On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 10:05 AM, Roger Price wrote:

...

See Debian [1], DNS24 [2] and openBSD [3] for succinct examples of what can be done.

The openBSD page looks so dated.... ... But to say that developers don't like something that looks nice is, I think, not accurate.

I took openBSD as an example of "information content", not for being up to date. The site Distrowatch [5] presents an informal "light-hearted" hot 100 of the GNU Linux and BSD distributions based on page hit counts on the Distrowatch site. This is not a rigourous measure but is a useful indicator of relative interest. Over the last 30 days, openSUSE has been at 9th position. openSUSE merits a higher place, and was 6th a year ago. [6] How does the openSUSE home page compare with the rest of the hot 100 as a technical site? In an effort to make an objective estimate, the Distrowatch-Watcher page [http://rogerprice.org/Distrowatch-Watcher.html] in it's Table 1 looks at the "information content" of the hot 100. In the same "light hearted" manner as Distrowatch, the "information content" can be estimated by comparing the number of characters in a page which are human readable to the total number of characters. Out on the World Wide Web, that ratio varies from 0 through to 90%. The Distrowatch-Watcher [8] currently shows openSUSE in 37th position at 19.2%. Other distributions are doing better: Debian is in 9th position at 35.8% and openBSD is in 11th place at 32.1%. In table 3, DNS24 is in 10th place with an excellent 57.1%. Table 3 compares openSUSE with other well known sites. RFC 2822 at 83.8% and the Unicode/UTF-8 FAQ at 83.3% show that concentrating on the technical content rather than the glitz gets a high score and a site suitable for developers and sysadmins. The Distrowatch-Watcher's Table 3 also shows that inside the opensuse.org site, openSUSE does achieve high information content scores. Back in 2014 [7] the openSUSE home page scored 43.1% for information density with a page designed in 2008: << As part of Hack Week III, members of the openSUSE community redesigned this landing page for the openSUSE web site. The main ideas for the redesign are: * Provide information about the openSUSE project ... >> This desire to offer information needed by developers and sysadmins seems to have been lost on the home page. openSUSE needs to get back to previous good habits. Roger [5] https://distrowatch.com/index.php?dataspan=4 [6] https://distrowatch.com/dwres.php?resource=trending [7] https://web.archive.org/web/20141015175748/http://www.opensuse.org/en/ [8] http://rogerprice.org/Distrowatch-Watcher.html -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/25/2017 06:03 AM, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 12:38 PM, Roger Price wrote:

...

This desire to offer information needed by developers and sysadmins seems to have been lost on the home page. openSUSE needs to get back to previous good habits. I fully agree with that!

If I were someone looking to get into using linux for the first time and came to that page I would just keep moving. There's nothing there to tell me that this is something I can use. It's something only nerdy types can use. Not a common computer user. And, people wonder why common users don't use Linux. As the user base gets older the numbers are going to go into the toilet unless you can interest younger users into the fold. That page won't get it done. -- "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes-and ships-and sealing-wax- Of cabbages-and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot- And whether pigs have wings." Lewis Carroll _ _... ..._ _ _._ ._ ..... ._.. ... .._ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am 25.10.2017 um 16:34 schrieb Patrick Shanahan:

the fact that openSUSE is a great platform for developers and sysadmin is a plus but it must also be a "great" platform for the "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience.

If someone wants to work on a better homepage I could provide screenshots of a plasma desktop running steam on linux, with mass market titles like war thunder, DOTA and the likes. That might help a bit :) Cheers MH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 2017-10-25 17:29, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

On 10/25/2017 10:34 AM, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

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* Billie Walsh [10-25-17 10:09]:

...

On 10/25/2017 06:03 AM, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:

...

On Wed, Oct 25, 2017 at 12:38 PM, Roger Price wrote:

...

This desire to offer information needed by developers and sysadmins seems to have been lost on the home page.  openSUSE needs to get back to previous good habits. I fully agree with that!

If I were someone looking to get into using linux for the first time and came to that page I would just keep moving. There's nothing there to tell me that this is something I can use. It's something only nerdy types can use. Not a common computer user.

And, people wonder why common users don't use Linux.

As the user base gets older the numbers are going to go into the toilet unless you can interest younger users into the fold. That page won't get it done.

and inferring to visitors that openSUSE is "pointed" at developers and sysadmin does not gain the more average user but only more highly "skilled" users.

the fact that openSUSE is a great platform for developers and sysadmin is a plus but it must also be a "great" platform for the "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience.

being great for developers and sysadmin should be a prominent "footnote", not a description of the distribution.

Well said Patrick.

Indeed. :-) -- Cheers / Saludos, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" (Minas Tirith))

but it must also be a "great" platform for the "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience. well, then there is a lot of work to be done, to be honest. Currently, on even very standard hardware with Leap or TW, my avice would be: user with at least 5 years Linux experience, good knowledge of the command

In data mercoledì 25 ottobre 2017 16:34:28 CEST, Patrick Shanahan ha scritto: line and some spare time in case something goes South on you. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

* Roger Price [10-25-17 16:47]:

On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Billie Walsh [10-25-17 10:09]:

...

If I were someone looking to get into using linux for the first time and came to that page I would just keep moving. There's nothing there to tell me that this is something I can use. It's something only nerdy types can use. Not a common computer user.

And, people wonder why common users don't use Linux.

As the user base gets older the numbers are going to go into the toilet unless you can interest younger users into the fold. That page won't get it done.

and inferring to visitors that openSUSE is "pointed" at developers and sysadmin does not gain the more average user but only more highly "skilled" users.

The openSUSE board have taken the decision that the primary openSUSE audience is IT professionals, developers and sysadmins. I do not have insider access to how the board thinks, but this looks like a business decision which takes into account the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE, and the relationships between Tumbleweed, Leap and SLE.

...

the fact that openSUSE is a great platform for developers and sysadmin is a plus but it must also be a "great" platform for the "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience.

being great for developers and sysadmin should be a prominent "footnote", not a description of the distribution.

My impression is that you will need to present very strong arguments to convince the board to change tack. What is the business case for providing a great platform for the unwashed? How many SLE licenses does that generate?

The board's decision appears to assume that Linux newcomers are better served by a derivative distribution such as Gecko, a specialist distribution such as SteamOS or an ultra-popular distribution such as Mint, but this will have to be confirmed by the board itself.

where did you get that? from the board?? are we now directing new-comers to another distro? completely lost on me? I really thought we wanted all of the users we could attract. and have not seen anything except your post that suggests otherwise. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 25/10/2017 à 23:57, Patrick Shanahan a écrit :

* Roger Price [10-25-17 16:47]:

...

The board's decision appears to assume that Linux newcomers are better served by a derivative distribution such as Gecko, a specialist distribution such as SteamOS or an ultra-popular distribution such as Mint, but this will have to be confirmed by the board itself.

where did you get that? from the board?? are we now directing new-comers to another distro? completely lost on me?

there was a long discussion following the "Leap". But the board did'nt go so far to sending users to an other distro but seems to think that a distro that attract devs is also better for customers

I really thought we wanted all of the users we could attract. and have not seen anything except your post that suggests otherwise.

read archives since OSC in The Hague jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

In data giovedì 26 ottobre 2017 05:22:08 CEST, Billie Walsh ha scritto:

On 10/25/2017 03:44 PM, Roger Price wrote:

...

On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Billie Walsh [10-25-17 10:09]:

...

If I were someone looking to get into using linux for the first time and came to that page I would just keep moving. There's nothing there to tell me that this is something I can use. It's something only nerdy types can use. Not a common computer user.

And, people wonder why common users don't use Linux.

As the user base gets older the numbers are going to go into the toilet unless you can interest younger users into the fold. That page won't get it done.

and inferring to visitors that openSUSE is "pointed" at developers and sysadmin does not gain the more average user but only more highly "skilled" users.

The openSUSE board have taken the decision that the primary openSUSE audience is IT professionals, developers and sysadmins. I do not have insider access to how the board thinks, but this looks like a business decision which takes into account the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE, and the relationships between Tumbleweed, Leap and SLE.

...

the fact that openSUSE is a great platform for developers and sysadmin is a plus but it must also be a "great" platform for the "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience.

being great for developers and sysadmin should be a prominent "footnote", not a description of the distribution.

My impression is that you will need to present very strong arguments to convince the board to change tack. What is the business case for providing a great platform for the unwashed? How many SLE licenses does that generate?

The board's decision appears to assume that Linux newcomers are better served by a derivative distribution such as Gecko, a specialist distribution such as SteamOS or an ultra-popular distribution such as Mint, but this will have to be confirmed by the board itself.

Roger

I did a little browsing around looking at some of the different Linus distros web site. Every one stress's that it is for IT types, even Mint. Nothing about the average user.

Maybe that was just a try to "promote" "Geko"-distribution? A one-man-show opensuse spinnoff, in a try to produce a "unwashed" only distribution as far as I understand. BTW, Mint stops KDE support (a bit OT but that reduces the amount of alternatives with KDE that are unwashed). -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

In data giovedì 26 ottobre 2017 06:36:41 CEST, michael norman ha scritto:

On 26/10/17 04:29, stakanov wrote:

...

In data giovedì 26 ottobre 2017 05:22:08 CEST, Billie Walsh ha scritto:

...

On 10/25/2017 03:44 PM, Roger Price wrote:

...

On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Patrick Shanahan wrote:

...

* Billie Walsh [10-25-17 10:09]:

...

If I were someone looking to get into using linux for the first time and came to that page I would just keep moving. There's nothing there to tell me that this is something I can use. It's something only nerdy types can use. Not a common computer user.

And, people wonder why common users don't use Linux.

As the user base gets older the numbers are going to go into the toilet unless you can interest younger users into the fold. That page won't get it done.

and inferring to visitors that openSUSE is "pointed" at developers and sysadmin does not gain the more average user but only more highly "skilled" users.

The openSUSE board have taken the decision that the primary openSUSE audience is IT professionals, developers and sysadmins. I do not have insider access to how the board thinks, but this looks like a business decision which takes into account the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE, and the relationships between Tumbleweed, Leap and SLE.

...

the fact that openSUSE is a great platform for developers and sysadmin is a plus but it must also be a "great" platform for the "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience.

being great for developers and sysadmin should be a prominent "footnote", not a description of the distribution.

My impression is that you will need to present very strong arguments to convince the board to change tack. What is the business case for providing a great platform for the unwashed? How many SLE licenses does that generate?

The board's decision appears to assume that Linux newcomers are better served by a derivative distribution such as Gecko, a specialist distribution such as SteamOS or an ultra-popular distribution such as Mint, but this will have to be confirmed by the board itself.

Roger

I did a little browsing around looking at some of the different Linus distros web site. Every one stress's that it is for IT types, even Mint. Nothing about the average user.

Maybe that was just a try to "promote" "Geko"-distribution? A one-man-show opensuse spinnoff, in a try to produce a "unwashed" only distribution as far as I understand. BTW, Mint stops KDE support (a bit OT but that reduces the amount of alternatives with KDE that are unwashed).

Mint will only stop KDE support after the next release, so it will be available for a few years yet,

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418 Oh, great. I will not send one user using KDE to a distro that has announced stopping support for it. Not an intelligent investment as far as I see it. YMMV

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/26/2017 07:35 AM, Wols Lists wrote:

On 26/10/17 12:42, stakanov wrote:

...

...

Mint will only stop KDE support after the next release, so it will be

...

available for a few years yet,

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418 Oh, great. I will not send one user using KDE to a distro that has announced stopping support for it. Not an intelligent investment as far as I see it. YMMV So what do they expect users to use? As someone who *can't* *stand* Gnome, I'm certainly not going to go there now. If people want to use Gnome, more power to them, but it's not for me!!!

Cheers, Wol

A bit of searching finds other environments. Some have the same kind of desktop. -- "The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes-and ships-and sealing-wax- Of cabbages-and kings-- And why the sea is boiling hot- And whether pigs have wings." Lewis Carroll _ _... ..._ _ _._ ._ ..... ._.. ... .._ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Billie Walsh composed on 2017-10-26 19:36 (UTC-0500):

Billie Walsh wrote:

...

A bit of searching finds other environments. Some have the same kind of desktop.

KDE 3. Everyone loved it. How about an updated version of KDE 3. Check out Trinity.

https://wiki.trinitydesktop.org/Trinity_Desktop_Environment

It's sad that rules exist that prevent TDE from being available directly through opensuse.org, and for TW users. There are at least two niggles in TDE that KDE3 doesn't suffer, but it's a very competent alternative. -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 26/10/17 15:44, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

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So what do they expect users to use? As someone who *can't* *stand*

...

