[Mageia-discuss] User support mailing list?

[Michael Scherer]

Le vendredi 03 juin 2011 à 12:52 -0400, Gary Montalbine a écrit :
> On 06/03/2011 11:30 AM, Remco Rijnders wrote:
> > Dear all,
> >
> > In the past few days since the release (and also before, but less
> > frequently) I notice a number of requests for help and assistance for a
> > variety of issues being posted on this list. To me this seems to be not
> > really on topic for this list which, to my understanding, is more aimed
> > at discussing the direction of Mageia for future releases and the role
> > Mageia should play in the larger free software community.
> >
> > I can fully understand why people would ask for help on this mailing
> > list as it seems the most appropiate one given the lists we have
> > available. I'd like to suggest the creation of a new mailing list for
> > and by users where they can get or provide assistance with end user
> > problems and questions like these.
> >
> > I've brought this topic up on #mageia-dev today and received mixed
> > reactions, though most of them seemed to be reluctant. As I'd like to
> > gather the opinion of a wider audience than just those present and awake
> > in #mageia-dev at the time, I now write this email.
> >
> 
> I support a mailing list for users. I had a problem that would not let 
> me use my security camera. Yesterday I posted the request for assistance 
> in the forum. No answer. Today I asked for help on the mailing list and 
> within 30 minutes I had the answer and now have a working camera. I am 
> strictly a user and find mailing lists very informative.

There is 507 people on this list ( I am a sysadmin of the ml, so I have
access ), and your demand was one of the 3 demand of the day ( anybody
can count ).

On the forum, I counted 14 request on this one
https://forums.mageia.org/en/viewforum.php?f=7 for the 2nd of june, 5 on
the subforums, and 2 on the advanced support forum.

That around 6 times more requests.

On the forum, there is around 500 people registered, but after looking
at the member list of the first 10 pages, there is only 64 people who
were connected on the 2nd of june or later on a total of 250 ( because i
got tired to count by hand for the other half ). As the members are
ordered by date of account creation, the numbers are likely wrong, and
there is a bias toward older users. However, that also allow to exclude
people who opened a account just to ask a question.

Roughly 25% of the people who have opened a account before 22 april did
connect yesterday ( based on the sample I counted by hand but I guess I
could also abuse my admin access to show some more accurate numbers ). 

On this 25% of people, there is some of them that do not read support
forums. But as I said, there is likely no people who are asking
questions, so we can approximate the 25% as people who are answering
rather than asking, and so, compare them to the 500 people that almost
all have read your mail. 

The ratio "people that read / number of questions" would be 24 times
better for this ml than the forum. 

Yes, posting here achieved a faster result. But this is not because ml
of users would be better. It is because you posted where there was more
people available and less questions.

-- 
Michael Scherer