Hi, On Mon, 30 Jan 2006, harryc wrote:
To the list, you're correct in assuming that many forums want to remain autonomous,
I guess all of them. None of them should change in their essence just because SUSE/Novell starts to recognize them.
but that doesn't mean that we can't communicate more effectively as a community.
This is the point: let's try to make the "inter forum" communication better. But maybe the best way would be that each moderator reads all the forums - an incredible time consuming task.
It's hard to let go of so many hard years work. It literally takes two to three years to build up a successful forum, and that is assuming that you have competent Mods and Admins from day one (which we do). Don't let this discourage you from reaching out, and the reverse applies.
Harry, SUSE/Novell has to find a way to "bind" you and your moderator fellows (loosely, but bind) to their "community building" efforts - everyone (even "they") has seen now that the community already was there when they started to invent it, so the task now is not "designing", but "glueing". This needs a deep level of understanding between individuals, so the task is harder then just to "design" something, but the goal is bigger than thought: SUSE/Novell simply has to find a way of "coordinating the moderators", because the community is already present and active and organized. I guess SUSE/Novell is steering right currently. Let's see. Cheers -e -- Eberhard Moenkeberg (emoenke@gwdg.de, em@kki.org)