At 02:03 AM 26/01/2006, Pascal Bleser wrote:
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Sonja Krause-Harder wrote: ...
The first question is: do we need/want an official openSUSE web forum? Why? What would you expect from it, compared to the existing SUSE community forums?
I'm not a friend of forums myself, but it seems like many people were asking for it.
The point is that I'm against the idea of an "official" openSUSE web forum.
The reasons are:
1. Don't work against the community ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As I said during the IRC meeting, if I was one of the guys investing so much of my free time to help others and moderate one of the currently existing SUSE community forums, I would be really p***ed to be left standing in the rain by Novell/SUSE.
agree, Novell MUST AGREE to support FULLTIME and LONGTERM if they want this to be worthwhile. cut
3. Don't split the expertise ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As in every Linux/FOSS/... community, there is a "kernel" of people who have more experience than most others - in this case e.g. long-time (SUSE) Linux users, developers, sysadmins, packagers, SUSE staff members, etc...
When you create more communication channels, you also split the "concentration" of such people on every single channel, because no one has the time to be active on all of them.
- From my experience, web forums are more for less experienced users, more for basic questions (installation, hardware support, "how can I play my MP3s", etc...) and mailing lists are preferred by more experienced users, mostly because they are very active on such communication channels and have witnessed that it is much more effective to work with.
so we have them primarily targetted for beginners and "silly" type questions, that shouldn't be in the current system now, with the moderators (PLUREL not singular) having the rights to move them between the Forum <> Lists
Now, that being said, if there is an "official" Novell/SUSE/openSUSE web forum and there is a very low concentration of "experts" in there, what's the point of it ?
To make it short: let's keep our communication channel as now (mailing-lists + IRC), where many experts are present, and let the community run web forums - when complex or seemingly unresolvable issues arise, they can redirect to the mailing-lists.
the only problem i ,and i think others, have with the current system is the absence of a inbuilt Search facility however, personally (as one who uses both systems) I like the current system best, I just want a search facility added so I can go back into the history when I find I need too. my 2 bits scsijon