I contacted Damian at SUSE root, one of the best known sites out there for unofficial SUSE support and information. The following is his reply to my asking for his input. On Friday 27 January 2006 15:35, you wrote:

Hi Joseph, Thanks for taking the time to ask my opinion about this.

I personally hate mailing lists, the only one I subscribe to is my local LUG and I only read it, never post. Of course, I know there are plenty of people who despise Forums, and greatly prefer mailing lists. Having said that, I do not think there should be an "Official" openSUSE Forum. I think it's too bad that there are two very popular unofficial SUSE forums because it is divisive to the community, and I personally don't see enough difference between them to make it worth splitting up the resources (kind, patient, and knowledgeable people who don't mind fielding questions from new SUSE users are in short supply), but they are both good forums and serve their purposes and the community well.

I read the notes from the mailing list discussion on this topic you linked to and I think they are all good points. However, the most persuasive for me is Pascal's "legal gray zone" argument about some things not needing to be on Official Novell virtual web space, but being valuable discussions, nonetheless. Additionally, just because Novell "Sponsors" the openSUSE project, it is still a community project; Novell doesn't need to put an Official "stamp" on everything in the community. As much as us "little people" appreciate Novell and SUSE's fantastic work and support, I think many can agree that the whole community doesn't need to be under the thumb of any company. I think it's best to find a balance between corporate and independent involvement in this case. These two forums have spent a lot of time on their respective sites and have a lot of experience running their forums, let them continue to do it. Maybe there's a hack to have the mailing list posts piped into a closed section of the forums, RSS-style, to keep the forums abreast of the lists.

I'm sure there are plenty of people who are members of SUSEForums.net, SUSELinuxSupport.de, and the openSUSE mailing lists who enjoy having each. I wonder if it would be possible to find a representative who is willing to keep an eye out for the Forum threads mentioned by Houghi where potential bugs/problems may be found and discussed on the forums, but never make it to the mailing lists. Perhaps the owners of the two forums would be willing to make such a representative a moderator so they can have a little control over such topics.

Again, I think my suggestion is less than ideal because there are two popular "competing" forums. I maintain some hope that they will combine again at some point and would encourage any efforts to that end, but from what I've read from their respective leadership, this seems unlikely.

Anyway, for what it's worth, that's my opinion. Feel free to do whatever you want with this email, post it to the list, summarize it, disregard it.

Thanks again!

-Damian

Joseph M. Gaffney aka CuCullin