On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 20:14:34 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Jim Henderson wrote:
On Fri, 15 Apr 2011 19:28:59 +0200, Per Jessen wrote:
Then they clearly *don't* want help.
If I want help, but I flatly refuse to use the communication means by which help is available, I don't really need it.
They do, but they want *convenient* help.
IMO, that is incredibly arrogant. I would like help to be provided in my native language, but when that's not available, I accept that I have to use a foreign language to get help. I don't see why the forum users cannot work like that too.
Well, good luck with that. :) Ironically, we often have posts in the forums from a subset of users who think that many of the developers are arrogant for not participating in the venue where most of the users participate. (And when I see those, I tend to point out that developers' focus is on development rather than support, and that I personally don't have a problem with developers not providing support if they want to focus on development tasks - and they shouldn't either). BTW many of the users on OSF do actually get help in their native languages - one of the things we do if someone's willing to help set it up and manage it in a foreign language is to create forums for those groups who want them. We currently offer in Hungarian, Japanese, Russian, French, English, German, Dutch, Greek, and Portuguese. We also have links to a few other independent forums where there's a language presence established (such as linuxclub.de for additional support for those who prefer German).
If there's a lower barrier to entry to get help somewhere else, then that's where they'll go.
Of course, that's how it should be. However, we are (well I am) specifically talking about the situation where there is no lower barrier.
I think 50,000 forum users would disagree about the barrier to entry for getting help in the forums being lower than the mailing lists. ;) But I'm also talking about the world we live in, not some hypothetical situation where there isn't a lower barrier. Remove our forums from the equation, and I'm sure plenty of the users will decide that since Ubuntu or Fedora cater to what they want in terms of a community, they'll leave us for them. Differentiating ourselves by being more difficult to work with than other distros doesn't help grow the community. 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