Gnome, I'm certainly not going to go there now. If people want to use Gnome, more power to them, but it's not for me!!!

Why are You complaining about Linux Mint's choice of DE on openSUSE ML? I don't really get that... This discussion surely belongs somewhere else...

Well, I'm a loyal SuSE user (as can be seen from my use of case :-), but the more distros don't want to support KDE, the harder it gets for those that do. Monoculture is bad, but KDE seems to be losing ground, and that's not good! Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

In data giovedì 26 ottobre 2017 15:22:41 CEST, michael norman ha scritto:

On 26/10/17 12:42, stakanov wrote:

...

In data giovedì 26 ottobre 2017 06:36:41 CEST, michael norman ha scritto:

...

On 26/10/17 04:29, stakanov wrote:

...

In data giovedì 26 ottobre 2017 05:22:08 CEST, Billie Walsh ha scritto:

...

On 10/25/2017 03:44 PM, Roger Price wrote:

...

On Wed, 25 Oct 2017, Patrick Shanahan wrote: > * Billie Walsh [10-25-17 10:09]: >> If I were someone looking to get into using linux for the first time >> and >> came to that page I would just keep moving. There's nothing there to >> tell me >> that this is something I can use. It's something only nerdy types >> can use. >> Not a common computer user. >> >> And, people wonder why common users don't use Linux. >> >> As the user base gets older the numbers are going to go into the >> toilet >> unless you can interest younger users into the fold. That page won't >> get it >> done. > > and inferring to visitors that openSUSE is "pointed" at developers > and > sysadmin does not gain the more average user but only more highly > "skilled" users.

The openSUSE board have taken the decision that the primary openSUSE audience is IT professionals, developers and sysadmins. I do not have insider access to how the board thinks, but this looks like a business decision which takes into account the relationship between SUSE and openSUSE, and the relationships between Tumbleweed, Leap and SLE.

> the fact that openSUSE is a great platform for developers and > sysadmin is a plus but it must also be a "great" platform for the > "unwashed masses" and provide them a great experience. > > being great for developers and sysadmin should be a prominent > "footnote", not a description of the distribution.

My impression is that you will need to present very strong arguments to convince the board to change tack. What is the business case for providing a great platform for the unwashed? How many SLE licenses does that generate?

The board's decision appears to assume that Linux newcomers are better served by a derivative distribution such as Gecko, a specialist distribution such as SteamOS or an ultra-popular distribution such as Mint, but this will have to be confirmed by the board itself.

Roger

I did a little browsing around looking at some of the different Linus distros web site. Every one stress's that it is for IT types, even Mint. Nothing about the average user.

Maybe that was just a try to "promote" "Geko"-distribution? A one-man-show opensuse spinnoff, in a try to produce a "unwashed" only distribution as far as I understand. BTW, Mint stops KDE support (a bit OT but that reduces the amount of alternatives with KDE that are unwashed).

Mint will only stop KDE support after the next release, so it will be available for a few years yet,

https://blog.linuxmint.com/?p=3418

Oh, great. I will not send one user using KDE to a distro that has announced stopping support for it. Not an intelligent investment as far as I see it. YMMV

I wasn't suggesting that you send anybody anywhere or implying support for Linux Mint, I merely point out that support for KDE in Linux Mint has not ended yet. Inteded, and that was not to say you do, far from it. But when you say: Mint is an "unwashed" alternative, then I was saying simply that it is indeed...only for people that do not use KDE. If you are using Mint with KDE now, it is a good policy IMO, because it leaves you the time to search for an alternative distro, easy to use, with KDE.

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Le 26/10/2017 à 05:22, Billie Walsh a écrit :

Nothing about the average user.

problem is 1) "john do" takes what the dealer gives him 2) devs do what they payload says or what they like to do (remember the coming of kde4) and that is free software... if you want a better fitted distro, do it. Same for 32 bits distro, we now need to install tumbleeed on old computers, it works, but the update burden is high. we lack on the linux side a large market company aiming basic user, ubuntu was at a time, but did some odd decision and seems to stop hoping replacing W..s jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 26/10/2017 à 15:59, Billie Walsh a écrit :

On 10/26/2017 01:11 AM, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

...

1) "john do" takes what the dealer gives him

There are a lot of "john do's" that are not really happy with "what the dealer gives him" but don't know what else to do. I went through that back in 2000. I had heard of something called Linux out there somewhere so I started asking questions. It took me a bit to get some good advice and make the leap of faith. There are a lot like I was back then but if they go to the website thinking about trying Linux they get turned off thinking it is only for devs and such.

may be not The problem is two folds. * on most computers, installing Linux goes pretty well, but pretty well only, not fully as it could if installed by the computer builder, so there is need of help. I see this every second saturday on my Linux User group meeting (I'm the install/fix specialist) * that said it goes really pretty well, so most people that try linux do this by themselves and never ask. It looks like nobody should ask, and if something fail, the user reverts to Windows. Truth is Windows XP and Windows 7 where usable. May be the better curve of Leap was not because of leap but because of Windows 8, then Windows 10. The way Windows do the updates (please do not stop the computer {wait for hours} - wait for hours at next start) is our best chance. The real stupid thing all Linux distro did is competing each other, dropping the Linux word when everybody begun to know it. In France the only Linux that has a known name is Ubuntu, certainly not Debian, nor Red Hat, no more Mandriva nor Mint and nor openSUSE - not on John Doe mind. Of course seasoned computerists know them... jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 26 October 2017 at 07:56, Per Jessen wrote:

Roger Price wrote:

...

My impression is that you will need to present very strong arguments to convince the board to change tack.

I think anyone who comes up with an improved home page will be considered.

Indeed But this is not the correct mailinglist to discuss this topic This is opensuse@opensuse.org - openSUSE's support mailinglist. This is not a support topic Please relocate this discussion to opensuse-project@opensuse.org (if you wish to discuss the Project's direction, Board's decisions and such) or opensuse-web@opensuse.org (if you want to actually discuss the openSUSE website) As both are in question, I will however breach with my new protocol of not providing insight into the workings of the project on this list to provide a little more context as to how the current openSUSE website and the Projects direction came to be. Before I start, a general reminder - the Board is openSUSE's _elected_ leadership body, responsible for leading and steering the Project. 5 of the 6 seats are directly elected by the community. Only a maximum of 2 of those seats can possibly be held by employees of the same company (eg. SUSE). The openSUSE Membership can force a re-election of the Board, if 20% of the membership request it. The 6th seat is appointed by SUSE as the Board's Chairman. The current Board Chairman (myself) was a community elected Board member before being appointed, and a user / community contributor for 8 years before being employed by SUSE 4 years ago. The 5 elected Board members can, at any time, request that SUSE replace their Chairman. The Board (as the Project as a whole) is independent from SUSE and only the Chairman has a responsibility to represent SUSE's needs on the Board. Therefore any suggestion that the Board makes any decision on behalf of SUSE is misrepresenting the function of the Board, the facts that the Board answers to the community, the Chairman answers to the Board as much as SUSE, and the openSUSE Project is independent from SUSE. Over the years we (the Project) have repeatedly looked at the statistics of our userbase and release downloads to give us an indication of the general health of the openSUSE Project. The Board has used this statistics in part of their decision making processes, but as should be obvious from the story below were not the only factors in play. By the end of November 2014 there were some clearly apparent problems with the Project. Since 2009 - our number of monthly downloads of our distributions had steadily declined, suggesting a constant apathy in the adoption of the Project's main output - our number of downloads around each release had steadily declined, suggesting that each release was failing more than the last at gathering significant traction with the broad "Linux of everyone" target audience the openSUSE Project had at the time - our number of unique users of our official download repos had steadily increased, suggesting however that we had a steady, loyal, and growing userbase When taken on balance this mean that openSUSE could be argued to be _at best_ stagnant, or at worst in a shallow decline. This led the Board to do significant analysis of the results, asking lots of our users lots of questions. The conclusion of the Board at around 2014, and since reinforced by subsequent Boards, was that the Project was failing to connect with the Board "Linux for everyone" target audience, as shown by the declining download numbers. However, the strong and stable repo userbase numbers gave us some hope. The Board's analysis of the users found a pretty clear and obvious trend - one of our strongest usergroups that were consistently adopting, keeping, and growing their openSUSE usage were developers, power users, and sysadmins. And of course these userbases were also highly represented in Tumbleweed/Factory, which was growing well at the same time. Put simply, this was the primary motivation for the Board pushing the Project in the direction we have, focusing on these userbases. Since making that decision, we have seen openSUSE's downloads and userbase numbers for both Leap and Tumbleweed grow. We have also seen the number of projects beyond the distributions under the openSUSE umbrella grow. I personally have no doubt we made a good decision based on the information we had to hand, and I think we did a good job of rationalising the facts and figures with the Board's personal and intimate knowledge we had of the Project, as we are all part of it. In parallel to the above analysis and the raw numbers, there were other factors at play, especially in the openSUSE Leap part of the story. No one can deny that the 12.2, 12.3, 13.1, and 13.2 releases were very problematic to develop. The delays and close calls speak for themselves. The simple fact was that the Project was struggling to find volunteers to actually help produce the distribution. This often led to significant delays. By the release of 13.2, despite the fact we did manage to get the release out of the door, there were so few contributors left working on the release that we basically had no one left to do any future releases. In the end of 2014 and early 2015, as Chairman, I was faced with the very real and depressing problem of having to find a way of informing the community that there would be no more releases of the openSUSE Distribution. I kept this problem privately between me and the Board at the time, in the hope there would be a solution to save me from having to do that. I spent a lot of time trying to find new volunteers to step and drive future releases, with no real success. This was despite the fact that openSUSE Tumbleweed was going very well, with a very strong number of contributors, merging with openSUSE Factory, and growing it's userbase at an incredible rate. Luckily, within SUSE there was their own efforts to find a way of making the SLE sources more readily available and more useful to a broader ecosystem than just the existing SUSE developers and partners. Along with a number of SUSE employees who are also openSUSE contributors (including within SUSE Management), we were able to steer things within SUSE that the idea morphed into the direct provision of the SLE sources into OBS, with the suggestion to the community that the community base a stable distribution on those sources. In a prototypical form I presented the idea at oSC 15, and from that point on it was driven by the community. It has since evolved into what everyone now knows as openSUSE Leap. Instead of openSUSE no longer having a stable distribution due to lack of contributor interest, Leap has found new contributors in addition to the ones we effectively 'stole' by milking SUSE's SLE efforts for everything they were worth. It is also a development model which is easier for our contributors more interested in Tumbleweed to still work with and help shape and maintain Leap in a sustainable way. And as a result Leap has been a bigger success than I had ever hoped for. As long as we had the contributors to keep building it, I would have been satisfied with Leap continuing the 'trend of stagnation' or 'slow decline' that the old stable releases were suffering from, and we could have relied on Tumbleweed to provide the growth that openSUSE needs to keep on getting new blood into the Project. But instead of that, Leap has bucked the trend and exceeded my expectations. 42.1 and 42.2 both showed signs of halting the stagnation/decline, and both showed signs of increase in the metrics we measure. 42.3 was the first release since 2009 to totally reverse that trend and grow significantly in it's own right across every metric we have been able to measure so far (Release downloads & repo users). This is despite Leap 42.3's marketing, on purpose, taking a significantly LESS detail orientated approach. Instead of bombarding uses with endless detailed outputs of every package version, complex deep diving sneak peaks and other such breakdowns we used to do for every release (and like people are advocating here for the website), we purposfully took an approach to 42.3's release marketing to follow the same approach as the current website. Like the website, we focused Leap 42.3's marketing on the general 'themes' of the release. It's closeness to SLE. The general topics of how and where we expect users to find Leap 42.3 useful. And the results have been greater than we expected. The numbers of users, and the sustainability of the development process, both speak for themselves (and we need both for openSUSE to continue long term) So, to summarise - the general direction of Leap was seen by the Board as a natural decision in the light of the realities the Project faced at the time - these realities included what could be described at best as 'stagnation' or at worst as a 'steady decline', depending on how you wanted to cut the numbers. - the alternative to Leap would have been the cessation of openSUSE producing a regular release distribution, due to lack of contributor interest. - since launching the new openSUSE website we have seen both increases in downloads & users to both openSUSE Tumbleweed & Leap - Since 2015, the Project is growing in a way that we haven't seen since 2009 - Leap 42.3's marketing campaign seems to reinforce the hypothesis that saturating potential users with too much information can actually hinder growth, even when your target audience is Developers, Sysadmins & Power Users. - The website is fully open source and contributions are welcome at https://github.com/openSUSE/landing-page And so, that is the story behind what is going on here. While obviously I think the history invalidates some of the concerns raised in this thread, I'm open to discussing those points further, but not on this mailinglist, and this is not the correct place, as already stated. Please relocate this discussion to opensuse-project@opensuse.org (if you wish to discuss the Project's direction, Board's decisions and such) or opensuse-web@opensuse.org (if you want to actually discuss the openSUSE website but not contribute to it directly on https://github.com/openSUSE/landing-page) Regards, Richard Brown openSUSE Board Chairman -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 27/10/17 06:57, David C. Rankin wrote:

On 10/26/2017 08:39 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

...

