On 10/06/18 19:28, George from the tribe wrote:
On 05/28/2018 07:51 PM, Simon Lees wrote:
The board has decided that it would like to see how well these changes work before deciding to add / remove / change openSUSE's mailing lists further. Although we have discussed several other possibilities that we could also try in the future.
Just think I will chime in here. In reading many of the responses, so many people have good things to say about this. Of course I respect the board for wanting to improve things, but I will just offer my opinion FWIW.
First, as an opensuse user with a very busy life, one thing that I find very helpful about this list is that it is general in nature. I can read posts and threads that have to do with general security, some international business related item that connects to the use of linux, or a highly technical thread about how to re-configure a graphics card. The reason it is so helpful like that is that this list is primarily a bunch of users just getting together and helping each other in any way we can. I really like the sense of community that this list generates, and that is completely dependent on its general nature.
As far as the abuse and rants go, here is my take. I have been "yelled" at, cussed at, and told (indirectly) that I basically didn't have a clue about what I was doing. I have also been thanked profusely when I have offered a helpful hint. None of those things bother me. Of course I don't want to make a mistake, but if I do, I am happy that someone is willing to point it out, even if in a somewhat stronger way than I am comfortable with.
What do all those things mean? It means we are a group of human beings, imperfect, all trying to make something work better and trying to help each other in our imperfect ways. Sometimes someone may have a bad day and post something more negative than he/she would normally post. I think we should just remember that we are all fellow human beings trying to make this work, and don't want to be subject to an organization that forces some kind of centralized control, like Microsoft. In any human community there will be strong and weak feelings, experts and novices, and everything else that encompasses interactive human behavior.
So even with the all the difficulties, I have always felt that this list functions well, in exactly the way it was designed. A general mailing list that promotes the development of a community of users, and these users help each other.
My first look for keeping up with opensuse, especially when I am very busy with other things, is to check this list. A lot of times I don't have time to go and look at multiple forums or multiple other lists. But I try not to miss keeping up with this list.
Anyway, I hope that adds some value to the discussion.
The counter to this at least in the feedback the board has received is that many people willing to offer support don't like having to filter through the "Noise" of the general mails in this list then eventually unsubscribe and no longer offer help. Which is why we have split the list, after all its not hard to subscribe to a second list and this gives users more choice in what emails they receive. -- 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