On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 04:03:16PM +0100, Pascal Bleser wrote: <snip>
1. Don't work against the community ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ <snip> 2. Legal ~~~~~~~~ <snip> 3. Don't split the expertise ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1 and 3 can be solved by asking what the people of the existing comunities tell. 2 I will explain at the end. <snip>
- From my experience, web forums are more for less experienced users, more for basic questions (installation, hardware support, "how can I play my MP3s", etc...) and mailing lists are preferred by more experienced users, mostly because they are very active on such communication channels and have witnessed that it is much more effective to work with.
I believe that we should indeed leave the existing mailinglists as they are, especialy the more specialized ones, like factory. What I asume is that we are talking about a generic openSUSE forum.
Now, that being said, if there is an "official" Novell/SUSE/openSUSE web forum and there is a very low concentration of "experts" in there, what's the point of it ?
The main problem that there are only these more technical savy people is BECAUSE there is no forum. At this moment the technical less savy people do not have a say on openSUSE. I see on Usenet people asking for enhancements or sugesting things. When I tell them to either post a bugreport or subscribe to the mailinglist, the people find this to cumbersome to do. When you have a forum, the people will contribute easier. It would be nice to have less tech-savy people say what they think. This brings be to point 2 from above. The legal part is an extremely valid point. I have very quickly looked at the forums and what all miss id feedback to and from SUSE itself. If the legal part is an issue, you could point to the existing forums for support and still have a smaller forum for sugestions Agin, only do this after speaking with the major forums. What are their ideas. houghi -- "When you are in it up to your ears, keep your mouth shut."