* David Krider (david@davidkrider.com) [031004 20:11]:
Whenever these sorts of threads rear their heads on this list, people get apoplectic, and tell the posters to go to the OT list. Well, I did, for several months, and I found the list to be tiresomely immature. The list is made up of all the hard-core pro-SuSE folks that got told to take it elsewhere, and they wind up talking about... ANYthing. I guess some people will interpret "OT" that way, but I just expected "suse-ot" to still at least be *tangentially* related to... SuSE! What a concept!
So you bring up a meta-off-topic thread here.
It seems that there is NO place for the discussions I want to have, and I think this is a disservice to the SuSE community. The Red Hat lists were fantastic. Many Red Hat people were active, and many more trolled. I see ckm all the time here, but he's apparently the SuSE liason for the list, because he's the only one (who at least posts from a suse.com account).
I run lists.suse.com but there are other SuSE people here as well (time permitting).
I wish this list would grow up. It's a high-volume list. What's the harm in having a few more messages if someone wants to talk about Red Hat or Microsoft? But, no. Within a few posts, everyone is told to take it to the OT list.
Because of the SCO noise (yes, it was noise) long-time contributors to this list were leaving or thinking about leaving in droves. I'd rather have one Anders Johansson than 500 subscribers who want to talk about SCO or the latest MS skulduggery.
Unfortunately, the discussions of these sorts of topics on that list were of little value because no one espoused a different point of view. It was just cheering for the home team. There's also an inordinate amount of chatter that boils down to reposts of Slashdot and memepool. Unfortunately, my request to keep *that* list at least related to Linux, if not SuSE, was met with flames.
I think, after four months, it's clear from the fact that only about 100 people have subscribed to suse-ot (many from suse-linux) that people generally aren't interested in these off-topic discussions. In any case, the list is there and it's what you make it.
So what's the bottom line here? Are the self-appointed moderators on this list telling me to talk about SuSE's strategy and positioning over on the Debian and Red Hat lists? Because there sure doesn't seem to be a worthwhile venue being offered by suse.com.
All of our lists with the exception of suse-ot, and this is clearly stated when you subscribe, are for technical discussions. As I wrote in the FAQ there are plenty of other places more suitable for these sorts of non-technical discussions, please go use them.
Either some people need to "get over it" on this list, or we need, simply, ot@suse.com, and to split non-Linux traffic from the suse-ot list.
Yes, you do need to get over it--off-topic discussions are not welcome here and hopefully the 'self-appointed' moderators as you call them will continue to do the great service that they have been. followup-to set appropriately, -- -ckm