[Mageia-discuss] Mailing List to Web Forum Bidirectional Gateway

Frederic Janssens fjanss at gmail.com
Sun Oct 3 23:34:45 CEST 2010


On Sun, Oct 3, 2010 at 22:40, Olivier Méjean <omejean at yahoo.fr> wrote:

> Le dimanche 3 octobre 2010 06:25:58, Tux99 a écrit :
> >
> > I hope it will be useful for those of us who prefer a web forum rather
> > than mailing lists, but still want to  partecipate in the mailing list
> > discussions!
> >
>
> Hi there
>
> Well, that's a great job, really, nice to see such a thing is possible.
>
> However i would like to point something very important for me, forum users
> are
> quite different from ML users.
>
> In fact, throught this system we face one goal of Mageia. Will it be a
> distribution for "developers" or for "end-users" (well i know developers
> are
> also end-users).


I thought the aim was to be a community distribution, so ideally it would be
for both.

End-users, well just users may come from Windows (i hope we
> will attract some to the good side of the force :D ) and they feels a forum
> must easier than a ML. Just look at rules on the ML here, no html, no top
> posting, just quote well are things that needs to use mail correctly. And
> just
> use mail correctly is sometimes hard for just users. I do not work in
> computing and i just see how computers are seen, how they are used and how
> theses 3 rules would be hard to use. No HTML ? well i guess few users
> (outside
> those working in computing) knows how to do it, no top posting ... ouch
> quite
> impossible, quote well ... hum what do you calll quoting ?
>

The advantage of a forum, for these problems, is that there is only one
interface : the forum, and the administrator can configure it as much as he
wants (or is able).
So : no HTML is decide by the administrator, not by the 'end user'.
(I just saw that 'wobo' explained it better than I do)

>
> Let's face it, ML is a tool for developers not a tool for users.


That's just the reason for the gateway : to provide a way to communicate
between users and developpers : developers usually hate forums, end-users
usually are unable to use ML's properly.
The fear has allready been expressed that if we open that communication
channel, developers will be flooded.
That is a real problem, and I think we have to use (existing, and eventually
new) tools to limit that problem.


As a user i
> do prefer forums, on one topic i can have the full discussion no need to
> navigate between mails, there are colors, it is (or it give the feeling)
> more
> attractive and newbies or users will prefer using forums. That's the same
> thing between using GUI or CLI, i know CLI is powerful, faster, very
> efficient,
> but for users GUI is better, they feel at ease when using their mouse to
> point
> and click, validate.
>
> I have also praticed a lot web forum, and a very little usenet and it is
> also
> two differents audience. Anyone here on alt.os.linux.mandriva (hum yes Marc
> Paré is on) ?
>
> So, even if there is a good tool to have a bidirectional Gateway between ML
> and web forum i don't think we will meet efficiency with it. The best way
> for me
> is to have these different tools since they have different audiences,


How can you have a community if you have no means to communicate ?
(Off topic example : I am belgian, Belgium is in danger of disintegrating
because (amongst other factors) there are 2 'public opinions' with 2
different languages, that do not communicate : there are no common mass
media)


> some of us
> will be on both tools but most will use just one.
>

Yes but it is better to manage a communication problem, rather than just
make sure that communication is very hard, so you can ignore the problem.

I hope I don't come across as too opiniated.
These communication problems are universal. I just think that Mageia is in a
position to do better, because it can manage it's tools. And that it could
greatly benefit by doing it.

>
> --
> Olivier Méjean
> Président de l'Association des Utilisateurs Francophones de Mandriva Linux
> http://mandrivafr.org
> twitter : obagoom
> identi.ca : goom
>



-- 

Frederic
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