[opensuse-project] mailing lists: users vs. support
On both Users[1] and Heroes[2] I presented the following: "What exactly is the difference between a "users" list and a "support" list? What subject(s) are common from "users" that don't constitute the subject of either another list, or support? The existence of both where many exist creates confusion. The changeover of list servers should have consolidated the two." After minimal list response, I forwarded same email to the Board. One board member responded that it discussed the matter, and: "Currently the board's opinion is that at first the community should discuss and if they come to a conclusion, the board can take care for the necessary steps if appropriate." This email constitutes an attempt to start such a discussion. In my non-scientific view: 1-There are too many opensuse lists 2-The users list has been acquiring more support posts than the support list. IMO, having both a support list and a users list has served only to create more unneeded division in an environment where mailing lists are seeing dwindling usage overall. Support doesn't seem to have enough helpers that answers to the vast majority of answerable help requests can be expected. [1] https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/users@lists.opensuse.org/message/ZI... [2] https://lists.opensuse.org/archives/list/heroes@lists.opensuse.org/message/Z... -- Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion, is based on faith, not on science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
Felix Miata wrote:
IMO, having both a support list and a users list has served only to create more unneeded division in an environment where mailing lists are seeing dwindling usage overall. Support doesn't seem to have enough helpers that answers to the vast majority of answerable help requests can be expected.
I second that and I second your suggestion to merge the two lists into 'users'. Remarkably, our language specific lists manage quite well to keep users and support on one list (per language). -- Per Jessen, Zürich (2.6°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
Am Samstag, 19. Dezember 2020, 12:23:24 CET schrieb Per Jessen:
Felix Miata wrote:
IMO, having both a support list and a users list has served only to create more unneeded division in an environment where mailing lists are seeing dwindling usage overall. Support doesn't seem to have enough helpers that answers to the vast majority of answerable help requests can be expected.
I second that and I second your suggestion to merge the two lists into 'users'. Remarkably, our language specific lists manage quite well to keep users and support on one list (per language).
I see it the other way round: 'support' serves a clear purpose, while 'user' can be anything, including off-topic gossip. But as we have openSUSE Users (日本語), openSUSE Users (Español), openSUSE Users (Deutsch) plus a bunch of inactive language specific groups, it would be consistent to call it openSUSE Users (English) and adjust the description to 'Support and Discussion for English speaking openSUSE Users' (or something like that) My 2c Axel
Axel Braun wrote:
Am Samstag, 19. Dezember 2020, 12:23:24 CET schrieb Per Jessen:
Felix Miata wrote:
IMO, having both a support list and a users list has served only to create more unneeded division in an environment where mailing lists are seeing dwindling usage overall. Support doesn't seem to have enough helpers that answers to the vast majority of answerable help requests can be expected.
I second that and I second your suggestion to merge the two lists into 'users'. Remarkably, our language specific lists manage quite well to keep users and support on one list (per language).
I see it the other way round: 'support' serves a clear purpose, while 'user' can be anything, including off-topic gossip.
That more or less goes for every single one of our lists with public participation. Axel, what do you consider the purpose of "users-el" to be? 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. 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. Putting on my "TW users" cap, I get no better support on 'support' than anywhere else.
But as we have openSUSE Users (日本語), openSUSE Users (Español), openSUSE Users (Deutsch) plus a bunch of inactive language specific groups, it would be consistent to call it openSUSE Users (English) and adjust the description to 'Support and Discussion for English speaking openSUSE Users' (or something like that)
Renaming will never achieve anything. 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. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (2.4°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 12/20/20 5:06 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Axel Braun wrote:
Am Samstag, 19. Dezember 2020, 12:23:24 CET schrieb Per Jessen:
Felix Miata wrote:
IMO, having both a support list and a users list has served only to create more unneeded division in an environment where mailing lists are seeing dwindling usage overall. Support doesn't seem to have enough helpers that answers to the vast majority of answerable help requests can be expected.
I second that and I second your suggestion to merge the two lists into 'users'. Remarkably, our language specific lists manage quite well to keep users and support on one list (per language).
I see it the other way round: 'support' serves a clear purpose, while 'user' can be anything, including off-topic gossip.
That more or less goes for every single one of our lists with public participation. Axel, what do you consider the purpose of "users-el" to be?
