Richard Brown composed on 2017-10-29 16:31 (UTC+0100):
If you think that opensuse@opensuse.org represents the 'community at large' you are sorely, sorely, painfully, dismally, mistaken.
At large, maybe not. But, IMO it must have some unique characteristics...
Let's ignore the fact that, ultimately, feedback only functions when contributors act on them, and the number of heavily active contributors on this list can probably be counted on both of my hands. Let's also ignore the fact that despite worldwide openSUSE events with attendances numbering in the hundreds, and openSUSE presences at other FOSS events with attendances numbering in the thousands, the number of opensuse@ subscribers I've met face to face can be counted on one hand.
Let's just look at some cold, hard, numbers
We know that this list has 1242 subscribers
This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list - 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community - 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+ - 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums - 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter
In the grand scheme of things, this mailinglist, at best, represents a small fraction of the community.
But, a special fraction. The mailing list and the forums predate all others. I for one am not a part of any of those social media groups. My participation in the openSUSE forums is sporadic, usually only reached indirectly via Google to proffer help or passively utilize its help, not to directly seek help or for general discussion or news. Inertia among other things keeps people keeping on doing what they've been doing where they've been doing it. Thus, the forums, and probably more so this group, is comprised heavily of more senior (aka wiser) members of the Gnu, SuSE and/or openSUSE communities, and so has a tendency to provide more enlightened if less restrained user feedback.
When the feedback for something is overwhelmingly positive from most quarters, it's not unusual for this list to be full of angry critique or negativity.
Senior participants grated by recurring, unrelated, or longstanding problems, if not real, from an illusion of reality.
When the feedback for something is overwhelmingly negative from most quarters, leading to the Project making serious changes as a result, it is not unusual for this list to be full of angry critique or negativity fighting for things to stay as they are.
Right, from fixing what ain't obviously broke by replacing with scratch rewrites, whole new paradigms, and their attendant new bugs and feature losses. New does not equate to improved. New does often equate to unlearning ingrained processes impeding learning unappreciated new. Perceived negativity can be a result of attitude, looking for opportunity to be offended, and complain, rather than being mindful that freedom to speak necessarily includes opportunity to be misinterpreted or receive a message opposing one's own beliefs or understanding. I'm not aware of any political system that includes any right to not be offended. Any that might exist would depend on attendant moderation, aka censorship, and the stifling of much effective communication.
There is no way, at all, this list can be fairly described as representative of the community 'at large'. Period.
It does bring it's own unique perspective. My openSUSE experience would definitely suffer without it. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org