Moin houghi Am Wed, 25. January 2006 21:25 schrieb houghi:
On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 06:12:38PM +0100, email.listen@googlemail.com wrote:
In the fields of user motivation / user management/supervision there is a enormous potential which isn't activated yet.
I agree. The tendens seems to go towards not having a forum. Not realy a surprise. It is as if you were asking what the best sport is at a soccer club. ;-)
I would say it's like launching aa new newspaper publication. For each new information channel, e.g a newspaper or in our case a forum, it needs advertising to find readers/participants. So beneath the fact that launching a new publication/channel will need technical ressources and manpower it will also need manpower to advertise and feed this new channel. Both of this are arguments which stand against a new forum instead of a better coordination in user motivation and binding to openSUSE.
Perhaps we are asking the wrong question and should we not need to ask: do we need a forum, but must we ask: how can we reach, motavate and supervise the enourmous potential that is out there and that we do not reach now.
1. I agree in your argument asking for better strategies motivating users. For this it will be interesting to have a closer look on whats going on in other projects and what can be adopted and done better. Let me call it 'Let's do it the asian way. Learn what others do and adopt it but do it better'. So I would suggest let us analyse first what all the others are doing and then what we may adopt and do better. - So what and how it is done in fedora, interesting because it's the most likewise project to openSUSE. - What / how is it done in Debian, beacause of its transparency and openness. - What / how is it done in Ubuntu, because of their organisational structure, e.g. the motu-, loco- and other teams - and because of Ubuntu's approaches they have due to their code of conduct and other strategies to win and involve users and to have an ethic/emotional binding of their users to ubuntu. 2. but most I am on a point of view that the question is not activating the enormous potential (if you are talking of new potential) but more in how to win back the lost users. This because they are the ones who mostlikely will be willing to join again. It's easier to win back an former friend than to find new ones also under the aspect of recources, human, technical and emotional ones. May be it is interesting to have a mailing campaign, snail mail might be the best, to invite lost users to join the new openSUSE community and become an active member (again). The addresses of all those who ordered SUSE boxes in the past will be a base for this. This has to be be of interest for Novell itself due to the fact that openSUSE will be the base of all enterprise products which will bring cash in the future. Novell has to accept and see this as a sustainable strategie which is a _must_ if they are really interested to do their buisiness in five ore more years and not only in the shareholder profit for the next four months or till the next buisines stock report. regards, Thomas