Indeed

But this is not the correct mailinglist to discuss this topic

This is opensuse@opensuse.org - openSUSE's support mailinglist. This is not a support topic

Please relocate this discussion to opensuse-project@opensuse.org (if you wish to discuss the Project's direction, Board's decisions and such) or opensuse-web@opensuse.org (if you want to actually discuss the openSUSE website)

And this has been another sad epitaph to the growth of SuSE. The splintering of the community into a myriad of different lists that no one with a day job could ever have the time to monitor allowing much of what takes place with opensuse to go on in isolation, without the benefit of the broader community's input. I an sense it is evidence of being a victim of your own success... but something was definitely lost along the way.

It is also curious that the mere mention of the board in one or two of a 20 post thread would reap a swift ushering away from a broader community discussion to an obscure and comparatively unsubscribed to list fragment.

The idea of a better home page is welcomed. There are a lot of good examples out there to follow -- there are even more examples of those so poorly done they are self-defeating. Here's to hoping any change drinks deeply from the first category of examples...

openSUSE is beginning to seem like an oxymoron. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Wols Lists wrote:

On 26/10/17 14:39, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On 26 October 2017 at 07:56, Per Jessen wrote:

...

...

Roger Price wrote:

...

...

My impression is that you will need to present very strong arguments to convince the board to change tack.

I think anyone who comes up with an improved home page will be considered. Indeed

But this is not the correct mailinglist to discuss this topic

This is opensuse@opensuse.org - openSUSE's support mailinglist. This is not a support topic

Please relocate this discussion to opensuse-project@opensuse.org (if you wish to discuss the Project's direction, Board's decisions and such) or opensuse-web@opensuse.org (if you want to actually discuss the openSUSE website)

So this is the opensuse support list is it? Well, if I can add my tuppence-worth, it's misnamed. You have opensuse-project for the project, and opensuse-web for the website. Shouldn't it be opensuse-support for support?

Wol, in principle yes. In practice some of these names have evolved over time. e.g. opensuse@o.o. Normally new (especially public) lists are named 'opensuse-newlist'. There are exceptions though.

The question isn't what do *you* think it's for, but what do "the great unwashed" think it's for.

I see no problem in initiating a discussion of the openSUSE home page here, but if you/we want something done or changed, the topic is better suited for opensuse-project.

Just as www.opensuse.org is the *first* place people are going to look on the web (and I agree with the complaint in this thread)

Ditto. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (10.0°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free dynamic DNS, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Fri, 27 Oct 2017 16:37:21 +0100 Wols Lists wrote:

Yes I can understand you not wanting it to degenerate into an off-topic chatter chatter list, but the name does rather imply it's a general "anything to do with suse" list. I know the problem is "where do you draw the line", but draw it too firmly and people won't go to the other suse lists, they'll just stop going to suse entirely.

+1 -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2017-10-28 at 15:15 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

On 27 October 2017 at 17:37, Wols Lists <> wrote:

...

For the majority of my time in the openSUSE Project, I chose not to be subscribed to this list because I was fed up of the 'hive of scum and villainy' that it had become.

I strongly object to your view of us. :-/ - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln0hLAACgkQtTMYHG2NR9VcEQCcCOFZ1HRZ09cXBVJe4yvEAVH5 xn8An07g0dlAUklE1yb/9uST2S6rgb0a =CAy1 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 28/10/17 09:32 AM, Richard Brown wrote:

"What are you going to do about the mess in opensuse@" is a very common question raised at face to face meetings, such as openSUSE Conferences, for several years. And it is a common opinion expressed repeatedly by newcomers to the Project who have often approached me (first as a Board member years ago, and still since becoming Chairman), feeling that this list is a toxic stain upon the Project compared to the other communication channels which the projec

Yes there are discussion that should be elsewhere; as you said to begin with, this thread is one such. I hate to be classified as part of the scum who only criticise and never help; Most of my 'needs' on this list are more about configuration that actual 'bugs'; about understanding and needing pointers and references. Members have been great in this regard, this is a wonderful source of help! If you want to criticise me about contributions it would be that I don't write up contributions for the fringe problems, the archaic equipment I favour[1]. I've mentioned the corporate "Closet of Anxieties" of as a source discarded equipment a number of times. I love how the past evolves into the present and the future. But I do wish you'd be more specific. There are a wide variety of contributors here, from me and archaism to others with corporate production arrays of machines and extensive RAIDs. Most of us have 'enjoyed' many roles, from Big Iron down to Raspberries. Many of us still do. What we have to contribute most of all is "Many Views". Sometimes the questions are as interesting and illuminating as the answers. The "Mess" that some people, especially newcomers, see is really the diversity and it is that diversity that is the real value of this list. That is why they see more value in the more specific channels that answer their IMMEDIATE needs, and that they aren't ready or even willing to partake of a community. Heck, on other technical lists I've seen people join, ask a question, get an answer and then leave. No interest in community; no interest in other Q&As. I realise that you are summarizing; but such a summary verges on insulting simply because this is a general forum. Yes the other channels are all very specific and bounded. As such they are only going to be populated by people concerned with those specifics or the patience to mindset for synchronous communication. But there is a great difference between "swamp" and "unstructured". [1] I've just spent $50 on a early digital camera, whereas the magazines are reviewing pushing things with processors 20 times the power, 100 times the sensitivity and 1,000 times the cost. This "old piece of junk" fit only for a thrift store can still produce images at a greater resolution than any display equipment I have, that my friends and colleagues have, even those with high end cameras. Go figure. https://www.dpreview.com/articles/4902764480/the-camera-i-almost-bought-agai... -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 28/10/17 11:49 AM, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

Perhaps the best way to remove the negativity on this list is to have it moderated like the forums are.

Indeed. I'm sure 'moderation' is a good thing, but I am sceptical about 'moderators'. After all, they are human with human foibles. What one might view as 'negative criticism' another might view as someone finding a valid problem that is taking to long to address, or, like the recent clarification about bugs being classified as needing fixes from the upstream maintainers rather than the openSUSE teams. It is too common the see 'criticisms' as being 'negative'. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Saturday, 2017-10-28 at 19:57 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

On 28 October 2017 at 18:15, Anton Aylward wrote:

...

On 28/10/17 11:49 AM, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

...

Perhaps the best way to remove the negativity on this list is to have it moderated like the forums are.

Indeed. I'm sure 'moderation' is a good thing, but I am sceptical about 'moderators'. After all, they are human with human foibles.

What one might view as 'negative criticism' another might view as someone finding a valid problem that is taking to long to address, or, like the recent clarification about bugs being classified as needing fixes from the upstream maintainers rather than the openSUSE teams.

It is too common the see 'criticisms' as being 'negative'.

Generally speaking (there are bounds of reason/tone/decency/respect), I often do not have a problem with either critical nor negative speech, when the outcome of that speech is something positive for openSUSE.

We're volunteers, we're passionate about what we do here, we can't be expected to always approach the project with happy happy joy joy feelings. But the focus should be on respecting all involved & accomplishing a positive goal on the end.

But that generally means I feel any negative talk or critique on _this_ list is pointless.

Because there are so few contributors listening here, there will be no actions resulting from such discussions.

I see that as the fault of those contributors, not as the fault of the participants on the list. It looks to me as if they prefer an ivory tower, IMO, and hear nothing about reality. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln15f8ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UQnQCdEgKLPJor6k/69HIbvcH6elH2 t3kAoI/gDuPWly2aiTTiym2deHrTA1I/ =1ip5 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Content-ID: On Sunday, 2017-10-29 at 15:41 +0100, Vojtěch Zeisek wrote:

Dne neděle 29. října 2017 15:30:23 CET, Carlos E. R. napsal(a):

...

On Saturday, 2017-10-28 at 19:57 +0200, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On 28 October 2017 at 18:15, Anton Aylward <> wrote:

...

On 28/10/17 11:49 AM, Ken Schneider - openSUSE wrote:

...

...

...

Because there are so few contributors listening here, there will be no actions resulting from such discussions.

I see that as the fault of those contributors, not as the fault of the participants on the list. It looks to me as if they prefer an ivory tower, IMO, and hear nothing about reality.

I must strongly disagree here. They do listen, but for whatever reason, they sit somewhere else (opensuse-web@... in this case, I assume). If You wish to talk to them, You must go to look for them. Do they have any duty to listen here? I don't suppose so. Why should they? You seems to live in bit strange world, turning around according to Your wishes...

But you read :-) In the current case (which I did not initiate), posting in an "obscure" contributor mail list would not be seen by the community at large. And it is the community which is saying they don't like the home page. Maybe instead of telling people to not post here about the OP issue, a consensus can be arrived at and then just post at the relevant place asking contributors to please change the home page, and see the thread here as to why. IMHO contributors and developers should peruse the places where users are, and see what plain people say. Not read in depth, just read the subjects and then get deeper when something comes his line. I know some devs/contributors had mail filters to tell them when a thread came related to what they maintained, and almost always participated with good quality replies. For instance, I have got help and solved bugs upstream just by asking on upstream mail lists and got direct replies from the devs, without getting asked to fill bugzillas or such. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln17M4ACgkQtTMYHG2NR9Un3gCeIxDa0BsSK7mrlv3YJFQqJAju MjQAn0Jia9Xj8P+5MWpVLdPXYmqo/kQH =azN2 -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:31:55 +0100 Richard Brown wrote:

Let's just look at some cold, hard, numbers

We know that this list has 1242 subscribers

This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list - 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community - 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+ - 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums - 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter

Interesting stats. I never knew there was a Facebook group. Bob [one of the 1242, now one of 14.8k as well :-) ] -- Bob Williams System: Linux 4.4.92-31-default Distro: openSUSE 42.3 (x86_64) Desktop: KDE Frameworks: 5.32.0, Qt: 5.6.2 and Plasma: 5.8.7

Anthony Youngman wrote:

On 29/10/17 16:12, Bob Williams wrote:

...

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:31:55 +0100 Richard Brown wrote:

...

Let's just look at some cold, hard, numbers

We know that this list has 1242 subscribers

This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list - 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community - 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+ - 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums - 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter

Interesting stats. I never knew there was a Facebook group.

Bob [one of the 1242, now one of 14.8k as well :-) ]

Well, I think those stats DEFINITELY confirm me as a dinosaur!

What's reddit? :-) Facebook I just won't touch (as far as I can make out, their attitude to security is "fail open by design!" :-( Google+ I belong to but never actually look at. Forums - a pain in the neck - don't care who, email is much better. Twitter - don't know how to use, what I've seen of it doesn't make much sense.

At least there's two of us. I don't frequent any of above either. I just have no need. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (10.4°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free dynamic DNS, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 29/10/2017 à 16:31, Richard Brown a écrit : I'm do not always agree about what you say, but I'm always interested by your posts and try to read then with attention :-)

If you think that opensuse@opensuse.org represents the 'community at large' you are sorely, sorely, painfully, dismally, mistaken.

"community at large" is a very virtual thing

Let's ignore the fact that, ultimately, feedback only functions when contributors act on them, and the number of heavily active contributors on this list can probably be counted on both of my hands. Let's also ignore the fact that despite worldwide openSUSE events with attendances numbering in the hundreds, and openSUSE presences at other FOSS events with attendances numbering in the thousands, the number of opensuse@ subscribers I've met face to face can be counted on one hand.

on 6 billion human on earth, I met only a very little number. to really meet people one need to be very active and I'm sure you have much better things to do, if by meet you mean speak to face to face.

Let's just look at some cold, hard, numbers

We know that this list has 1242 subscribers

it's much for a *mailing list*. If any subscriber wrote at least one mail each week, the list could be unusable

This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list - 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community

I know nothing of reddit, sorry. Is it an official openSUSE discussion channel? may be I should get a look I see 4 814 subscribers at the openSUSE - it seems to be a forum

- 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+

yes and? do you really *discuss* openSUSE on Facebook or Google+? this only mean many people once got a look.

- 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums

how many active at the same time? The forum itself say "Active Members 1,728", so the hole forum is no more active than this very list!!

