[Mageia-sysadm] Migration of the forums

[nicolas vigier]

On Thu, 20 Sep 2012, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:

> 2012/9/20 nicolas vigier <boklm at mars-attacks.org>:
> > On Thu, 20 Sep 2012, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> >
> >> 2012/9/19 nicolas vigier <boklm at mars-attacks.org>:
> >> > On Wed, 19 Sep 2012, Wolfgang Bornath wrote:
> >> >
> >> >>
> >> >> If we have
> >> >>  - a technical forum admin (with or without helpers) who prepares code
> >> >> changes and talks to a dedicated sysadmin
> >> >>  - a dedicated sysadmin who implements the prepared changes within a
> >> >> reasonable time span
> >> >> everything is ok.
> >> >
> >> > This is what we were supposed to do now, but it seems it doesn't work.
> >>
> >> Ah, I did not know that. Would it not be better to find out why this
> >> does not work and try to fix that?
> >
> > Each discussion quickly move to personal attacks and fights to point out
> > who is responsible for all the problems, and I'm really tired of those
> > discussions and bad atmosphere, and I think we've wasted enough time
> > with this since the begining of the project. So if it's imposible to
> > discuss, I think the best solution is to move forums setup outside
> > sysadmin team, so that there is no need to discuss anymore.
> 
> Yes, this issue has a history of wrong behavior and misunderstandings,
> I am a part of it as everybody else. Unfortunately it is also a
> history of individual responsibility, not a system error. But since
> when is this a reason to forget about a good solution at all? Moreso
> if the proposed second choice is a very bad choice?
> 
> A forum is the main communication platform between makers and users -
> even if you don't like forums. Each and every large popular project I
> have visited during the last 10 years has a forum on their website.
> Surely users will find a forum outside of the Mageia web family, but
> what an impression will give that to them, regarding Mageia as a
> project which relies on the cooperation and contribution of the users?

I never said forums are not useful, or that I didn't like forums. And
the proposal is not to drop them, but only remove this task from
sysadmin team, because current organisation doesn't work.

And having external forums is not unusual for a project. Go to
http://fedoraproject.org/, click on "Forums" and you're on
http://www.fedoraforum.org/ where you can read :
"FedoraForum.org is privately owned and is not directly sponsored by the
Fedora Project or Red Hat, Inc."

If you go to http://www.debian.org/support, you'll find links to
debianHELP forum, and Debian User Forums, with both not managed by
debian sysadmin team (so they are not on debian.org domain).

> 
> IMHO an "outsourcing" of the forum is a no-go. And I'm still not
> convinced that the simple sysadmin<->forum sysadmin scheme is not
> possible.

I think I've already wasted far too much time on this to be convinced
that it's time to stop.