On Sat, Apr 2, 2011 at 2:02 PM, Kostas Koudaras <warlordfff@gmail.com> wrote:
What I am going to say have much love inside them because you know you are all my friends. We have ambassadors in 47 countries which means that we have users of openSUSE at 47 countries at least so making 47 different local mailing lists would be great,if those ML's had traffic If they don't those are practically useless.
Now I will tell you what I made so that you see some things a bit more clear. I asked a local mailing list when I thought I could work with it. I asked a second one about translation when it became clear we needed one. The first question is if you really need one. By need I mean post there almost daily and have members communicate and help each other and inform people. Having a ML just to have 2-3 mails per month and in a language that you can do it in another ML, the way I see it, and think about it, might cause some problems to the local community you are making the list to support.Consider that you must have people to support all levels of users(at least most of them).
Also think about all that confusing things Bryen said ;-) and how many local ML can confuse users.
Having many lists make the Global community lose important feedback and honestly that is the reason we tell Greek people if they have a problem they can explain in English, write at opensuse-project and not in opensuse-el since others users can benefit in various ways with answers they will get.
Now about what Chuck said about a local event,I think that even if you had an opensuse-USA list, states are so big that this problem would not be solved. Also don't underestimate the help a Greek or a French or a Belorussian can give you in a local event in the states,more ideas are never bad. No one tells you how to run things, bottom line you always do what you want,but having more ideas if you have a well-structured way of thinking can never be harmful. I am not against local ML, on the contrary I am a big supporter but only if think it can really change things to the better and only if you really think that the existing lists don't serve you they desirable way. Bottom line on that, if you think a ML can help your local communities go for it but have in mind that it can also weaken a local community if it does not work well, I know a couple of examples. I would suggest to start where we started and that is an IRC channel, announce it on the project ML and then talk with people there if you really need a ML. If you all agree to that go for it.
That is my opinion and I certainly don't want to play the smart-ass here :-) Think about it
Kostas
You know Kostas, for someone who talks a lot, you actually talk a lot of sense. You raise some very similar points to those mentioned by Henne and Bryen but the way you express it is very persuasive. So to find a better approach I had a look on the Communication page http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Communication_channels and it seems the best thing to do is ask people to sign up to the Project list "opensuse-project@opensuse.org - The mailing list where non-technical aspects of the openSUSE distribution and community are discussed. Join us! " and to include Australia in the subject line. People can then filter out those messages if we are making too much noise. hopefully this will be a satisfactory solution. cheers, Helen -- IRC: helen_au helen.south@opensuse.org helensouth.com -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-marketing+help@opensuse.org