- 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter

I don't tweet

In the grand scheme of things, this mailinglist, at best, represents a small fraction of the community.

this is pretty obvious. How many votes for your last election? Do you really this could mean you only represent the people that gave you they vote? obviously not.

But you should have a clear understanding of just how significant that opinion is, and should be, in the broader context of the overall openSUSE Project.

There is no way, at all, this list can be fairly described as representative of the community 'at large'. Period.

I fear to say that there is no *project* at all, if we compare your numbers with the number of openSUSE members. Because any people speaking about "the project" should and I guess is an openSUSE member, isn't it? I agree the tone of this very list is pretty often harsh, but you do nothing to make it smoother, on the contrary. If we should consider yours arguments, all of us here should resign and go to an other distribution. We once had a project coordinator (joos) that worked very well to make the openSUSE lists friendly. I know your is elsewhere, but I don't see the openSUSE community live really :-( We need a central point to discuss the project and it's derivatives, before going to specialized places for the action. sincerely jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 29/10/2017 à 23:41, Richard Brown a écrit :

1728 'active' means 1728 people posted in the last month

If we were to judge opensuse@opensuse.org by the same measurement, there are under 300 active members of this list. The forums are over 4x more active than this list.

the whole forum, how many for all the lists?

...

We once had a project coordinator (joos) that worked very well to make the openSUSE lists friendly. I know your is elsewhere, but I don't see the openSUSE community live really :-(

Because you don't tweet, you dont look at facebook,

I look at facebook french, I manage one group... and is your facebook page this one: https://www.facebook.com/en.openSUSE/ I'm subscribed and it don't seems very active last article is 2011?? (https://www.facebook.com/pg/en.openSUSE/notes/?ref=page_internal) you don't know

about Reddit, you don't go to open source conferences,

I did 3 times (2011, 2015, briefly 2016 where nobody cared) you dont

contribute on github, you don't contribute on OBS.

I don't understand anything of OBS, and I tried. I contribute on bugzilla when necessary (not often) I see none of yours "new" channels here: https://en.opensuse.org/Portal:Support

If you were working on something on your spare time, and knew there was a mailinglist full of grumpy old people who dislikes the majority of what you were working on, would you be subscribed to this list? would you want to talk to them? would you encourage others to talk to them?

of course I would and I do in many circumstances (not only for openSUSE), else how do you want a change?

And you can see how I am regularly treated on this list to see how I might have come to that conclusion ;)

I think your comment are most of the time very negative, this is not for making the best of the list

If people are not prepared to address that image problem directly, I will continue to try and focus the attention of this list on its official intended function as a support mailinglist, in the hope that it such a focus might, in time, bring some life and growth back into this list.

you wont give this result if as you said you ask people to leaved the list...

...

We need a central point to discuss the project and it's derivatives, before going to specialized places for the action.

For the Project, there is opensuse-project@

not very active https://lists.opensuse.org/opensuse-project/2017-10/

For technical topics, there is opensuse-factory@

isn't it for tumbleweed?

Please, stop being so stuck in your old ways.

how many openSUSE members? How many votes? what about *official* openSUSE channels? do you want to stop using the mailing lists channel? this could be done, but in favor of facebook, I don't know of any project doing so. be clear, what is the official, new (or old) support channel for openSUSE? update the wiki accordingly jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/29/2017 03:41 PM, Richard Brown wrote:

Those the non-specialized places. Not this channel - talking about things in this channel is a almost always a waste of time whenever the outcome is dependant on one of our volunteer contributors to do anything about it. The quicker people realise that are start engaging with the rest of our vibrant community, the better.

Please, stop being so stuck in your old ways.

Yes, but old ways are so comfortable, and they work well! In my case, I've got work-related traffic flowing to me via email. Add this to traffic from an organization I volunteer with, plus email from friends/family, plus various security-related feeds and I find that Thunderbird meets my needs. The information is "pushed" onto the one platform that rules them all (in my case). Web-based email, web-forums, and whatnot are "pull" information feeds. I wouldn't be able to support my users if they weren't able to push their requests in front of my face. I'm a "push" kind of a guy, and Thunderbird brings all those pushes to one place where I can act accordingly and preserve the traffic if needed. Some of my feeds are top-post too! This works well when you have a team of people that use email for event notification and coordination. It allows us to archive the thread of actions taken while not getting in the way of the important stuff on the top. Regards, Lew -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Top posting intentionally, to make clear this is from me as one of the Forums Team members. Op maandag 30 oktober 2017 17:15:45 CET schreef Anthony Youngman:

On 29/10/17 22:41, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On 29 October 2017 at 17:52, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

...

Le 29/10/2017 à 16:31, Richard Brown a écrit :

...

- 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+

yes and? do you really *discuss* openSUSE on Facebook or Google+? this only mean many people once got a look.

Yes, the openSUSE Group has regular discussions. Today someone is discussing issues they've had with upgrades, yesterday someone was discussing Tumbleweed on an iMac (10 comments in the thread - 58 reactions (eg. +1, Happy Faces, etc)), openSUSE from the Windows Store, (10 comments in the thread, 25 reactions), fstab questions, UEFI questions from a new member (I do like how Facebook highlights new joiners of the group)

It's a very active list

...

...

- 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums

how many active at the same time? The forum itself say "Active Members 1,728", so the hole forum is no more active than this very list!!

1728 'active' means 1728 people posted in the last month

Flippin' 'eck! That's 600 posts a DAY! How do you keep on top of THAT!?

With a dozen of people moderating the forums. Yes, 600 posts a day, and even more in the past ( #posts has decreased where #users has increased ).

...

If we were to judge opensuse@opensuse.org by the same measurement, there are under 300 active members of this list. The forums are over 4x more active than this list.

It's not about activity, it's about content. We (the Forums Team) do not allow threads to dwell and drift in all directions.

And how many people on those forums read ALL of the posts?

Like said: a dozen of (global ) moderators. That communicate through their own ( non public ) area in the forums.

Okay, I only read a fraction of the posts here, but I have a far better chance of keeping on top of everything here, than I would in some of those other places.

On top of what? We're talking about a relatively small group of active subscribers.

...

Of all the openSUSE forums, social media outlets, etc I monitor, opensuse@ is the only one repeatedly shrinking in size. Even our more specialised, technical lists are growing at a rate comparable to every other part of the project. And yet opensuse@ consistently fails to reflect the growth in the Project as a whole.

Because the Powers That Be seem to want a Unicorn? I've been thinking, and I get the impression that this list will NEVER be able to satisfy what the powers that be want, because what they want is impossible.

The Powers That Be ? Come on. Well, OK, let's take that path. Compare factory@ to opensuse@ ....

...

...

I agree the tone of this very list is pretty often harsh, but you do nothing to make it smoother, on the contrary. If we should consider yours arguments, all of us here should resign and go to an other distribution.

All? No, I most certainly do not want that

Neither do I. But be fair, almost every thread in opensuse@ drifts away from the OP. Often even after the OP has indicated that his issue has been solved.

...

I would be pleased though if some people left, yes. Specifically those who complain and in the same breadth admit unwillingness to do anything to help openSUSE resolve that which they complain about.

You mean people like me? Why yes, I do moan about certain things *SUSE, and I'm unlikely to do anything about it myself. I don't have a clue about web design, how am I supposed to do anything about the website?

Oh - and as other people on this list will attest, I DO do stuff for SUSE. It's just that I do it upstream, and actually I'm surprised at the regular bouquets I seem to get for it (I shouldn't be, it's a very visible role. Bit unfair on the people behind the scenes, though).

...

I don't think it's unfair to wish for that. In a volunteer organisation, having complainers hang around and not doing anything positive to remedy the problems they perceive are just a drain on the motivation of all the other volunteers.

Depends. A VERY BIG depends.

...

If you were working on something on your spare time, and knew there was a mailinglist full of grumpy old people who dislikes the majority of what you were working on, would you be subscribed to this list? would you want to talk to them? would you encourage others to talk to them?

This list has an image problem.

I concur here. Too many people who refuse to use the ML for reasons including terms like "incrowd", "abomination", "bullying", "aggressive" .

...

It's the responsibility of the regular residents of this list to correct that image problem > I cannot correct it, because I downright agree with the negative perception so many people have on this list.

Not least down to the powers that be wanting a Unicorn! I'll explain. You described this list as a "community support list". Is that a "community SUPPORT list", or a "COMMUNITY support list". Because if what you want is a "community SUPPORT list", you might as well shut the whole lot down right now. Because the only way you are going to get a SUPPORT forum, is to PAY people to provide that support ...

Sheer nonsense, none of the Forums Team is payed to do the work, not by SUSE, not by others,

...

And you can see how I am regularly treated on this list to see how I might have come to that conclusion ;)

Well, I'm sorry, but my impression of you is a Jobsworth who thinks he owns the place. Harsh but true. So what do you expect? Sorry.

But if on the other hand, you want a COMMUNITY support list, you need to encourage said community. So what if you own the place - you need to be the jovial "mine host" (by all means keep a baseball bat conveniently hidden under the bar to keep order!).

From almost dead back to a vibrant community and the Board would not have encouraged said community ? Now, as a board member, we encouraged community members to step up and take over our infrastructure. Where what now is the Heroes team is doing a very fine job.

...

If people are not prepared to address that image problem directly, I will continue to try and focus the attention of this list on its official intended function as a support mailinglist, in the hope that it such a focus might, in time, bring some life and growth back into this list.

IT WON'T. IT WILL KILL IT STONE DEAD. Is this what you want? ...

Have a look at the forums. We move whatever is not on topic to Chit-chat, completely off topic to the Soapbox. Doing so makes the forums to a quite efficient knowledge base.

Noob: I have a problem. X doesn't work.

... crickets ... crickets

Noob: Is there anyone out there? Noob2: I'm here - I'm waiting for an answer to my problem, can't help you with yours sorry. Noob3: Me too ... Noob4: Me three ...

... crickets ... crickets

If you focus on the people ASKING for support, this list is dead. WHERE IS THAT SUPPORT GOING TO COME FROM!!!???

Could be from the same people hanging around there now. They have the knowledge.

If, on the other hand, you focus on the devs, the greybeards, the people WHO CAN HELP, then this list stands a chance.

It does IMHO. But it requires that not every thread dwells in all directions, subject changes more often than not.

STOP DRIVING THE PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP AWAY! You actively told us that was what you were doing!!!

I could as easily shout "Start making this list one that noobs can find their answers. People search mailing lists archives for solutions and have to go through endless threads with extensive posts.

As I said, you need to be the jovial Mine Host. Your job is to welcome people and speak softly but carry a big stick.

May I suggest the following rules: 1) Try not to take offence. 2) DO NOT intentionally give offence 3) Help the noobs

Having read the ML for months now, reading the way the board ( chosen by members ) has been addressed ...... tsk.

The best hangouts are those where you don't notice the bouncers are doing their job. You should quietly reminding the regulars if they step over the line. You should be looking out for people who are out to cause trouble. And if the regulars are raucous in the background, let them get on with it.

There are ONLY TWO metrics by which this group should be judged. The first is pretty meaningless on its own - how many people come to this list with a question. The second is far more important - what proportion of them go away satisfied with an answer.

You're forgetting one number: how many people refuse to use this ML ...

AND IF YOU ARE NOT A REGULAR HERE YOU WON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT THOSE STATS ARE! That's why it's your job to keep the troublemakers out. Which does NOT include the regulars having a moan in the corner! :-)

...

...

We need a central point to discuss the project and it's derivatives, before going to specialized places for the action.

For the Project, there is opensuse-project@

For technical topics, there is opensuse-factory@

Those the non-specialized places. Not this channel - talking about things in this channel is a almost always a waste of time whenever the outcome is dependant on one of our volunteer contributors to do anything about it.

And if you know where these things are supposed to be discussed, you can point us to it - maybe we don't know where to go. Or maybe you can point them at us - that might be more effective.

...

The quicker people realise that are start engaging with the rest of our vibrant community, the better.

What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. If you want us to engage with them, maybe you should also be trying to get them to engage with us, rather than actively trying to drive them away!>

...

Please, stop being so stuck in your old ways.

We're cynical greybeards - we've seen it all before.

Well, at 57 years old, I'm a greybeard too. And it's never occurred to me that I've seen it all before, because I haven't.

We've learnt by BITTER experience that usually "new == WORSE". I've got a magazine in front of me right now that says "ditch these dangerous old unsupported apps" (including Picasa). For Picasa, we're supposed to move to the online Google Photos. My internet is unreliable. When it works (admittedly most of the day, just not in the evening when I want it) it is running pretty close to the maximum theoretical speed, which gives me an upload speed of about 0.5 MBit. At 30 MBYTE per photo, how long is that going to take me to upload a day's shoot of, say 100 photos? That's before Google Photos complains that my photos are far too high a resolution for it to cope with. WE HAVE A REASON FOR BEING CYNICAL.