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 and tried several times to get the list to stay more as a support list but this was obviously rejected by the users of the list as is evident by the continued behavior. The most common complaint is that simple support questions would go off on a "tangent" of stories and semi related information which often resulted in threads ending up at 20-30 posts rather then the 3 it should have been. Many people who wanted to offer support simply got sick of the volume of mails between issues like this and posts that weren't really support questions.
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.
Putting on my "TW users" cap, I get no better support on 'support' than anywhere else.
But as we have openSUSE Users (日本語), openSUSE Users (Español), openSUSE Users (Deutsch) plus a bunch of inactive language specific groups, it would be consistent to call it openSUSE Users (English) and adjust the description to 'Support and Discussion for English speaking openSUSE Users' (or something like that)
Renaming will never achieve anything.
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. Maybe it would be less confusing if we had a "Support" and "Discussion" list. I believe having a well functioning support list is vital to the project, if we were to merge the lists then we would need moderate the solresulting list reasonably heavily to ensure it staysas a functional support platform that keeps all the people willing to provide support happy. 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 but maybe a "Support" and "Discussion" list would be clearer and would help the process. (Feel free to suggest a better name for "Discussion"). -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
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
Per Jessen composed on 2020-12-20 20:45 (UTC+0100):
If I may suggest - the reason "discussion" will occasionally become more prevalent is simply that "support" is not forthcoming. +1 -- Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion, is based on faith, not on science.
Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
On 20/12/2020 20.45, Per Jessen wrote:
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 have been subscribed since January 2002 or earlier. The list had 40000 messages a year back then (compared to 12000 on 2019). That includes a lot of noise, methinks, not every post can be strictly on topic and supportive. But the thing is, with so much activity, someone finds the tidbit that finally helps the OP. Problem is, IMHO, that the list has to compete with other resources that are more popular, like a webforum - and that doesn't mean the list is doing anything wrong. Only that there are fewer people and that the person that knows the answer doesn't participate "here". Besides... I suspect that the second mail list has fewer subscribers, so posting there has the actual risk of not getting "support". To me, the support mail list only serves a purpose if the people capable of giving support read and write there. And I'm thinking specifically of the developers and maintainers.
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.
-- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)
Am So, 20. Dez, 2020 um 9:36 P. M. schrieb Carlos E. R.
On 20/12/2020 20.45, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
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 have been subscribed since January 2002 or earlier. The list had 40000 messages a year back then (compared to 12000 on 2019). That includes a lot of noise, methinks, not every post can be strictly on topic and supportive. But the thing is, with so much activity, someone finds the tidbit that finally helps the OP.
Probably also worth noting there were less mailing lists in general, so it's not like you could redirect anybody that wanted to discuss anything else anywhere else, because there wasn't any other place to go. I had an opportunity to go through A LOT of archives as part of migration, and I have to say I am impressed people didn't go on wild tangents nearly as often as users list manages to do nowadays, and we have an offtopic list now, so that really shouldn't be a problem people manage to notice ;)
LCP [Stasiek] https://lcp.world
On 20/12/2020 21.45, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
Am So, 20. Dez, 2020 um 9:36 P. M. schrieb Carlos E. R. <>:
On 20/12/2020 20.45, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
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 have been subscribed since January 2002 or earlier. The list had 40000 messages a year back then (compared to 12000 on 2019). That includes a lot of noise, methinks, not every post can be strictly on topic and supportive. But the thing is, with so much activity, someone finds the tidbit that finally helps the OP.
Probably also worth noting there were less mailing lists in general, so it's not like you could redirect anybody that wanted to discuss anything else anywhere else, because there wasn't any other place to go. I had an opportunity to go through A LOT of archives as part of migration, and I have to say I am impressed people didn't go on wild tangents nearly as often as users list manages to do nowadays, and we have an offtopic list now, so that really shouldn't be a problem people manage to notice ;)
Maybe many of us have /known/ each other for years and conversations strike easily ;-) I remember that there were some SuSE maintainers back then that with 40000 messages a year were capable of noticing and participate (fast) in a thread about whatever they maintained (posting an exact solution), and keep silent on almost everything else. Maybe they had a filter on some keywords alerting them. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 12/21/20 7:49 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 20/12/2020 21.45, Stasiek Michalski wrote:
Am So, 20. Dez, 2020 um 9:36 P. M. schrieb Carlos E. R. <>:
On 20/12/2020 20.45, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
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 have been subscribed since January 2002 or earlier. The list had 40000 messages a year back then (compared to 12000 on 2019). That includes a lot of noise, methinks, not every post can be strictly on topic and supportive. But the thing is, with so much activity, someone finds the tidbit that finally helps the OP.
