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

[Wolfgang Bornath]

2010/10/4 Tux99 <tux99-mga at uridium.org>:
>
> If the official forums has clear rules and well organised subforums as I'm
> sure it will be, then users won't invade the ML (or the ML gw forums)
> simply because the rules will say that the dev ML is for developer talk
> only, while support questions need to go into the support subforums.
>
> Of course there will always be the odd user that misbehaves, but there will
> also be mods who will educate and worst case restrict users that don't
> behave.
> The main point though is, when the users is aware that all the devs are
> volunteers, then there is a lot more respect for them.

Maât's "fear" is not totally unrational. We had a lively discussion on
the cooker ML not long ago where developpers gave some reasonable and
logic points where "intrudors from userland" would hold back
developpers from their work. Read the forums how some users keep
asking for this and that - IMHO not at all related to the fact that
they want to be served by some employees of a commercial company. The
proper way to communicate with developpers was the Bugzilla system.

But you have a valid point in saying that Mageia is/will be different.
We already discussed a system of "Bug Friends", experienced users in
the forum helping unexperienced users to write proper bug reports to
express their wishes/suggestions. The ML<->Forum system with a good
set of rules and mods who keep enforcing those rules would be a good
system, too. In the Mandriva forum I was often told that an answer to
my question was in the cooker mailinglist - I refused to read that
lively list just to search for this particular answer. But with a
forum-like structure I would have searched the ML even before asking.

So, yes, IMHO the gateway should be implemented - provided that it
will be in it's own section of the forum and it will be "guarded" by
some mods. Otherwise the devels will look for some other way to remain
undisturbed.