Please, will YOU ask yourself, whether what you want is achievable. If you want this to be a support group, then one way or another you are going to have to pay for it. You can either pay people hard cash to provide said support, or you can provide a COMMUNITY AREA where greybeards, devs, etc etc LIKE to hang out. There's no other way round it. And by objecting to what WE want to discuss, you are NOT creating that nice community area.

Let me give you an example of which I have personal experience. I was on a - not that noisy - technical mailing list. Maybe 100-200 messages a week, mostly tech, that every now and then veered off into totally irrelevant chit-chat. The powers that be decided that this chit-chat was putting people off, and tried to force it off into its own list. The chit-chat was maybe 1/3 the list volume, probably a bit less. The problem was yes it did kill the chit-chat as planned. But it killed the tech list too - the drop in tech volume was immediate and obvious. I'm now on THREE lists that get maybe one thread a week between them!

Cheers, Wol

-- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

jdd@dodin.org wrote:

Le 30/10/2017 à 18:52, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :

...

Top posting intentionally, to make clear this is from me as one of the Forums Team members.

and it's OK.

I just wanted to say three things:

* I agree with you that this list should be moderated

* when a thread derives, it's not always for a bad reason and is sometime useful. Moderation should stop flames.

Maybe I'm just quick to use 'ignore thread', but as far as I can see, there aren't very many situations of that kind that call for moderation. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (6.4°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - your free DNS host, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Mon, Oct 30, 2017 at 3:12 PM, michael norman wrote:

On 10/30/2017 06:29 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...

jdd@dodin.org wrote:

...

Le 30/10/2017 à 18:52, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :

...

Top posting intentionally, to make clear this is from me as one of the Forums Team members.

and it's OK.

I just wanted to say three things:

* I agree with you that this list should be moderated

* when a thread derives, it's not always for a bad reason and is sometime useful. Moderation should stop flames.

Maybe I'm just quick to use 'ignore thread', but as far as I can see, there aren't very many situations of that kind that call for moderation.

I distrust the idea of moderation per se, it presumes some sort of greater wisdom and usually ends up assuming the moderator/s have that wisdom. My experience of this list is that eventually it polices itself known trolls get found out and OT comment usually gets filtered out by list members. That to me is the community that makes this list worthwhile.

We are told to get up to date and use Facebook or Twitter. I won't use either of those "platforms" for anything, if that makes me a dinosaur so be it.

For me if you kill this list you kill what I think of as openSUSE.

I occasionally use Facebook and Twitter, but I agree that the mailing lists are the heart and soul of what I consider the openSUSE community. Twitter in particular is a total waste for anything beyond sound bites. It's designed to not allow meaningful expression of thoughts. Greg -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/10/17 20:02, Per Jessen wrote:

...

My experience of this list is that eventually it polices itself known

...

trolls get found out and OT comment usually gets filtered out by list members. That to me is the community that makes this list worthwhile.

I also believe in the list policing itself. I do not believe the bans we've seen were correct, fair or needed.

I get the impression it was old hands being booted off. That means you're probably right. About the ONLY thing that should get people kicked out is abusive behaviour, but that really does need *immediate* action. Which is why moderators need to be part of the group, because they can tell the difference between a new guy coming in and causing trouble, and an old hand overstepping the line. (Unfortunately, somebody out to cause trouble can make many people leave before the majority are confident to step up and take action. We need people who are given the responsibility and authority to nip that stuff in the bud :-( Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

jdd@dodin.org wrote:

Le 30/10/2017 à 21:10, Wols Lists a écrit :

...

I get the impression it was old hands being booted off. That means you're probably right. About the ONLY thing that should get people kicked out is abusive behaviour, but that really does need *immediate* action.

moderation don't need to ban (except on last resort), but stopping a thread can be, making any notice privately can be also

Right, and that moderation we already have. Just not specifically delegated to anyone, but it is free for anyone to intervene with "hold it, aren't you guys going too far?" -- Per Jessen, Zürich (4.4°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2017-10-30 at 22:30 +0200, ellanios82 wrote:

On 30/10/17 22:10, Wols Lists wrote:

...

I get the impression it was old hands being booted off.

 ~ guess "Linda" knew a thing or two

And she contributed. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln7EOoACgkQtTMYHG2NR9UquQCeIQbLj0ziGzh99g3I3rDVHQ8U q9sAnjLxdZnXPa2ssdYjjWGpIDC+KAGO =IF2Q -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2017-10-30 at 21:02 +0100, Per Jessen wrote:

michael norman wrote:

...

On 10/30/2017 06:29 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...

jdd@dodin.org wrote:

...

Le 30/10/2017 à 18:52, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink a écrit :

...

Top posting intentionally, to make clear this is from me as one of the Forums Team members.

and it's OK.

I just wanted to say three things:

* I agree with you that this list should be moderated

* when a thread derives, it's not always for a bad reason and is sometime useful. Moderation should stop flames.

Maybe I'm just quick to use 'ignore thread', but as far as I can see, there aren't very many situations of that kind that call for moderation.

I distrust the idea of moderation per se, it presumes some sort of greater wisdom and usually ends up assuming the moderator/s have that wisdom.

Agree.

...

My experience of this list is that eventually it polices itself known trolls get found out and OT comment usually gets filtered out by list members. That to me is the community that makes this list worthwhile.

I also believe in the list policing itself. I do not believe the bans we've seen were correct, fair or needed.

...

For me if you kill this list you kill what I think of as openSUSE.

As I described yesterday, this list only represents 0.95% of the collected openSUSE communities, so it really is insignificant.

I agree to all. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln7EEQACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WdYQCdE9W9rB/sss+ZAQGatCrmqiwf rsMAoJG/fkwys4x+2IQKcZxl1jQD+w7R =7RMs -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

michael norman composed on 2017-10-30 19:12 (UTC):

I distrust the idea of moderation per se, it presumes some sort of greater wisdom and usually ends up assuming the moderator/s have that wisdom. My experience of this list is that eventually it polices itself known trolls get found out and OT comment usually gets filtered out by list members. That to me is the community that makes this list worthwhile.

+1

We are told to get up to date and use Facebook or Twitter. I won't use either of those "platforms" for anything, if that makes me a dinosaur so be it.

The nicest way I know to describe "social media" is monumental time sewer. This I think is entirely apt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk TEDxTysons "Quit Social Media".

For me if you kill this list you kill what I think of as openSUSE.

+1 -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Tuesday, 2017-10-31 at 00:15 -0400, Felix Miata wrote:

michael norman composed on 2017-10-30 19:12 (UTC):

...

I distrust the idea of moderation per se, it presumes some sort of greater wisdom and usually ends up assuming the moderator/s have that wisdom. My experience of this list is that eventually it polices itself known trolls get found out and OT comment usually gets filtered out by list members. That to me is the community that makes this list worthwhile.

+1

...

We are told to get up to date and use Facebook or Twitter. I won't use either of those "platforms" for anything, if that makes me a dinosaur so be it.

The nicest way I know to describe "social media" is monumental time sewer. This I think is entirely apt: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3E7hkPZ-HTk TEDxTysons "Quit Social Media".

...

For me if you kill this list you kill what I think of as openSUSE.

+1

Agreed. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln7EZUACgkQtTMYHG2NR9V+zgCeJCvDjXilsRhvrMu9D5sbxrMg 8SoAn3cLMUN8l/14WQDDZffo4fBV7Kl3 =9QPg -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/10/17 23:55, Anton Aylward wrote:

On 30/10/17 02:29 PM, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Maybe I'm just quick to use 'ignore thread', but as far as I can see, there aren't very many situations of that kind that call for moderation.

On most lists I'm on the regulars are prone to advise when others bitch and moan about content and trolls to shrug it off and use the delete key. aka 'ker-plonk': delete by individual

The 'ignore thread' is BIG delete key :-)

If your mail reader isn't up to this then get a new one.

I use Thunderbird, which has message filters which I use to file my emails under the various mailing lists to which they belong. I'm sorely tempted to create a rule called "kill file" and put most of the @opensuse addresses posting to this list in it ... :-) My previous mail client had a proper kill file. Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

...

As I said, you need to be the jovial Mine Host. Your job is to welcome people and speak softly but carry a big stick.

May I suggest the following rules: 1) Try not to take offence. 2) DO NOT intentionally give offence 3) Help the noobs

Having read the ML for months now, reading the way the board ( chosen by members ) has been addressed ...... tsk.

The members are probably responding in kind. Besides, does that Board warrant any special kid gloves? Most of what is heard from the Board is from yourself or Richard, the other members are only heard very occasionally.

...

The best hangouts are those where you don't notice the bouncers are doing their job. You should quietly reminding the regulars if they step over the line. You should be looking out for people who are out to cause trouble. And if the regulars are raucous in the background, let them get on with it.

There are ONLY TWO metrics by which this group should be judged. The first is pretty meaningless on its own - how many people come to this list with a question. The second is far more important - what proportion of them go away satisfied with an answer.

You're forgetting one number: how many people refuse to use this ML

We don't know that number. This claim seems to stem from your own source of information? I've never met or heard from any. I can check the server logs for addresses that have subscribed, then unsubscribed within one/two/three weeks, that might give us something factual. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (6.1°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/10/17 03:17 PM, Wol's lists wrote:

Do they refuse to use THIS list? Or do they refuse to use ANY mailing list (just like I refuse to go anywhere near facebook).

I know quite a few people who use openSUSE; and quite a few more that use various flavours of Linux. NONE, absolutely NONE of them subscribe to this list or other vendor lists. They may ask questions of specific forums, get answers then go away, but they aren't regular subscribers. Neither do they subscribe to Facebook or Twitter for any Linux group, if and when they do. A couple use G+, but don't subscribe to openSuse or other Linux groups; one uses LinkedIn now that it has absorbed that discussion site, what was it, Pulse or something. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

ellanios82 wrote:

On 30/10/17 19:52, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

...

Compare factory@ to opensuse@ ....

On Tumbleweed matters , when a noob asks a TW question on factory@ : one should not be surprised to meet much rudeness.

TW is a difficult one to place - it is a regular openSUSE distro, so support ought to be on this list. However, support for TW is largely non-existent on this list, hence people divert to opensuse-factory. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (5.8°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Patrick Shanahan wrote:

* Per Jessen [10-30-17 16:08]:

...

ellanios82 wrote:

...

On 30/10/17 19:52, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

...

Compare factory@ to opensuse@ ....

On Tumbleweed matters , when a noob asks a TW question on factory@ : one should not be surprised to meet much rudeness.

TW is a difficult one to place - it is a regular openSUSE distro, so support ought to be on this list. However, support for TW is largely non-existent on this list, hence people divert to opensuse-factory.

if you consider that tw and factory are nearly synonymous, opensuse-factory is the *natural* place for tw discussion. most or nearly all of Leap is first used in tw/factory.

I agree, but -factory is a less than optimal place for user support. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (4.4°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 10/30/2017 05:52 PM, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

Top posting intentionally, to make clear this is from me as one of the Forums Team members.

Op maandag 30 oktober 2017 17:15:45 CET schreef Anthony Youngman:

...

On 29/10/17 22:41, Richard Brown wrote:

...

On 29 October 2017 at 17:52, jdd@dodin.org wrote:

...

Le 29/10/2017 à 16:31, Richard Brown a écrit :

...

- 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+

yes and? do you really *discuss* openSUSE on Facebook or Google+? this only mean many people once got a look.

Yes, the openSUSE Group has regular discussions. Today someone is discussing issues they've had with upgrades, yesterday someone was discussing Tumbleweed on an iMac (10 comments in the thread - 58 reactions (eg. +1, Happy Faces, etc)), openSUSE from the Windows Store, (10 comments in the thread, 25 reactions), fstab questions, UEFI questions from a new member (I do like how Facebook highlights new joiners of the group)

It's a very active list

...

...

- 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums

how many active at the same time? The forum itself say "Active Members 1,728", so the hole forum is no more active than this very list!!

1728 'active' means 1728 people posted in the last month

Flippin' 'eck! That's 600 posts a DAY! How do you keep on top of THAT!?

With a dozen of people moderating the forums. Yes, 600 posts a day, and even more in the past ( #posts has decreased where #users has increased ).

...

...

If we were to judge opensuse@opensuse.org by the same measurement, there are under 300 active members of this list. The forums are over 4x more active than this list.

It's not about activity, it's about content. We (the Forums Team) do not allow threads to dwell and drift in all directions.

...

And how many people on those forums read ALL of the posts?