Probably also worth noting there were less mailing lists in general, so it's not like you could redirect anybody that wanted to discuss anything else anywhere else, because there wasn't any other place to go. I had an opportunity to go through A LOT of archives as part of migration, and I have to say I am impressed people didn't go on wild tangents nearly as often as users list manages to do nowadays, and we have an offtopic list now, so that really shouldn't be a problem people manage to notice ;)
Maybe many of us have /known/ each other for years and conversations strike easily ;-)
This is exactly why we didn't kill the opensuse@ list when we created the support@ list. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Stasiek Michalski wrote:
I had an opportunity to go through A LOT of archives as part of migration, and I have to say I am impressed people didn't go on wild tangents nearly as often as users list manages to do nowadays, and we have an offtopic list now,
What "now" ? The offtopic list has existed since 2006. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (9.1°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 20/12/2020 20.45, Per Jessen wrote:
[big snip] For eighteen years it worked quite well. I do not think that splitting our user community has improved on that.
I have been subscribed since January 2002 or earlier. The list had 40000 messages a year back then (compared to 12000 on 2019). That includes a lot of noise, methinks, not every post can be strictly on topic and supportive. But the thing is, with so much activity, someone finds the tidbit that finally helps the OP.
Problem is, IMHO, that the list has to compete with other resources that are more popular, like a webforum - and that doesn't mean the list is doing anything wrong. Only that there are fewer people and that the person that knows the answer doesn't participate "here".
That is a very interesting point and clearly an argument for merging 'support' back into 'users'. Also, I know we are all pre-occupied with C-things, but I have yet to hear a single user voice saying "please don't".
To me, the support mail list only serves a purpose if the people capable of giving support read and write there. And I'm thinking specifically of the developers and maintainers.
+1 -- Per Jessen, Zürich (8.7°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
On 12/23/20 7:12 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Carlos E. R. wrote:
On 20/12/2020 20.45, Per Jessen wrote:
[big snip] For eighteen years it worked quite well. I do not think that splitting our user community has improved on that.
I have been subscribed since January 2002 or earlier. The list had 40000 messages a year back then (compared to 12000 on 2019). That includes a lot of noise, methinks, not every post can be strictly on topic and supportive. But the thing is, with so much activity, someone finds the tidbit that finally helps the OP.
Problem is, IMHO, that the list has to compete with other resources that are more popular, like a webforum - and that doesn't mean the list is doing anything wrong. Only that there are fewer people and that the person that knows the answer doesn't participate "here".
That is a very interesting point and clearly an argument for merging 'support' back into 'users'.
Also, I know we are all pre-occupied with C-things, but I have yet to hear a single user voice saying "please don't".
Well allow me to be that voice for you :-) but for reference many of the people who complained need to read the factory list as a part of there regular job, Many of them are either not subscribed to this list, or don't read it closely and many of the ones that do are probably on leave and not reading there emails atm. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On 12/21/20 6:15 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
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.
I wouldn't use dysfunctional to describe the list, i'd say less fit for certain purposes then some other alternatives.
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.
The higher the volume the more time someone needs to invest into whether this post is A: A question at all B: something I can help with and if so then go through all the emails in the thread to work out if the question has been answered this last part is especially hard if the email goes off on tangents. Previous boards had a number of complaints from people who found the volume and off topic nature of the opensuse@ list meant it was impossible for them to provide support there because mostly they were spending there spare time keeping up with the list and then didn't have time to offer support. Many of the people that raised such issues have gone on to offer significant support on the new support list.
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.
Yeah a previous board ended up coming to the decision that the least worst way to do this was to create a dedicated support list to help the people only interested in providing support. Boards before I joined tried several times to solve these issues without creating an alternate list which wasn't successful.
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.
Yes this is something we should work on solving. I guess a further alternate solution could be moving the support list to be the users list and the users list to be the offtopic list but then still the name is slightly missleading, or having a users-support list and a users-discussion list.
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.
Moderation as in moderators who would keep the list on the topic of support and would place anyone who regularly takes the list away from the topic of support under moderation. This is not something I want to see because it would completely kill off the current vibe of the users list but history shows it would be the only way for that list to function as openSUSE's primary support email list.
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 am speaking as I believe the only remaining member of the board from the time when this decision was made. Who at the time strongly pushed for a new list to be created for support, But who also pushed to keep the original opensuse@ list at the same time when serious consideration was being given to close it completely. I recognise it is a valuable place for many people in the community just that it wasn't functioning well as the primary support place. At that time we had opensuse@opensuse.org and opensuse-support@opensuse.org which was probably less confusing to new people then the users and support we have currently. Obviously I have the insights behind why we did what we did then but the current board is yet to discuss this in detail and i'm unsure if we will before the new board comes into affect for next year.
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.
From the perspective that previously the board was regularly getting complaints about members of the opensuse@opensuse.org list frequently taking the list off-topic and making it hard for other to provide support and that we haven't had any complaints since (Other then 1-2 CoC violations) to me indicates that what we had when we had opensuse@opensuse.org and opensuse-support@opensuse.org was better then what we had with just one list. In the context of the other list names whether what we have now in terms of naming is good i'm less sure, especially as the new list page shows lists by volume which will probably rank users above support much of the time. With the old setup we could and did emphasize the opensuse-support list over the opensuse list so it was more obvious to new users which they should choose. -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
Simon Lees wrote:
On 12/21/20 6:15 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
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.
I wouldn't use dysfunctional to describe the list, i'd say less fit for certain purposes then some other alternatives.
Hi Simon, yeah it is of course a matter of opinion (or wording), so in my opinion, "being less fit for certain purposes" - a) goes for many of our lists b) only speaks for merging 'support' back into 'users'. A quick glance at the archives will show the 'support' list often being as offtopic as the 'users' list was criticised of being.
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.
The higher the volume the more time someone needs to invest into whether this post is A: A question at all B: something I can help with and if so then go through all the emails in the thread to work out if the question has been answered this last part is especially hard if the email goes off on tangents.
That is just life on a mailing list. When/if a thread diverges into offtopic/uninteresting tangents, you just mark those branches as read or flag them as 'ignore'.
Previous boards had a number of complaints from people who found the volume and off topic nature of the opensuse@ list meant it was impossible for them to provide support there because mostly they were spending there spare time keeping up with the list and then didn't have time to offer support. Many of the people that raised such issues have gone on to offer significant support on the new support list.
How many exactly? Only just today, I see people seeking Tumbleweed support on factory.lists, so something is clearly missing.
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.
Yeah a previous board ended up coming to the decision that the least worst way to do this was to create a dedicated support list to help the people only interested in providing support. Boards before I joined tried several times to solve these issues without creating an alternate list which wasn't successful.
Much as the current solution has also not been overly successful, in fact only causing more harm - - the community has been split - it is confusing for newcomers. - despite 'support' supposedly providing support for TW, people still turn to Factory. - the split of users and support is inconsistent with the language-specific setup.
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.
Yes this is something we should work on solving. I guess a further alternate solution could be moving the support list to be the users list and the users list to be the offtopic list but then still the name is slightly missleading, or having a users-support list and a users-discussion list.
AFAICT, the 'users' and the 'support' list both have: a) the occasional offtopic thread b) lack of TW support. (a) was always easily solved and never warranted splitting the lists, especially not in the light of that also meaning a split of the community. (b) seems to me to have remained an issue, as people still go to factory.lists. Hence, merging the two list back into one would remove confusion without causing any problems.
In the context of the other list names whether what we have now in terms of naming is good i'm less sure, especially as the new list page shows lists by volume which will probably rank users above support much of the time.
If you yourself or the Board had shown the slightest interest, I could have told you that from the beginning. Last I looked, I think the 'support' list had about a tenth the number subscribers of the 'users' list. People vote with their feet. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (10.3°C) Member, openSUSE Heroes
Per Jessen composed on 2020-12-22 21:37 (UTC+0100):
merging the two list back into one would remove confusion without causing any problems. (significant) new
:-D Hunting through archives might become a new problem, unless post-merger the support archive were merged into the new combo. -- Evolution as taught in public schools, like religion, is based on faith, not on science. Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/
On 22/12/2020 21.55, Felix Miata wrote:
Per Jessen composed on 2020-12-22 21:37 (UTC+0100):
merging the two list back into one would remove confusion without causing any problems. (significant) new
:-D
Hunting through archives might become a new problem, unless post-merger the support archive were merged into the new combo.
I intentionally archive both in the same folder specifically for facilitating searches. -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 15.1 x86_64 at Telcontar)
On 12/23/20 7:07 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
Simon Lees wrote:
On 12/21/20 6:15 AM, Per Jessen wrote:
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.
