[Mageia-discuss] Forum or mailing list

[Gary Montalbine]

On 06/06/2011 07:19 AM, Renaud (Ron) Olgiati wrote:
> There is one point that has not been made, but is to my mind important in this
> discussion. I have been on the Mandriva user list for years, and have also
> used forums (fora ?) for more specialized queries on OpenOffice and others,
> where no ML was available.
>
> The huge difference to me between the two approaches is this: From a list I get
> emails every day, glance at them all and delete most of them immediately,
> store some of them for future reference, and try to reply to those I feel I
> can help with. The forum I only visit when I have a problem, and post a
> question, but the rest of the time I do not log in, so I do not get to see
> other people's problems, and do not get the opportunity to help.
>
> Ron, on the banks of the Paraguay River.

As a user I do pretty much the same. Early on I had mentioned my 
experience with the forum and the list on getting a serious problem 
quickly resolved. My problem was on the forum for over 24 hrs. without 
an answer. When I asked on the list I had an answer in 20 min. I think 
the question should be asked of those with the knowledge to answer the 
questions. With a forum and a list the experts are being asked to devote 
valuable time to both. The forum is also fragmented and takes more time 
to go thru each section. I started with ML in 2002. I found the expert 
list to be extremely useful.

Essentially, what do the experts want? Those that have the knowledge to 
answer the questions. It is their time we are asking them to spend on 
the users questions.

Gary