Dear list, after having read all those "why I wont use the forums" posts, to which I certainly contributed my share with my "venomous" post I got fed up with it and am somehow wondering how to improve that since we all should be supposed to pull on the same string. So, can we just cut that right now and here and instead find out some way how to make those forums more attractive for the people who are currently not using them and OTOH making forum users create more productive bug reports since "reporting by proxy" is NO option IMHO? Regarding the problem: I think it has been established by now that those forums are considered some swamp that makes it very hard to find out some interesting topic one would like to get involved in (may it be because one is interested in the topic or one maintains a package that is related to it). Which is why most people apparently simply don't bother with said forums. OTOH you, the forum admins, have been asked quite some times to introduce some subtopics targeting more specific needs. So could you please reconsider your stance and admit that it will be easier to find "interesting" topics one might be inclined to get involved in if one doesn't have to wade through loads of other stuff? Your, the forum admins`, answer was mostly that said subtopics are already covered by their parent ones (e.g. applications for servers and security). OTOH you happily run some "64-bit" subforum which makes no sense IMHO since this nowadays boils down to having to install the necessary 32-bit compat libs for some binary blobs (e.g. skype). So, to make it short: Can you, the forum admins, please agree that introducing some subforums for specific topics makes it much easier to find "interesting" posts for the "contributor" / "dev" so those would be more inclined to get involved and can we please get some list together of "interesting" topics so those get realized? Point simply being adding some subforum doesn't cost a single $ but makes it much easier to find - personally - "interesting" topics so one gets more inclined to get involved. From my personal POV I would be delighted to see: 1. a "security" one for stuff like apparmor, selinux, ssl with certificates, general server hardening and so on 2. a "server" one for stuff like apache, php, samba, XEN, KVM, general virtualization and so on. Please add some topics you (the "currently not using the forums dude") would like to see so you could more easily identify the topics you are interested in so you might be even more inclined to participate in that forums. Last but not least I'm seriously wondering on those "reporting in bugzilla for forum users" discussion. So could you, the forum admins and users, please make it plain clear to your fellow users that: 1. To report something broken there is only ONE place and that is http://bugzilla.novell.com/ 2. If you (the random user) don't like the interface then welcome to the club but until someone writes a new one this wont change. 3. Reporting a bug as a proxy is plain useless since you (the proxy reporter) will never be able to answer any follow up questions. And here comes the most important one: 4. You need NO knowledge to report a bug but are simply supposed to explain as best as you can what you did to produce that bug. Then the devs will simply ask what you did, if it isn't clear, and tell you what information they need to fix it. If you don't know how to provide that info then simply ASK. Every single dev I know is perfectly happy to tell you how to provide the requested information so really all that is required from you is to create a bugreport, do the best you can and then simply be receptive. Ok, that got quite lengthy, sorry for that and thanks for sticking with me. Please keep it productive. regards, Stephan. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org