On 16/07/17 18:32, Lew Wolfgang wrote:
IMHO Richard has a point, possibly poorly made. This list, with a mission of offering support to both new-bees and gray-beards, really doesn't need nastiness and flame wars. Heated theoretical discussions about the UNIX Philosophy, while interesting, probably aren't what a new-comer wants to hear. Someone offered the suggestion of creating a new mailing list, maybe entitled systemd-design, or something. Couldn't Per do that in a few seconds?
But would all the systemd advocates/detractors go there? My experience on a list was that when they tried to push "off topic" stuff to different it didn't work. It just killed the off-topic traffic stone dead, and the result is now a "dull as ditchwater" technical list :-(
It's a hard problem to solve.
Also, I have some experience working within a volunteer organization. I've learned it remarkably difficult to channel volunteers to do what they don't want. Pushing a string comes to mind. Volunteer's energies and morale are better lead by encouragement and example. Threats of any kind just trigger a stampede for the exits. I hope no one abandons us, just when I started to make the case for a new group of technical people to dump Windows and join us.
And who says a stampede for the exits is a bad thing? I haven't read any of the systemd thread but it does seem to have gone rather rogue :-) and maybe we don't want the participants here ... (there is plenty of evidence that activists search out threads, and will join the group/list/forum specifically to participate :-(
And from this particular thread, I get the very strong impression that people are complaining that Richard is doing his job ...
If this is a technical support group, then I would much rather that the systemd advocates/detractors are driven off (because they don't belong here), than that the list is closed. If the openSUSE people have set this up as a support forum, then it's their right to tell abusers of the forum to "bugger off".
It seems to be the elephant in the room that anybody who wishes to provide a support service to the public is expected to put up with any kook/weirdo/nutter who wishes to abuse said service to their own ends :-(
Cheers, Wol