Hi all, after all the eMails about "Community" and what this could be, this list and how to handle technical questens and to ask for some kind of moderations, I just want to give you my point of view of it. first at all: Who I am: My name is thomas, living in berlin, germany. I'm on this list from the beginning, right after opensuse.org was online. my knowledge about linux was not so deep, so I've had to learn a lot of technical things about it. I've started with SuSE 9.3 a few weeks before the first beta of openSUSE 10.0 find its way to us. but after learning a lot I have a few PCs here for my work where SL10 and SL10.1 is running, and we have only two more PCs where still windows is working - so linux "is in the office", and I don't think is will be replaced again by windows anymore. this list and the "community": I think we all have read enauph about the pro's and contras about this list. if so, the last two questions are: 1 - do we need a "special" list for the community ? 2 - how to handle technical questions in this list ? the answers: to question 1: yes, we need. OK, when you like to, you can break down every aspect of a community to the technical stuff it depends on. but there is a lot of stuff that needs to be diskussed before it will result into a technical answer. for example the question about the LiveDVD that come up this week. how should a LiveDVD looks like ? should there be a procedure to install the system from the LiveDVD, or should there only a hint of installing the system via internet by booting a minimal netwirk install ? this is not a technical diskussion, even it will result into it. at this point the community has a diskussion about the need of a LiveDVD with an install-entry, and not the diskussion about how the install routine could be looks like. so the right list to talk about it is this list, not the technical list. and when you look back in your inbox, you can find a lot of thinks, that may result into a technical part, but it all starts with a talk between members of the community, right ? and even this diskussion about the list, the community etc is not a technical talk, even it can / will result into some technical part ( some examples: a better handle of the subsribe function, maybe putting this list into a moderated list etc). and if you just lift your eyes, and have a look at upcoming parts of the openSUSE distros, you can see a lot of things that need to be discussed that are not part of technical, but more part of a sort of 'political' point of view. so, there is indeed a ned for a list for the community. to question 2: I think there are some ways to handle technical questions better than the way it is currendly handled. when we just have a look at the technical questens about the last weeks, we will find a lot of things that are answered on the the technical list more then one time. the problem is: how can someone find the answers when he is new on the list ? the archiv - that will be the first answer. but even the archiv is not realy helpfull, because it shows only the subjects, and the only way to look for an answer is by using the "find"-function of the web-browser and looking for a pice of word the question depends on. you have to do that a lot of times, because you have to open every month of the archiv one after one. and when the answer to the question isn't bind to the subject of an eMail, it could not be find. I've had that situation myself a lot of times, and the only way to find answers was to read every thread that looks like it could be the right one ( but that was often not the way ). so, to start with a better help for "newsbees": the archiv needs a function to search it. the function should not only look into the subjects of the eMail, but also into the body. so if someone has trouble with is WLAN on this centrino-based notebook for example, he just need to search for 'wlan', maybe with a 'AND centrino' and he yould find some pice of answers even if he is not on the list. the next step to handle technical stuff on this list depends on this search-function: we could answer the question with a template text that points to the technical list, but it could also include a link to the search function that already includes one ore more keywords to search for, so if the link will be opend, it will automaticly starts to search with the right keywords to find the already given answers. inserting the keywords into that link will not do mutch more work then inserting the template text itself. and if we havae the time to compose these templatebased eMail, maybe we could also insert a few links to some answers in the archiv, not only to the serach. but that will be already the next step to compose better hints for someone who is asking technical stuff on this list. so far: as we are on the community list: what does the community think about it ? did you see the point where "community stuff" ends and where "technical stuff" starts ? ;) I hope so ! this list did not need to be closed. it just needs to be handled on a better way. best regards, JBScout aka Thomy --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-help@opensuse.org