I wouldn't use dysfunctional to describe the list, i'd say less fit for certain purposes then some other alternatives.
Hi Simon,
yeah it is of course a matter of opinion (or wording), so in my opinion, "being less fit for certain purposes" -
a) goes for many of our lists b) only speaks for merging 'support' back into 'users'.
A quick glance at the archives will show the 'support' list often being as offtopic as the 'users' list was criticised of being.
Thanks for the heads up, I guess we should do a better job of staying on top of that. The constant offtopic is also something that has been off putting to new comers.
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.
The higher the volume the more time someone needs to invest into whether this post is A: A question at all B: something I can help with and if so then go through all the emails in the thread to work out if the question has been answered this last part is especially hard if the email goes off on tangents.
That is just life on a mailing list. When/if a thread diverges into offtopic/uninteresting tangents, you just mark those branches as read or flag them as 'ignore'.
Previous boards had a number of complaints from people who found the volume and off topic nature of the opensuse@ list meant it was impossible for them to provide support there because mostly they were spending there spare time keeping up with the list and then didn't have time to offer support. Many of the people that raised such issues have gone on to offer significant support on the new support list.
How many exactly? Only just today, I see people seeking Tumbleweed support on factory.lists, so something is clearly missing.
Enough that the board saw it as an issue worth addressing. I saw some bug reports and questions around development but no one asking for support.
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.
Yeah a previous board ended up coming to the decision that the least worst way to do this was to create a dedicated support list to help the people only interested in providing support. Boards before I joined tried several times to solve these issues without creating an alternate list which wasn't successful.
Much as the current solution has also not been overly successful, in fact only causing more harm -
- the community has been split
Well the community was asked to go to one place.
- it is confusing for newcomers.
Since the list changes yes, we should fix that
- despite 'support' supposedly providing support for TW, people still turn to Factory.
Yeah that was the point of my other post, we will continue to educate new people and will moderate people who should know better
- the split of users and support is inconsistent with the language-specific setup.
Yes we need to find a solution to this in the new year.
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.
Yes this is something we should work on solving. I guess a further alternate solution could be moving the support list to be the users list and the users list to be the offtopic list but then still the name is slightly missleading, or having a users-support list and a users-discussion list.
AFAICT, the 'users' and the 'support' list both have:
a) the occasional offtopic thread b) lack of TW support.
(a) was always easily solved and never warranted splitting the lists, especially not in the light of that also meaning a split of the community.
The board (before I joined) tried to solve this issue numerous times and in the end gave up and created a new list. As I said previously to solve this issue by merging lists we would need to moderate people who go regularly offtopic and I don't think thats necessarily the best pick for the users list as it will kill off much of the discussions.
(b) seems to me to have remained an issue, as people still go to factory.lists.
Which is not a long term solution either hence my other original email.
Hence, merging the two list back into one would remove confusion without causing any problems.
I guess we will have to agree to disagree then, but this will be something for the next board to sort out, we are just going around in circles now.
In the context of the other list names whether what we have now in terms of naming is good i'm less sure, especially as the new list page shows lists by volume which will probably rank users above support much of the time.
If you yourself or the Board had shown the slightest interest, I could have told you that from the beginning. Last I looked, I think the 'support' list had about a tenth the number subscribers of the 'users' list. People vote with their feet.
Given one list is many years older then the other isn't that to be expected? -- Simon Lees (Simotek) http://simotek.net Emergency Update Team keybase.io/simotek SUSE Linux Adelaide Australia, UTC+10:30 GPG Fingerprint: 5B87 DB9D 88DC F606 E489 CEC5 0922 C246 02F0 014B
On 24.12.20 00:30, Simon Lees wrote:
Enough that the board saw it as an issue worth addressing. I saw some bug reports and questions around development but no one asking for support.
Then your view of reality is different than mine. "Help, my update is stuck with this RPM %post error" is as much a support question as it is a bug report. It's both. btw: your argument that "some people have to read factory as part of their work" IMHO means "they are getting paid to read factory". But from us volunteers, who are not paid, you are expecting to subscribe to yet another mailing list? That's 100% not going to happen here :-) -- Stefan Seyfried "For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Richard Feynman
participants (8)
-
Axel Braun -
Carlos E. R. -
Carlos E. R. -
Felix Miata -
Per Jessen -
Simon Lees -
Stasiek Michalski -
Stefan Seyfried