Like said: a dozen of (global ) moderators. That communicate through their own ( non public ) area in the forums.

...

Okay, I only read a fraction of the posts here, but I have a far better chance of keeping on top of everything here, than I would in some of those other places.

On top of what? We're talking about a relatively small group of active subscribers.

...

...

Of all the openSUSE forums, social media outlets, etc I monitor, opensuse@ is the only one repeatedly shrinking in size. Even our more specialised, technical lists are growing at a rate comparable to every other part of the project. And yet opensuse@ consistently fails to reflect the growth in the Project as a whole.

Because the Powers That Be seem to want a Unicorn? I've been thinking, and I get the impression that this list will NEVER be able to satisfy what the powers that be want, because what they want is impossible.

The Powers That Be ? Come on. Well, OK, let's take that path. Compare factory@ to opensuse@ ....

...

...

...

I agree the tone of this very list is pretty often harsh, but you do nothing to make it smoother, on the contrary. If we should consider yours arguments, all of us here should resign and go to an other distribution.

All? No, I most certainly do not want that

Neither do I. But be fair, almost every thread in opensuse@ drifts away from the OP. Often even after the OP has indicated that his issue has been solved.

...

...

I would be pleased though if some people left, yes. Specifically those who complain and in the same breadth admit unwillingness to do anything to help openSUSE resolve that which they complain about.

You mean people like me? Why yes, I do moan about certain things *SUSE, and I'm unlikely to do anything about it myself. I don't have a clue about web design, how am I supposed to do anything about the website?

Oh - and as other people on this list will attest, I DO do stuff for SUSE. It's just that I do it upstream, and actually I'm surprised at the regular bouquets I seem to get for it (I shouldn't be, it's a very visible role. Bit unfair on the people behind the scenes, though).

...

I don't think it's unfair to wish for that. In a volunteer organisation, having complainers hang around and not doing anything positive to remedy the problems they perceive are just a drain on the motivation of all the other volunteers.

Depends. A VERY BIG depends.

...

If you were working on something on your spare time, and knew there was a mailinglist full of grumpy old people who dislikes the majority of what you were working on, would you be subscribed to this list? would you want to talk to them? would you encourage others to talk to them?

This list has an image problem.

I concur here. Too many people who refuse to use the ML for reasons including terms like "incrowd", "abomination", "bullying", "aggressive" .

...

...

It's the responsibility of the regular residents of this list to correct that image problem > I cannot correct it, because I downright agree with the negative perception so many people have on this list.

Not least down to the powers that be wanting a Unicorn! I'll explain. You described this list as a "community support list". Is that a "community SUPPORT list", or a "COMMUNITY support list". Because if what you want is a "community SUPPORT list", you might as well shut the whole lot down right now. Because the only way you are going to get a SUPPORT forum, is to PAY people to provide that support ...

Sheer nonsense, none of the Forums Team is payed to do the work, not by SUSE, not by others,

...

...

And you can see how I am regularly treated on this list to see how I might have come to that conclusion ;)

Well, I'm sorry, but my impression of you is a Jobsworth who thinks he owns the place. Harsh but true. So what do you expect? Sorry.

But if on the other hand, you want a COMMUNITY support list, you need to encourage said community. So what if you own the place - you need to be the jovial "mine host" (by all means keep a baseball bat conveniently hidden under the bar to keep order!).

From almost dead back to a vibrant community and the Board would not have encouraged said community ? Now, as a board member, we encouraged community members to step up and take over our infrastructure. Where what now is the Heroes team is doing a very fine job.

...

...

If people are not prepared to address that image problem directly, I will continue to try and focus the attention of this list on its official intended function as a support mailinglist, in the hope that it such a focus might, in time, bring some life and growth back into this list.

IT WON'T. IT WILL KILL IT STONE DEAD. Is this what you want? ...

Have a look at the forums. We move whatever is not on topic to Chit-chat, completely off topic to the Soapbox. Doing so makes the forums to a quite efficient knowledge base.

...

Noob: I have a problem. X doesn't work.

... crickets ... crickets

Noob: Is there anyone out there? Noob2: I'm here - I'm waiting for an answer to my problem, can't help you with yours sorry. Noob3: Me too ... Noob4: Me three ...

... crickets ... crickets

If you focus on the people ASKING for support, this list is dead. WHERE IS THAT SUPPORT GOING TO COME FROM!!!???

Could be from the same people hanging around there now. They have the knowledge.

...

If, on the other hand, you focus on the devs, the greybeards, the people WHO CAN HELP, then this list stands a chance.

It does IMHO. But it requires that not every thread dwells in all directions, subject changes more often than not.

...

STOP DRIVING THE PEOPLE WHO CAN HELP AWAY! You actively told us that was what you were doing!!!

I could as easily shout "Start making this list one that noobs can find their answers. People search mailing lists archives for solutions and have to go through endless threads with extensive posts.

...

As I said, you need to be the jovial Mine Host. Your job is to welcome people and speak softly but carry a big stick.

May I suggest the following rules: 1) Try not to take offence. 2) DO NOT intentionally give offence 3) Help the noobs

Having read the ML for months now, reading the way the board ( chosen by members ) has been addressed ...... tsk.

...

The best hangouts are those where you don't notice the bouncers are doing their job. You should quietly reminding the regulars if they step over the line. You should be looking out for people who are out to cause trouble. And if the regulars are raucous in the background, let them get on with it.

There are ONLY TWO metrics by which this group should be judged. The first is pretty meaningless on its own - how many people come to this list with a question. The second is far more important - what proportion of them go away satisfied with an answer.

You're forgetting one number: how many people refuse to use this ML ...

...

AND IF YOU ARE NOT A REGULAR HERE YOU WON'T HAVE A CLUE WHAT THOSE STATS ARE! That's why it's your job to keep the troublemakers out. Which does NOT include the regulars having a moan in the corner! :-)

...

...

We need a central point to discuss the project and it's derivatives, before going to specialized places for the action.

For the Project, there is opensuse-project@

For technical topics, there is opensuse-factory@

Those the non-specialized places. Not this channel - talking about things in this channel is a almost always a waste of time whenever the outcome is dependant on one of our volunteer contributors to do anything about it.

And if you know where these things are supposed to be discussed, you can point us to it - maybe we don't know where to go. Or maybe you can point them at us - that might be more effective.

...

The quicker people realise that are start engaging with the rest of our vibrant community, the better.

What's sauce for the goose, is sauce for the gander. If you want us to engage with them, maybe you should also be trying to get them to engage with us, rather than actively trying to drive them away!>

...

Please, stop being so stuck in your old ways.

We're cynical greybeards - we've seen it all before.

Well, at 57 years old, I'm a greybeard too. And it's never occurred to me that I've seen it all before, because I haven't.

...

We've learnt by BITTER experience that usually "new == WORSE". I've got a magazine in front of me right now that says "ditch these dangerous old unsupported apps" (including Picasa). For Picasa, we're supposed to move to the online Google Photos. My internet is unreliable. When it works (admittedly most of the day, just not in the evening when I want it) it is running pretty close to the maximum theoretical speed, which gives me an upload speed of about 0.5 MBit. At 30 MBYTE per photo, how long is that going to take me to upload a day's shoot of, say 100 photos? That's before Google Photos complains that my photos are far too high a resolution for it to cope with. WE HAVE A REASON FOR BEING CYNICAL.

Please, will YOU ask yourself, whether what you want is achievable. If you want this to be a support group, then one way or another you are going to have to pay for it. You can either pay people hard cash to provide said support, or you can provide a COMMUNITY AREA where greybeards, devs, etc etc LIKE to hang out. There's no other way round it. And by objecting to what WE want to discuss, you are NOT creating that nice community area.

Let me give you an example of which I have personal experience. I was on a - not that noisy - technical mailing list. Maybe 100-200 messages a week, mostly tech, that every now and then veered off into totally irrelevant chit-chat. The powers that be decided that this chit-chat was putting people off, and tried to force it off into its own list. The chit-chat was maybe 1/3 the list volume, probably a bit less. The problem was yes it did kill the chit-chat as planned. But it killed the tech list too - the drop in tech volume was immediate and obvious. I'm now on THREE lists that get maybe one thread a week between them!

Cheers, Wol

Somebody is protesting too much. Unreadable message. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

...

...

This list has an image problem.

This stands out but I can't fathom who wrote it. Dave P

-- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/10/17 22:06, Wols Lists wrote:

Do they find it a NICE PLACE to be?

 - Indeed : Best Recipe : Jovial , Welcoming Mein-Host  { Bouncers well out of sight } ........  regards -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/10/2017 22:06, Wols Lists wrote:

On 30/10/17 17:52, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

...

...

Not least down to the powers that be wanting a Unicorn! I'll explain.

...

You described this list as a "community support list". Is that a "community SUPPORT list", or a "COMMUNITY support list". Because if what you want is a "community SUPPORT list", you might as well shut the whole lot down right now. Because the only way you are going to get a SUPPORT forum, is to PAY people to provide that support ...

...

Sheer nonsense, none of the Forums Team is payed to do the work, not by SUSE, not by others,

If you read my post, you'll notice I didn't only mean "given cash" :-)

Do they ENJOY being on the forums? Do they find it a NICE PLACE to be?

Personally I would absolutely hate it. I'd much rather be on a mailing list :-)

At the end of the day people will only go there if they get something out of it. If the list is PURELY SUPPORT, I don't imagine you'll find many people prepared to hang out there, in the hope that something interesting will turn up. Make this list a support-only forum, and you'll get crickets.

The PURPOSE of the list is to give people support. The FUNCTION of the list is to give greybeards a place to hang out. The JOB of management is to keep the place pleasant, clean and tidy, and keep the trolls and yobs at bay. That way, everyone wins :-)

(Which is why I'm in favour of bouncers, sorry moderators, but they should NOT normally be noticed.)

Cheers, Wol

I think you're right, I'm 63 but I don't have a beard nor much hair. I think the youngsters use forums and social media, it's their way. Myself, I have a twitter account created when I had a problem with my mobile provider but I never use it. I have a Facebook account but with about 6 friends, mainly to keep in touch with my daughter in the UK and I still get too much notification mail. I use the microchip forum for work and the kicad one for work and because I maintain kicad on openSUSE. We oldies need this list. Dave P -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 30/10/17 12:15 PM, Anthony Youngman wrote:

We're cynical greybeards - we've seen it all before. We've learnt by BITTER experience that usually "new == WORSE". I've got a magazine in front of me right now that says "ditch these dangerous old unsupported apps" (including Picasa). For Picasa, we're supposed to move to the online Google Photos. My internet is unreliable. When it works (admittedly most of the day, just not in the evening when I want it) it is running pretty close to the maximum theoretical speed, which gives me an upload speed of about 0.5 MBit. At 30 MBYTE per photo, how long is that going to take me to upload a day's shoot of, say 100 photos? That's before Google Photos complains that my photos are far too high a resolution for it to cope with. WE HAVE A REASON FOR BEING CYNICAL.

As a regular reader you may recall my references to the "Closet of Anxieties", the corporate closet of equipment that works just fine with Linux but was abandoned because of Microsoft upgrades and local tax/depreciation policies. Waste, waste, waste! Rescue it, put Linux on it, donate it to charities like the Feral Cat Rescue Society. Or use it myself. As a regular reader you might recall my problems printing a LO document; part of the problem was that the embedded image was from a screen shot. The flip side of this is that I just bought a camera that has "only" a 5Mpxl sensor (as opposed to the 24Mpxl and 54Mpxl ones that are filling the on-line photo magazine review pages) but has a great lens. And at 5Mpxl that's more than the resolution of a FULL screen screen-shot. And it blows up to a 10x8 just fine. Compared to the content, the composition of a lot I see on-line, Flkr, elsewhere...

Please, will YOU ask yourself, whether what you want is achievable. If you want this to be a support group, then one way or another you are going to have to pay for it. You can either pay people hard cash to provide said support, or you can provide a COMMUNITY AREA where greybeards, devs, etc etc LIKE to hang out. There's no other way round it. And by objecting to what WE want to discuss, you are NOT creating that nice community area.

This IS a community. The regular subscribers make it a valuable resource that advertisers would pay millions to have access to. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 29/10/17 17:15, Felix Miata wrote:

Right, from fixing what ain't obviously broke by replacing with scratch rewrites, whole new paradigms, and their attendant new bugs and feature losses. New does not equate to improved. New does often equate to unlearning ingrained processes impeding learning unappreciated new.

