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

[Maât]

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...


>
> 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.)

> 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.

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 :-(

> 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 :)

Cheers,
Maât