On Wed, 25 May 2022 22:13:36 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
It is however a pity when this causes a fragmentation of communication, because that is also a fragmentation of the community. We have long had enough of that. (e.g. forums / mailing lists).
There are really two schools of thought about that - one is that you go where the users are, the other is that you require the users come to you. The latter used to work really well, but now with the proliferation of non-affiliated sites like stackoverflow, communities (and sub- communities) can self-organize wherever they want to. The onus is now less on the people in those communities to go to the 'official' venues; it's more now on the 'sponsor' (not quite the right word, but it'll suffice) to be aware of those venues and to incorporate them into their community plan (or not, and to just let those unofficial places organically grow). On the Facebook group, for example, we strongly encourage difficult/ complex technical questions go to the forums, where threading is easier to follow and there is more technical expertise. If it's a development- related question, we direct them to bugzilla and the MLs. But I'm always surprised at how many people insist "no, I asked here, don't send me somewhere else, just answer my question" - even when the expertise in the FB group just doesn't exist. Unfortunately, I don't see this trend reversing itself. Either we go where the users are, or we just don't talk to them until our community platforms entice them to come over to the 'official' spaces, and there's a lot of inertia to overcome in order for that to happen. -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits