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

[Marc Paré]

Le 2010-10-04 11:41, Maât a écrit :
> Le 04/10/2010 16:58, Marc Paré a écrit :
>> Ahh, I see. There seems to be a communication problem here. My
>> apologies if I was not clear.
>>
>> I was taking the view that with the bidirectional gateway, allowing
>> the devs to see and participate in user discussions and they would
>> clearly not be forced to read any threads/discussions that they were
>> not interested in.
>>
>> And you are talking about users participating in dev discussions and
>> devs not having the patience for "with useless mail reading or
>> questions that support or advanced users can perfectly deal with".
>>
> No.
>
> If a user want to suscribe to a dev list and take the risk to raise his
> "user voice" in the middle of an expert debate he's free to do so.
>
> He should though perhaps prepare himself to a "somewhat virile welcome"
> but this he should not be forbidden to do that :)
> (and he is not)
>
> I'm talking about users creating "pure" user topics :
> -- how do i -- put a RTMF question here --  ?
> -- look at my new wallpaper (isn't my new baby dog lovely ?)
> -- i think that -- put an old secular troll here --
> -- why do this fscking -- put the package you want here -- works like
> that and not like that ?
> -- who's the fsking b*stard that removed -- put the removed by upstream
> feature you want here -- ?
> -- i want to sell my old car to buy a new one... (http://blah) who wants
> to make an offer ?
> -- /et caetera/
>
> These topics in a subforum are many. And these topics are precisely what
> upset devs and packagers.
> And reading those or trying to filter to "separate the wheat from the
> chaff" is dev time waste that the
> global community should want to minimize...
>
>

Is it not a rule to NOT post a reply to an someone who abuses. Then the 
offending thread just dies. There is no problem, if we all follow this 
rule. If we all followed this rule then there would be no problem. Why 
would a dev or even for that matter a user answer an offending post? We 
all know that it is useless.

>>
>> So, in a way, we are talking about the same thing but from a different
>> perspective.
>>
>> So, this thread is about the merits of a mailist-forum offering
>> bidirectional gateway allowing all people to see/communicate with each
>> other regardless of the means, mailist, irc, forums etc. If I
>> understand your argument, you are saying that devs may not be
>> interested in having non-knowledgeable users taking part in their
>> discussions as they could find this annoying and they could possibly
>> just quit participating in discussions where they are overwhelmed with
>> "novice" input.
>>
> No you dit not understand my argument at all :)
> (see above ^^)
>
>>
>> My argument, is that devs would then have, by the simple process of
>> the bidirectional gateway, the ability to "see" everyone's
>> conversations and that, whichever conversation would look interesting
>> to them, they could join in.
>>
> That they have already : some monitor forums and join in whenever they
> want to.
> (But this is time consuming. Hence very few do this on a regular basis.)

But this is quite understandable.The very few who do it then are 
enjoying the threads that they follow. I don't think that there is a 
problem with this.

>
>> Under this whole umbrella everyone would of course have to adhere to
>> the normal netiquette rules of conduct as laid out for mailists; irc,
>> forums. So, participation for everyone becomes a choice of their own
>> and if a discussion thread garners so much attention that it is
>> overwhelmed with questions by "less-informed" users/devs, then you
>> could either ignore their contributions to the discussion or try to
>> inform them of the issues. Often times this will fix the problem.
>>
> No because you start from the end. One you have a community of perfectly
> educated users the problem will disappear beacause users will use
> bugtracker and mailing lists... the need of a forum is just the proof
> that your start point is a false statement :)
>
> The second point is the volume... with a few list subscibers i am
> something like 300 mails late
>
> With 20 000 forum suscribers (or even 5000) posting that would change
> many things. Devs would give up all the list :)
> That's as simple as that.

If the volume of posts increase to that size, then we could all 
congratulate ourselves for having such a great and vibrant distro. Devs 
would still have the option of following the posts/threads that most 
interest them. I would say that the conditions that you describe are 
actually those of a successful distro. I would not think that a dev who 
initially found a thread that was interesting would just quit on it 
because it got too busy. That is when a thread becomes really exciting.

>
> Especially since the news will spread that advanced users are answering
> "magically" on a specific forum will push all users to try their chance
> here and not in an other forum... resulting in a worst flood than you
> could imagine :)
>
> And moderators would have to educate people wanting to post there and
> not elsewhere.
>
> That's the better way to create a war between moderators and users :-(
>

If users are having to seek out and find devs to try to get their 
attention, then I would hope that the mailist, irc, and forums 
moderators would be vigilant enough to realize that somewhere along the 
way the communication between the users and devs is NOT working. There 
is a broken link and user dissatisfaction is growing. This would be a 
sign to watch out for from an organizational point of view. It means 
that somewhere along the way the communications link is broken. It needs 
to be corrected to promote proper communications behaviour.

>> I have been following the thread on mirror infrastructure and have not
>> contributed to any of the discussions, but why would I not be
>> permitted to sit in on the sidelines?
>>
>> Marc
>>
> That's the other part... very different matter. This could be dealt with
> a read only forum section. But can you give me a correct estimation of
> the extra volume needed for 3 years of forum + ml life with 1000 posters
> on one side and 5000+ (more likely 10 000 or 20 000) ?
>
> And about global system performance once filled with 5 million posts and
> browsed by 400 simultaneous active members.
>
> (And if you imagine to add also Cauldron which can reach the rate of 600
> mails per day just to be able to "to sit in on the sidelines" the volume
> is even huger)
>
> That's why these questions need to be treated with caution :)

Unfortunately, then the distro would then have to re-evaluate its goals 
if the volume of communications is limited by the physical capabilities 
of their hardware. It may be that the "community" aspirations of the 
distro has struck a serious lack of balance with reality. However, 
usually when the participation is at such a height, a community will 
rally financially and support the request for more funds for hardware 
upgrades. We have to have faith in the overriding community wishes for 
the good will of the distro.

>
> Cheers,
> Maât
>
>
Cheers

Marc