Simon Lees wrote:
For the English language users/support lists, they were only split about two years ago, whereas the single 'users' list worked flawlessly some eighteen years prior to that. Also, by looking at the traffic on 'support', there appears to be more user chat than support.
'flawlessly' is a matter of opinion, the board received many many complaints about the list in that time
Hi Simon, I certainly agree it is a matter of opinion, my own coming from having been a list member for that long. I think that eighteen years is a long time for a dysfunctional mailing list.
My point was rather than the other language-specific lists do not have an issue with combining users and support, so maybe the English language groups ought to revert to that scheme too.
My opinion here is that the volume on the english list maybe makes it special compared to most of the other language lists.
Agree, there is no doubt the volume of traffic is a lot higher, but I don't know how that should make it special. Why do you think so? I think a high-volume list is a good sign, a sign of a community that is alive and kicking.
Maybe it would be less confusing if we had a "Support" and "Discussion" list.
If I may suggest - the reason "discussion" will occasionally become more prevalent is simply that "support" is not forthcoming. The English-language 'users.list' is a list with a large number of members, presumably most better qualified for offering discussion than support. That cannot be helped, at least I don't know how.
I believe having a well functioning support list is vital to the project,
Agree. The issue is, as Felix and others have pointed out, that we appear to have some confusion about which list is good for that.
if we were to merge the lists then we would need moderate the solresulting list reasonably heavily to ensure it stays as a functional support platform that keeps all the people willing to provide support happy.
Why is that ? We don't need moderation, we need qualified people who can support others, that is all. Simon, as your stance does not seem to correspond well to the current Board position, I assume you are speaking as a community member ?
I think there are many people on the users list who would be rather unhappy with that solution however, we fundamentally have 2 different groups of people who want and expect two very different things and i'm not sure how we can resolve that into 1 list
For eighteen years it worked quite well. I do not think that splitting our user community has improved on that. I'll repeat from my earlier post: I think the real question to ask - to see if re-merging is warranted - is if the new support list has achieved its declared purpose. Surely the advocates from back then can answer that question. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (5.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes