Help us name the Quality Control Platform!

Contribute a good name for the DLN Community Project - Quality Control Platform!

Proposals:

Bonus points for something with low competition/conflict. Branding/SEO people weigh in! @MichaelTunnell

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Yet Another Cuality Qontrol Platform, or YACQP, pronounced “Jacob.”

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You don’t know how funny that joke is LOL. I need permission to tell you why :stuck_out_tongue:

edit: Just checked, his name is public to the forum. The person with the highest expertise/time combo for our backend is named Jakob Profile - kobberholm - TuxDigital Forum

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That’s funny. IT IS DESTINY.

To clarify:
The name of the project would be Shout/Out.
The two pieces of software would be:
Open User Testing (Out)
Social Hub for Open User Testing (Shout)

Shoutout works as it signifies a way for developers to reach out to the community and for the users to reach the developers.

The open user testing is where developers create surveys and can have conversations with the users of each specific user testing campaign.
This part can be selfhosted and still submit campaigns to the social hub.

The social hub is where the software projects advertise their user testing campaigns and users can search for projects that they are interested in or even automatically get notified when a project is in need of a user that matches their profile.

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I switched my summary for your quote, thank you.

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Sounds good to me.

I like the idea of Shout/Out but it has big uphill battle on brandability and SEO so while I do like the quirkiness and the style of the concept I think it might be not be specificly identifiable enough. I am not saying no to this though, just saying I’d like to think about it more but I am open to considering it as well other options.

The only thing, that I can think of at the moment, that I have a hard-line on is absolutely zero chance of anything using “yet another”, “just another”, or etc. because to me those are a sign of the project couldnt come up with anything so they just settled. I’d rather not settle. :smiley:

It’s like you think we’ve never heard an episode of TWIL…

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lol I knew you were giving the one you gave as a joke (especially based on Cuality Qontrol lol) but just wanted to make it clear to those who arent aware of my stance on that just in case. :smiley:

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I agree about the SEO of the term and there are several companies with trademarks for Shoutout in the tech business (usually they relate to social apps or technologies), but any wording that has to do with communication will be a part of someone’s trademark, but none are directly related to software testing, so at least there’s that.

When it comes to the terms QA and QC, I think we have to use them with caution, as they have real meanings, are defined in ISO 9000 standards for QM/QA and are the actual names of the overarching puzzles, that we are just trying to be a tiny piece in.

Most of software testing is done automatically and I suspect people who work with this professionally, would not welcome a tool that sits at the bottom of the stack and calls itself SQUAT - Social Quality Assurance Tool :smiley:

A brief explanation of the terms Quality Assurance vs Quality Control - Guru99.
Another brief explanation Quality Assurance & Quality Control - ASQ.
A long and thorough explanation/whitepaper on the subject Quality Assurance, Quality Control and Testing — the Basics of Software Quality Management

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“QALinux”

Simple, to the point, and not much URL/name collision.

Con: it implies a linux focus, which may or may not be an issue.

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Good point, don’t want to leave out other FOSS OSs.

No idea if an acronym is the best way to go but here’s some building material for anyone thinking that way:

Pairs:
AQ - Assured Quality
QA - Quality Assurance
CQ - Control Quality
QC - Quality Control
SF - Software Freedom
FS - Free Software
OS - Open Software

Standalone:
A - Assured / Assurance
B - Bug / Bugs
E - Error
F - Freedom / Fault / Feedback
Q - Quality
R - Readiness
S - Software
T - Testing / Test / Trial / Trials
X - Experimental

Extra:
P - Platform / Program
S - Service

As I noted in a previous post, Quality Assurance is not a suitable term for this, as it deals with processes to prevent issues from occurring. It does not deal with testing.

To an outsider, this might seem like pedantry, but in many (most?) companies, different people are responsible for QA and QC, so if we label this QA, we will be marketing our product to the wrong people (and possibly undermining the credibility of the product, by showing a lack of understanding of quality management).

To quote the Guru99 article:

KEY DIFFERENCE [between QA and QC]

  • Quality Assurance is aimed to avoid the defect whereas Quality control is aimed to identify and fix the defects.
  • Quality Assurance provides assurance that quality requested will be achieved whereas Quality Control is a procedure that focuses on fulfilling the quality requested.
  • Quality Assurance is done in software development life cycle whereas Quality Control is done in software testing life cycle.
  • Quality Assurance is a proactive measure whereas Quality Control is a Reactive measure.
  • Quality Assurance requires the involvement of all team members whereas Quality Control needs only testing team.
  • Quality Assurance is performed before Quality Control.
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Side note… we should vote Sat on an interim name. I used “Quality Assurance Platform” as a temporary filler but it’s a quick change.

I have no opinion either way but that’s some good information.

As for how the platform’s used, it could be any combination from software that would have been published but is just getting one last review, to software deep in the test cycle. Maybe both names are inaccurate if we’re going by explicit definition?

User testing is definitely part of quality control.

When the article refers to proactive vs reactive, they are not so much talking about where in the release cycle we are (alpha, beta, release candidate etc), but where in the development cycle. Each feature can have it’s own development cycle and you can start with user testing as soon as there is an MVP, even though you are not going to release for another six month.

It might help to think of it like this:

  • Quality Assurance is about processes set in place for development of the software.
  • Quality Assurance is done by managers.
  • Quality Control is about the actions taken to control the quality.
  • Quality Control is done by engineers.

The above is to be taken with a huge grain of salt, as engineers are likely to be involved in every step of development and the test team can involve anyone, including managers, “man on the street”, senior developers or the CEO of the company.

It’s one hell of a topic to wrap your head around. Here’s another good one from the 3rd link you posted.

I could probably poke at some contradictions and how the project is an extension of assurance as much as it’s a tool of control but I may be more wrong than i’m right.

If you’d allow me one cheeky correction though: :stuck_out_tongue:

“Quality control can be compared to having a senior manager walk into a production department and pick a random car for an examination and test drive.”

Hehe well, to be fair, nothing is ACTUALLY DONE by managers :stuck_out_tongue:

And yes, I agree that testing is sometimes referred to as a separate thing to quality control and in my initial draft I think I even wrote that, but I have a tendency to write long posts, so I try to do a final pruning before posting and that did not seem like valuable enough distinction to make the cut.

Also, my personal preference (and how I try to refer to the project at all times) is User Testing, as that is both accurate and descriptive :slight_smile:

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How about FOSSfix? As I see it, this project has the goal of helping FOSS improve and give developers more resources to fix problems. So, in that case, “fix” would both signify improvement as in correction and as in stability.

Furthermore, the branding should be pretty easy. There’s only one, relatively recent and unknown Facebook page for this. Other social media handles are available. Domain names are also available for all TLDs. And it’s a catchy name that could translate nicely into a logo design.

While Shoutout was a very nice suggestion, it would be almost impossible to brand the project. Most domain names and social media handles are already taken and rising up in Search Results would be borderline impossible.

Also, wouldn’t it be better if the forum subsection was placed at the top of the DLN forum home page?

Either way, good luck with the project. As a Surface Pro owner, I’ve become accustomed to when software crashes because the developers simply didn’t test something out, and I would love to see that improving over time.

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I got everything that had “quality assurance” renamed to “quality control” incl. the NextCloud group and forum section.

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