[Mageia-discuss] Mageia Forums

[Nex6]

________________________________
From: Michael Scherer <misc at zarb.org>
To: Mageia general discussions <mageia-discuss at mageia.org>
Sent: Wed, September 22, 2010 11:39:57 AM
Subject: Re: [Mageia-discuss] Mageia Forums

Le mercredi 22 septembre 2010 à 04:32 +0200, Tux99 a écrit :

> While I'm in no position to influence this, I believe that Mageia 
> and it's community would greatly benefit if the Mageia devs would use a 
> reserved section of the Mageia forum (a subforum where only devs can 
> post) for cooker discussions rather than a mailing-list, since it would 
> bring devs and users closer to each other and facilitate interaction.

Well, no for several reasons:

1) a restricted forum is not really the spirit of openess I would see.
And a restricted forum would not be really a way to bring dev and
non-dev closer if this is restricted to dev. ( not to mention that the
simple existence of the idea "dev and users" is harmful, IMHO ). 

2) forums are IMHO not adapted to the work:

- depending on the forum, some will mark messages as read while you
didn't , fluxbb for example, and this is stressing ( at least, it does
stress me, since each time, I wonder if I forgot to read something
important or not )

- you have to read the whole page to follow a thread, while evolution
allow me to mark just a subthread as read when I know it doesn't
interest me ( like thread about kde or nvidia driver on cooker )

- you cannot have subthread, which basically make everything a mess

- you cannot do any kind of filtering ( like some people do with gnus,
to highlight post with keyword ) 

- you cannot cross post between forum ( which can be required when
specialized ml will appear )

- you basically cannot automate much task ( like applying a patch for
git with git am )

- you cannot read them offline ( in, when you commute, like what I do )

- most of the time, you cannot read them on your phone ( see the commute
part )

So basically, for my workflow, and I think I am not having a so uncommon
one among the  FOSS crowd, a forum is less adapted than a ML.


Regarding devs on forums, I have already expressed myself on cooker ml,
seek my name around august this year. Of course, I may appear like a ass
in theses mails,( maybe because I am one ), but I think that basically
changing the name of the project will not impact much my opinion, and
that still reflect my thoughts.

Of course, some packagers will read forums, and some used it ( like
Nicolas Lecureil, Samuel Verschelde and likely others ) for various
task, but personally, I would prefer rely on people to help me by doing
the triaging, and let me focus on issues where I can be more useful for
everybody. I think this would scale more than asking every developer to
get on the forum. 

So while I do not want to actively ignore users, it must be clear that
not everybody will/can pass a significant time on forum. And well, while
reading is sufficient in theory, if you just read, people do not know
and feel neglected. But answering requires more time. For example, I
have devoted my full afternoon on reading -discuss and I have still many
mails to read and maybe to answer, so I really do not think I could cope
with a user forums. 

When you take a forum, you need to take one that can show "hot topic",
or something like that, ie think of infrequent readers that may want to
only have the more important discussion ( ie, a
packager/designer/coder/whatever that just pass from time to time ). 

-- 
Michael Scherer



I am torn, on the ML vs Forums thing. I like forums, and I think for normal 
users it would be easier for them. but; for more active devs/user other Mageia 
personnel a ML would be better. 


not, sure how to resolve it, its an age old question.

-Nex6



_______________________________________________
Mageia-discuss mailing list
Mageia-discuss at mageia.org
https://www.mageia.org/mailman/listinfo/mageia-discuss
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: </pipermail/mageia-discuss/attachments/20100922/a1ee8cfe/attachment.html>