Ooh new! Shiny! Us greybeards have been around long enough to have been burnt plenty of times by such stupidity. And yet each new generation, like lemmings, charges down the same road laughing at the *experience* of the generation before, believing that they won't fall into the traps that have caught ALL their predecessors. Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Richard Brown wrote:

We know that this list has 1242 subscribers

This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list - 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community - 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+ - 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums - 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter

In the grand scheme of things, this mailinglist, at best, represents a small fraction of the community.

Which surely begs the question - why is the odd bit of complaining, criticism, negativity or long-winded offtopic discussions much of a problem when the list is such an insignificantly small fraction. I mean, given your numbers, this list represents 0.95% of the openSUSE community, so why are we even having this discussion?? -- Per Jessen, Zürich (10.2°C) http://www.dns24.ch/ - free dynamic DNS, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:31:55 +0100 Richard Brown wrote:

As someone who tries his best to keep a broad overview of the feedback we get from all of the above channels, it's fair to say that repeatedly this relatively small list, is repeatedly the outlyier when it comes to feedback. When the feedback for something is overwhelmingly positive from most quarters, it's not unusual for this list to be full of angry critique or negativity. When the feedback for something is overwhelmingly negative from most quarters, leading to the Project making serious changes as a result, it is not unusual for this list to be full of angry critique or negativity fighting for things to stay as they are.

I'm not judging whether this list or the thousands of other people who actively discuss the project in alternatives to this list are right or wrong. Everyone is entitled to their opinion.

Usenet has always been a rough and tumble place, and you have to get used to that. I generally ignore any thread that that gets over to the right hand side of my message list. I know it'll probably be more noise than signal. But this ML has been where I've learnt most of what I know about Linux. Either by asking questions or lurking. I feel that a lot of the old-timers (even on a bad day!) are like old friends, and I'd certainly buy them a beer if we ever met. Bob -- Bob Williams System: Linux 4.4.92-31-default Distro: openSUSE 42.3 (x86_64) Desktop: KDE Frameworks: 5.32.0, Qt: 5.6.2 and Plasma: 5.8.7

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:31:55 +0100 Richard Brown wrote:

We know that this list has 1242 subscribers

This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list - 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community - 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+ - 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums - 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter

As I've mentioned before, I have no intention of 'doing' social media, which rules out reddit, facebook, google & twitter for me, but I have been a member of the forums for a number of years. I hardly ever go there because there's just too much surface area. It's a place I dip into if I'm looking for something specific, or in the past if I felt like answering some questions. Now my general approach to managing forums is to add their RSS feeds to my RSS aggregator, so two days ago I went to the forum and asked my aggregator to search for an RSS feed and it found https://forums.opensuse.org/external.php?type=RSS2 so I added that. But I went back to my aggregator today and the RSS feed hasn't been updated. So how do I follow the forums? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Op dinsdag 31 oktober 2017 21:11:11 CET schreef Per Jessen:

Dave Howorth wrote:

...

On Sun, 29 Oct 2017 16:31:55 +0100

Richard Brown wrote:

...

We know that this list has 1242 subscribers

This compares to the following other communities, each of which have a broader "general discussions about openSUSE" topic by design, other than the intended "support" focus of this list

- 4814 subscribers to the openSUSE reddit community - 14.8 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE group on facebook - 29.5 _thousand_ followers of the openSUSE group on Google+ - 38 _thousand_ members of the openSUSE forums - 56.2 _thousand_ subscribers of the openSUSE feed on twitter

As I've mentioned before, I have no intention of 'doing' social media, which rules out reddit, facebook, google & twitter for me, but I have been a member of the forums for a number of years. I hardly ever go there because there's just too much surface area. It's a place I dip into if I'm looking for something specific, or in the past if I felt like answering some questions.

Now my general approach to managing forums is to add their RSS feeds to my RSS aggregator, so two days ago I went to the forum and asked my aggregator to search for an RSS feed and it found https://forums.opensuse.org/external.php?type=RSS2 so I added that. But I went back to my aggregator today and the RSS feed hasn't been updated. So how do I follow the forums?

AFAIR, the fora are also bi-directional gated to a news-server - maybe news://forums.opensuse.org, I'm really not sure. Otherwise open a report (admin@o.o) on the failing RSS function.

That's right. I activated kaggregator yesterday and ever since the forums feeds drop in like they should. Another way of accessing the forums is through NNTP. -- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Am 01.11.2017 um 14:47 schrieb Per Jessen:

The correct server is news://nntp.opensuse.org

...are knode and leafnode still around? cheers MH -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Mathias Homann wrote:

Am 01.11.2017 um 14:47 schrieb Per Jessen:

...

The correct server is news://nntp.opensuse.org

...are knode and leafnode still around?

I'm writing this using knode, but I don't think there's a knode for Leap anymore. There is also pax, and TB can read newsgroups too. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (9.8°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - dedicated server rental in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 01 Nov 2017 16:48:18 +0100 Per Jessen wrote:

Mathias Homann wrote:

...

Am 01.11.2017 um 14:47 schrieb Per Jessen:

...

The correct server is news://nntp.opensuse.org

...are knode and leafnode still around?

I'm writing this using knode, but I don't think there's a knode for Leap anymore. There is also pax, and TB can read newsgroups too.

claws reads newsgroups as well. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On Wed, 1 Nov 2017, Per Jessen wrote:

Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

...

Another way of accessing the forums is through NNTP.

The correct server is news://nntp.opensuse.org (https://forums.opensuse.org/faq.php?faq=novfor#faq_nntp)

This FAQ is now out of date. Is there are more up to date description of NNTP access to openSUSE forums suitable for n00bs? I'm trying to use pan: I've been reading the pan manual at http://pan.rebelbase.com/manual/html/pan-getstart.html which says that by typing pan I should see lots of newsgroups. I see none. Setting up news://nntp.opensuse.org:119 in pan produces nothing. Are there ports to be opened in the firewall? I'm surprised to read in the FAQ << 4 - Reader Setup: ... These servers are on port 119, do not require authentication >> There must be some security somewhere. Any help or pointer to help would be much appreciated. Roger -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Roger Price wrote:

On Wed, 1 Nov 2017, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

...

Another way of accessing the forums is through NNTP.

The correct server is news://nntp.opensuse.org (https://forums.opensuse.org/faq.php?faq=novfor#faq_nntp)

This FAQ is now out of date. Is there are more up to date description of NNTP access to openSUSE forums suitable for n00bs? I'm trying to use pan: I've been reading the pan manual at http://pan.rebelbase.com/manual/html/pan-getstart.html which says that by typing pan I should see lots of newsgroups. I see none.

You probably need to refresh the list of groups. -- Per Jessen, Zürich (15.4°C) http://www.hostsuisse.com/ - virtual servers, made in Switzerland. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2017-10-29 at 16:31 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:

On 29 October 2017 at 15:59, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

In the current case (which I did not initiate), posting in an "obscure" contributor mail list would not be seen by the community at large. And it is the community which is saying they don't like the home page.

If you think that opensuse@opensuse.org represents the 'community at large' you are sorely, sorely, painfully, dismally, mistaken.

I never said that. Also, I consider part of the comunity the "just users". You obviously despise them, as you despise many people on this list, judging your words. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln7DekACgkQtTMYHG2NR9XegQCfRt+YWVn6D5tqHiG7vvrntMX/ Z/EAni8nvq/0nOEkgV1zLgV5wfsXv4wk =Sn/f -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 28 October 2017 at 19:35, Wols Lists wrote:

I want ONE place, that's "all about SuSE". And this list, to me, seems *supportive* of SuSE.

I snipped the rest of your email because I want to let it peculate before I decide if I want to respond to it or not, but the above needs to be addressed - the openSUSE Project is not SuSE - the openSUSE Project is an independent, contribution led, community founded in 2005 - the openSUSE Project is sponsored by many sponsors, and has contributors from many corporations, including SUSE - SUSE is a company selling commercial Linux products, founded in 1992 - SUSE has not been called SuSE since 2004 For more detail, feel free to flick through this slide deck - https://speakerdeck.com/sysrich/oggcamp-2017-opensuse-a-reintroduction In short - this is not a list that is 'about SuSE'. This is a support mailinglist for the openSUSE Project to provide mailinglist support to users of software developed by the openSUSE Project. Broader discussions occasionally happen and are tolerated, but as I've said in other parts of the thread, are often ineffectual when those discussions are trying to affect change, as few openSUSE contributors inhabit this list, using instead the lists for discussing contributions (-factory, -packaging, etc) Users of SUSE products should buy support from SUSE. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 29/10/17 17:00, Per Jessen wrote:

...

- SUSE has not been called SuSE since 2004

For more detail, feel free to flick through this slide deck - https://speakerdeck.com/sysrich/oggcamp-2017-opensuse-a-reintroduction Richard, do you really find it appropriate to pick on a mistake and respond with this useless sarcasm?

Actually, it WASN'T a mistake. SuSE, SLES, openSUSE, call it what you will. They're all COVERED BY ONE BIG UMBRELLA. If you're loyal to one, chances are you're loyal to all. The legal structure and personal loyalties don't necessarily tie up. My nationality is Scottish/German - now where am I going to get a Scottish passport :-) The point I was making is I've been around a LONG time! That doesn't mean you should listen to me, but it does mean you'd be stupid to dismiss me out-of-hand. Cheers, Wol -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Sunday, 2017-10-29 at 23:58 +0100, Richard Brown wrote:

On 29 October 2017 at 18:00, Per Jessen wrote:

...

Richard Brown wrote:

...

On 28 October 2017 at 19:35, Wols Lists wrote:

...

I want ONE place, that's "all about SuSE". And this list, to me, seems *supportive* of SuSE.

I snipped the rest of your email because I want to let it peculate before I decide if I want to respond to it or not, but the above needs to be addressed

- the openSUSE Project is not SuSE - the openSUSE Project is an independent, contribution led, community founded in 2005 - the openSUSE Project is sponsored by many sponsors, and has contributors from many corporations, including SUSE - SUSE is a company selling commercial Linux products, founded in 1992 - SUSE has not been called SuSE since 2004

For more detail, feel free to flick through this slide deck - https://speakerdeck.com/sysrich/oggcamp-2017-opensuse-a-reintroduction

Richard, do you really find it appropriate to pick on a mistake and respond with this useless sarcasm?

Dear Peter (or should I call you Jessie?),

When discussing someone, or something, is generally considered basic respect to refer to them correctly by their name.

I just tell them that the proper name is openSUSE and leave it there. But you can not convince people to use the new names if they don't want to, and some don't. Even if they are wrong. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln7HqIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9Xr8wCgjIsqKdHKyoVTBxR8vNXJ9cod qxoAn0opSTzZxj/WLEQk5WS06+43SUDM =S7tK -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday, 2017-11-02 at 22:21 -0000, Wols Lists wrote:

On 02/11/17 13:33, Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

I just tell them that the proper name is openSUSE and leave it there.

But you can not convince people to use the new names if they don't want to, and some don't. Even if they are wrong.

Or, having re-read my post, at least the first time it was correct.

I have been a SUSE user since SuSE 5.x :-)

Me too :-)

(Except I can't have been, if SuSE != SUSE :-)

Personally, I love the SuSE name. I don't use it because some people get somewhat pissed, so I use the modern name instead. Thus I only use SuSE when I want to stress the point that I'm talking about is old times. I hate when a company changes name. In Spanish, we have a saying: «La mona con vestido de seda mona se queda», literally "the monkey with silk dress is still a monkey", but google translates as "the cute girl in silk dress stays". - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAln7nLgACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WBAQCfSeTTkani4ZjS/8kahDz/SocJ hzYAn3+8PAv2EztYtYWIu2clOn0r0EYt =/LKv -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-11-02 23:31 (UTC+0100):

On Thursday, 2017-11-02 at 22:21 -0000, Wols Lists wrote:

...

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

...

I just tell them that the proper name is openSUSE and leave it there.

...

...

But you can not convince people to use the new names if they don't want to, and some don't. Even if they are wrong.

...

Or, having re-read my post, at least the first time it was correct.

...

I have been a SUSE user since SuSE 5.x :-)

Me too :-)

...

(Except I can't have been, if SuSE != SUSE :-)

Personally, I love the SuSE name. I don't use it because some people get somewhat pissed, so I use the modern name instead. Thus I only use SuSE when I want to stress the point that I'm talking about is old times.

It's pretty common to prefer nicks to polysyllabic names. In a written context, SuSE was a good name, openSUSE very bad. Exactly how is one supposed to write it as a first word of a sentence? That there would be any question is what makes it bad, not whatever the answer may be.

I hate when a company changes name.

+++ Always encountering a corporate rename it comes to mind desire to obscure or bury the past. Anyone else remember this one? GoldStar -> LG Electronics, Inc. I bought an LG product once before making the name change discovery: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/106-dvd-recorders-standard-def/818511-first-at... Poor design, loaded with inferior quality capacitors. I haven't bought anything branded LG since.

