On Thu, 2006-01-26 at 06:36 -0600, Glenn Holmer wrote:
On Wednesday 25 January 2006 08:25, Sonja Krause-Harder wrote:
The first question is: do we need/want an official openSUSE web forum? Why?
No:
Unnecessary waste of energy that could be used elsewhere.
As a non-technical user I'll add my voice in agreement here. Why moderate another forum? This one must take up enough of Suse staffs' time. So I vote "NON" too (echoing De Gaulle there, eh? Which would mean something to Europeans of a certain age...)
Adds confusion (and just when we've decided to have only one same version of SUSE...).
Not necessarily, but the point about two different audiences is perhaps valid, but not as important as the first point.
Re. "mailing lists are too hard to use", people who can't follow simple instructions to join (send an e-mail to... to subscribe, send an e-mail to... to unsubscribe) probably won't be helped by the message content in any case.
Well, I found my way to the list ... but still often find the help too technical anyway! But resources would be better spent doing some really helpful idiot tips over stupid things that one doesn't find in the usual manuals that fox newbies, those odd gaps, that tekkies have subsumed into an instinctive level they don't think about in their assumptions. Information storage and retrieval is important too - Email lists thread nicely - I've not seen a web list that does. Only thing I've ever seen with decent threading is Cix's web based conferencing system, which grew out of an old BBS since the early 80s. Might be worth a look at that for an inspiration ... but what does that provide that a mailing list won't, apart from access on the move for people away from their message base? In cix's case the off line reader threading and the web prescence are simply interchangeable, and it works well for differing needs. Now web access to list stuff may be a useful facility to have for people who could use it away from base, but that could be done using a different and less intensive method, surely?? He asks the technical ...!
Also: tradition! www is not the whole internet, even if we no longer use gopher :)
Indeed, point taken. I've been "on the net" since the err 70s. Just because one is a shallow user doesn't mean to say that one hasn't been using the technology as a tool and communications system for a lifetime - just not needed to/have time to delve into the inner workings in the way that professional IT people simply have to as their core knowledge. I think it is important that the less resource consuming older layers of the systems continue to be used.