and to more countries?
• If I wished to license the proprietary Google Android apps for my firm's new device, who do I contact?

The first two of those bullets are fresh off the Google Groups, within the past few hours.

The Android engineers who provide help on the Google Groups are not in position to answer those questions, and I can understand why the Google staff who could answer those questions might not want to be on a public mailing list. That does not eliminate the need for answers, but it does require alternative approaches for getting them.

One possibility is to set up an office of the ombudsman.

The office of the ombudsman would have a public access point — public mailing list, a simple email address, an issue tracker, whatever — and would be managed by people whose mission would be to filter the requests down to legitimate unique questions, then get answers for them. The office would have greater (private) access to the Google staff who could provide the answers, thereby insulating those people in terms of effort and exposure. The office would maintain some sort of FAQ to help eliminate redundant questions and would re-route questions to other forums that might be more appropriate (e.g., the proper Google Group for a programming question).

This might not even require additional Google staff...if Google were willing to let a couple of community members serve as the ombudsdroids.

Whether through a system like this or some other means, Google needs to consider how best to get non-technical Android questions answered. As recent events illustrate all too well, Android cannot afford not to answer these sorts of questions, lest others make up their own answers, to their and Android's detriment.

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• Wireless / Mobile
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• cyanogen
• Google Android