On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 18:04:34 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Jim Henderson wrote:
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 16:31:51 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
I think it's entirely appropriate to redirect someone when better help is available elsewhere. That it happens to be to another openSUSE forum or list, that's life, we chose it that way.
You choose to use e-mail lists, Per, and that's fine - others in overwhelming numbers use the forums: We currently have 56769 registered users there.
This isn't about the medium, Jim - it's about where the best help can be found. When someone advises me that I'd get a better answer elsewhere, it's my problem if I choose to ignore that advice.
But it *is* about the medium, Per. If the users aren't comfortable with or don't like the medium where help is provided, they'll avoid it like the plague. You might give the best possible help on all aspects of openSUSE, but if you make the users jump through hoops that *they* feel are unnecessary, they simply *will not do it*. Why do you think we've got 56,000+ registered users on the forums and there are, what, a few hundred users on the opensuse-users mailing list? I can tell you that it isn't because the majority of users think mailing lists are more convenient than the forums. It's that the users (a) feel they get good enough help on most things in the forums, and (b) that they use the medium *they prefer*. If you don't want to participate there, that's fine - I've absolutely no problem with that, as we've discussed in the past. But when one starts taking the attitude that "we know better than the users what they want" when it comes to social interaction, the users will say "um, no, we actually do know what we prefer, and if you won't provide it, we'll find someone who will" is actually the way users react. I've been involved in online forums of one kind or another for close to 30 years and have literally talked to tens of thousands of people from all walks of life; this isn't conjecture or theory on my part, it's based on decades of experience working online with customers and users. Which incidentally is why I'll tell you that user preference is going to be the primary driver, but I'm not going to tell you that you MUST use the forums - you're free to use what you want, of course, just as the users will. And what I see looking at the stats here and in the forums is that the users have declared their preference. We can choose to accept that choice or we can push them away from openSUSE by telling them that they MUST use a mailing list if they want any help at all. Or we use the current setup, which is two levels of interaction - 'the masses' who use the forums use them to get basic help, and the MLs are used for more advanced users who need a deeper level of help from people writing code. One of the issues I see with this, though (and I've seen the same thing before) is that when developers work in a bubble with little to no awareness of what is going on with the users, developers will tend to develop things that users don't need or don't want. I've seen that happen more times than I can count from Novell's engineering department specifically (mostly pre-SUSE).
At some point, *we* have to go where the *users* are and use what the users find most convenient to them.
I beg to differ. If you want help, go to where help can be found.
Do you want to grow the openSUSE user community or shrink it? If you want to shrink it, that's the way to do it. If you want to grow it, you make it convenient from the user's point of view. The harder or more inconvenient it is (or is perceived to be), the fewer users you end up with. Remember that this isn't the cathedral, Per. It's the bazaar. ;) Jim -- Jim Henderson Please keep on-topic replies on the list so everyone benefits -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse-project+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse-project+help@opensuse.org