On Tue, 22 Jun 2010 10:40:48 +0200, Karsten König wrote:
Btw quickly skimming over a few threads I wonder what makes people start to help out there, what got you started to helping people that lack proper manners and to the abbility find basic information?
For me, I started because I recognised that the way for people to learn enough to contribute in more concrete ways (such as documenting things, filing bug reports, and up to code contributions) is that they need to start somewhere. The forums existed and I had previous experience in the Novell forums (going back to the early 90's), so I knew what to expect. I think something that Stephan (and perhaps others) is missing is that if you want to add contributors, many people aren't prepared to just jump into the deep end, you have to cultivate from the user base. And a large portion of that user base comes from the forums. It's not the only place people come to the project from, of course, but I do hate to think what the MLs would look like if 40,000+ people started posting to them - the S/N ratio would be unbearable. But in running the forums, those of us who do so also recognise that the structure isn't going to be 100% perfect for everyone. If we were to structure exactly like Stephan suggested (following linux-club.de), someone else would be unhappy and say that it's not optimal. I would simply refer those people back to the guiding principle that says that we respect that people work in different ways and have their own preferred tools. Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org