In Spanish, we have a saying: «La mona con vestido de seda mona se queda», literally "the monkey with silk dress is still a monkey", but google translates as "the cute girl in silk dress stays".

:-D -- "Wisdom is supreme; therefore get wisdom. Whatever else you get, get wisdom." Proverbs 4:7 (New Living Translation) Team OS/2 ** Reg. Linux User #211409 ** a11y rocks! Felix Miata *** http://fm.no-ip.com/ -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

* Carlos E. R. [11-05-17 21:37]:

El 2017-11-05 a las 20:19 -0500, Felix Miata escribió:

...

Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-11-02 23:31 (UTC+0100):

...

On Thursday, 2017-11-02 at 22:21 -0000, Wols Lists wrote:

...

Carlos E. R. wrote:

...

...

Personally, I love the SuSE name. I don't use it because some people get somewhat pissed, so I use the modern name instead. Thus I only use SuSE when I want to stress the point that I'm talking about is old times.

It's pretty common to prefer nicks to polysyllabic names. In a written context, SuSE was a good name, openSUSE very bad. Exactly how is one supposed to write it as a first word of a sentence? That there would be any question is what makes it bad, not whatever the answer may be.

Reminds me. There is an old bug with the speller in open/libre Office: it does not accept "end of sentence. openSUSE ..." as correct. I just checked: LO still corrects openSUSE to OpenSUSE.

you have the ability to correct your dictionary, don't you. -- (paka)Patrick Shanahan Plainfield, Indiana, USA @ptilopteri http://en.opensuse.org openSUSE Community Member facebook/ptilopteri Registered Linux User #207535 @ http://linuxcounter.net Photos: http://wahoo.no-ip.org/piwigo paka @ IRCnet freenode -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA256 El 2017-11-05 a las 22:04 -0500, Patrick Shanahan escribió:

* Patrick Shanahan <> [11-05-17 21:49]:

...

* Carlos E. R. <> [11-05-17 21:37]:

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El 2017-11-05 a las 20:19 -0500, Felix Miata escribió:

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Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-11-02 23:31 (UTC+0100):

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On Thursday, 2017-11-02 at 22:21 -0000, Wols Lists wrote:

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Carlos E. R. wrote:

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Personally, I love the SuSE name. I don't use it because some people get somewhat pissed, so I use the modern name instead. Thus I only use SuSE when I want to stress the point that I'm talking about is old times.

It's pretty common to prefer nicks to polysyllabic names. In a written context, SuSE was a good name, openSUSE very bad. Exactly how is one supposed to write it as a first word of a sentence? That there would be any question is what makes it bad, not whatever the answer may be.

Reminds me. There is an old bug with the speller in open/libre Office: it does not accept "end of sentence. openSUSE ..." as correct. I just checked: LO still corrects openSUSE to OpenSUSE.

you have the ability to correct your dictionary, don't you.

and after further investigation: my libreoffice oowriter says "openSUSE" is correct as is and I do not recall ever checking that before.

Try again, at the start of a sentence. My LO autocorrects it to OpenSUSE, no matter what I do. If yours doesn't, you have disabled the autocorrector as you type. - -- Cheers Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" (Minas Tirith)) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iF4EAREIAAYFAln/1mEACgkQja8UbcUWM1x7+QD/U50tbmKBVntk3iUoOaB/yUNp aTZi9M0NB4XXF0Vr8pwA/ReWWQkfhewdWpnx5mT+2HSAkyrrlR9RNlwajD4HFkjO =4nnE -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2017-11-06 at 11:55 +0100, Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink wrote:

Op maandag 6 november 2017 04:26:25 CET schreef Carlos E. R.:

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El 2017-11-05 a las 22:04 -0500, Patrick Shanahan escribió:

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* Patrick Shanahan <> [11-05-17 21:49]:

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* Carlos E. R. <> [11-05-17 21:37]:

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El 2017-11-05 a las 20:19 -0500, Felix Miata escribió:

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Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-11-02 23:31 (UTC+0100): > On Thursday, 2017-11-02 at 22:21 -0000, Wols Lists wrote: >> Carlos E. R. wrote:

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Just tried, LO says openSUSE. Even if I myseld write OpenSUSE it corrects that to openSUS, no matter whether it's the start of a sentence ( Option for capitals is on ) or in the middle. Of course this could be a localization thing,.

I just tried in a new user (USA locale. Leap 42.2). I typed "openSUSE" on the blank page, pressed [ENTER], and instantly, the word was converted to OpenSUSE. I correct the first "O" to "o", go to the end of the word, type a space, and again the word is capitalized. It is a rule, the first word of a sentence must be capitalized, and at least in English, there are no exceptions, no method that I know to add exceptions. In fact, "OpenSUSE" appears underlined in red, the speller says there is an error. One of the suggestions is in fact "openSUSE", and holds as long as you don't press "space" or [enter] close to the word. If there is an intermediate space the autocorrector does not trigger. This has been known since ever. I have not tried recently on a new user with Spanish locale, but I could. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAloAbXoACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WCywCfY77bnoJUEn5MOl/dxZQSX9jO A9EAn1ZqmUE2G/wLdpVyRbj+NOKTQK0e =t+UU -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2017-11-06 at 15:34 +0100, gumb wrote:

On 06/11/17 15:11, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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I just tried in a new user (USA locale. Leap 42.2). I typed "openSUSE" on the blank page, pressed [ENTER], and instantly, the word was converted to OpenSUSE. I correct the first "O" to "o", go to the end of the word, type a space, and again the word is capitalized. It is a rule, the first word of a sentence must be capitalized, and at least in English, there are no exceptions, no method that I know to add exceptions.

In fact, "OpenSUSE" appears underlined in red, the speller says there is an error. One of the suggestions is in fact "openSUSE", and holds as long as you don't press "space" or [enter] close to the word. If there is an intermediate space the autocorrector does not trigger.

This has been known since ever.

I have not tried recently on a new user with Spanish locale, but I could.

I think you have to do a Ctrl-Z (or whatever the Undo shortcut is in your locale) straight after the autocorrect occurs to effectively tell it to accept what you've typed.

Yes, but that first deletes the new line or the space you typed. As soon as you add the space, because you need to separate words, you know, it uppercases the word again. The trick is to add the space or newline, let the autocorrection do the thing, then go back to retype, then go to the end of the line taking care not to press [space] or [enter] right close to the "openSUSE" word. It is more tricky on a calc sheet. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAloAdiIACgkQtTMYHG2NR9U45wCfUnmU9Zr4NdRWRHc5fp4gTOJ7 3vAAn3sAX34ApAVH4c4yogfNTarQG09K =38X4 -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Monday, 2017-11-06 at 15:05 -0000, Wols Lists wrote:

On 06/11/17 14:48, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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Yes, but that first deletes the new line or the space you typed. As soon as you add the space, because you need to separate words, you know, it uppercases the word again.

I thought that had been fixed. If it hasn't, it's a bug imho. Any wordprocessor should treat the user's input and the autocorrect as two *separate* edits to be undone. I hate to say it, but Word gets this right.

Yes, you are right, it is a bug.

Dunno about WordPerfect, but iirc that had the rule "only one autocorrect is allowed to fire. Check the user dictionary first", so anything with a weird spelling, capitalisation, whatever, you just put in the user dictionary to correct it to itself - eg "MSc == MSc". The exception to this was that if the *dictionary* entry was all lower case, it referred only to the spelling and not the capitalisation/grammar etc.

Yes, this would have to go to a capitalization dictionary. But notice that such exceptions normally signal that a word is a proper name and must be always capitalized, whereas the "openSUSE" case is the exact reverse. - -- Cheers, Carlos E. R. (from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" at Telcontar) -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v2 iEYEARECAAYFAloAeywACgkQtTMYHG2NR9WTKgCfcStAKvYQHiqh+g62eoF2hvOp jiIAn1EOnkJzx3K+9AM9pJG/5hqr+y6n =o5kZ -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 11/06/2017 09:48 AM, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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On 06/11/17 15:11, Carlos E. R. wrote:

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I just tried in a new user (USA locale. Leap 42.2). I typed "openSUSE" on the blank page, pressed [ENTER], and instantly, the word was converted to OpenSUSE. I correct the first "O" to "o", go to the end of the word, type a space, and again the word is capitalized. It is a rule, the first word of a sentence must be capitalized, and at least in English, there are no exceptions, no method that I know to add exceptions.

In fact, "OpenSUSE" appears underlined in red, the speller says

On Monday, 2017-11-06 at 15:34 +0100, gumb wrote: there is

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an error. One of the suggestions is in fact "openSUSE", and holds as long as you don't press "space" or [enter] close to the word. If there is an intermediate space the autocorrector does not trigger.

This has been known since ever.

I have not tried recently on a new user with Spanish locale, but I could.

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I think you have to do a Ctrl-Z (or whatever the Undo shortcut is in your locale) straight after the autocorrect occurs to effectively tell it to accept what you've typed.

Yes, but that first deletes the new line or the space you typed. As soon as you add the space, because you need to separate words, you know, it uppercases the word again.

The trick is to add the space or newline, let the autocorrection do the thing, then go back to retype, then go to the end of the line taking care not to press [space] or [enter] right close to the "openSUSE" word.

It is more tricky on a calc sheet.

I just tried it. It only happens when openSUSE is the first word in the sentence, where you'd normally have a capital on a word. -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Op maandag 6 november 2017 11:55:44 CET schreef Knurpht - Gertjan Lettink:

Op maandag 6 november 2017 04:26:25 CET schreef Carlos E. R.:

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El 2017-11-05 a las 22:04 -0500, Patrick Shanahan escribió:

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* Patrick Shanahan <> [11-05-17 21:49]:

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* Carlos E. R. <> [11-05-17 21:37]:

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El 2017-11-05 a las 20:19 -0500, Felix Miata escribió:

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Carlos E. R. composed on 2017-11-02 23:31 (UTC+0100): > On Thursday, 2017-11-02 at 22:21 -0000, Wols Lists wrote: >> Carlos E. R. wrote: > Personally, I love the SuSE name. I don't use it because some people > get > somewhat pissed, so I use the modern name instead. Thus I only use > SuSE > when I want to stress the point that I'm talking about is old times.

It's pretty common to prefer nicks to polysyllabic names. In a written context, SuSE was a good name, openSUSE very bad. Exactly how is one supposed to write it as a first word of a sentence? That there would be any question is what makes it bad, not whatever the answer may be.

Reminds me. There is an old bug with the speller in open/libre Office: it does not accept "end of sentence. openSUSE ..." as correct. I just checked: LO still corrects openSUSE to OpenSUSE.

you have the ability to correct your dictionary, don't you.

and after further investigation: my libreoffice oowriter says "openSUSE" is correct as is and I do not recall ever checking that before.

Try again, at the start of a sentence. My LO autocorrects it to OpenSUSE, no matter what I do. If yours doesn't, you have disabled the autocorrector as you type.

-- Cheers

Carlos E. R.

(from openSUSE 42.2 x86_64 "Malachite" (Minas Tirith))

Just tried, LO says openSUSE. Even if I myseld write OpenSUSE it corrects that to openSUS, no matter whether it's the start of a sentence ( Option for capitals is on ) or in the middle. Of course this could be a localization thing,. Correcting myself. Had "whilst typing" off for the Capital.

-- Gertjan Lettink, a.k.a. Knurpht openSUSE Board Member openSUSE Forums Team -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

On 05/11/17 08:19 PM, Felix Miata wrote:

I bought an LG product once before making the name change discovery: http://www.avsforum.com/forum/106-dvd-recorders-standard-def/818511-first-at...

Poor design, loaded with inferior quality capacitors. I haven't bought anything branded LG since.

LOL! A friend of mine worked in the same office block as a company that equipped all its PCs with LG Flatrons. They all died with BadCapsPlague They all went into the dumper, that company's instantiation of the "Closet of Anxieties". Hi fished them out, just as I do with my corporate closets, replaced the caps. I have one of these 'rescues' on my desk right now. Rather him than me; I don't have a steady enough hand with the soldering iron for this kind of work. -- A: Yes. > Q: Are you sure? >> A: Because it reverses the logical flow of conversation. >>> Q: Why is top posting frowned upon? -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org

Le 28/10/2017 à 15:32, Richard Brown a écrit :

In the past, I used to just advise them to unsubscribe, as I had, and every other contributor I know had.

so you where organizing the decline of the list? If any interesting people go, who stay? jdd -- http://dodin.org -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org To contact the owner, e-mail: opensuse+owner@opensuse.org