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I'm starting a new thread, sorry, but the original one has been hijacked several times and mutated
into something unreadable.
Could we please try to summarize and get into some decisions and/or action items ?
We are discussing alright but getting nowhere.
And this time, please:
- - don't just post to say something about someone's signature
- - don't discuss what software should be used, we're not even near that point (if at all)
- - don't discuss about having an NNTP gateway or something, this is not the topic, we can discuss
that later on, or start another thread
- - NO THREAD HIJACKING PLEASE, let's really try to get into some real actions or we'll be discussing
this during 3 weeks and still get nowhere (although I think we've reached the point where almost
everyone is sick of discussing it, so let's keep the topic up right now and get to a decision)
To pick up Sonja's mail:
1. Do we want/need openSUSE web forum(s)
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Answer is: YES.
I think we've debated this long enough and there seems to be a concenscius that we indeed need an
official forum.
Unless you have a strong argument against it, don't discuss this all over again.
Don't reply to say you agree, only reply on this item if you have a strong point against it (liking
it or not isn't a strong point ;)).
2. Will it take resources away from other SUSE tasks
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I think we first need to decide how to proceed, we can discuss that afterwards, before doing what
we're actually going to decide.
Yes, it will take some resources away if we decide to have a _new forum_:
- - hosting, installing the web forum software
- - maintaining it (tuning, keep up with security patches)
As far as _moderation_ is concerned, I think that can be left to people from the community.
We'll make a call for volunteers and, obviously, having the people who already do that on existing
SUSE community forums would be a plus.
Unless you have a strong argument to make about this item, don't reply, I think it's of no use to
discuss that right now. Let's get to it step by step. Let's first decide what we want and how we
want it, then we'll see how we will do it (including the priority with regards to how much
ressources it will take away from other tasks).
3. Do we create a new forum or do we elect one of the existing
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We're pretty much going nowhere on this issue, as opinions seem to be 50/50.
I have expressed my gripes about creating a new one. I think that would alienate the existing forum
community and really wouldn't be a nice move.
On the other hand, having a single forum "forum.opensuse.org" has advantages:
- - centralized
- - easier for beginners to find their way
- - when people don't know where to ask (because there's more than one forum around), this would be
the place
- - maybe we could aggregate existing forums into a very large one
The other option being to elect existing forums to become the "official" one(s) (I'm putting an (s)
because of forums per language, read the next point).
But I think we're stuck on this one. I suggest we should contact the maintainers+moderators of the
largest currently existing SUSE web forums.
Let's start by making a list of whom to contact (this is the list of forums on the Communicate page)
- - http://linuxclub.de (in german) (Henne already volunteered to contact them)
- - http://forums.suselinuxsupport.de/ (in english)
- - http://www.suseforums.net/ (in english)
- - http://www.alionet.org/ (in french)
- - http://forum.suse.pl/ (in polisch)
- - http://www.susebr.org/ (in brazilian portuguese)
- - http://www.suseitalia.org/ (in italian)
If you know some large forum that is not mentioned above, please add it in a reply.
AFAIK the first 3 forums on the list above are the largest ones, but the others are
language-specific (so is linuxclub.de though).
(BTW, AFAICR suseforums.net was created as a split of suselinuxsupport.de because the moderators had
some internal fights, so... it might not be that easy to get them together, but let's try anyway ;))
Anyone volunteering to find out who the maintainers are and send them a nice email ?
Let's invite them on the opensuse ML and ask them about their opinion, they're certainly the most
valuable and I really wouldn't want this discussion to happen behind their backs.
Which leads us to a new point...
4. Internationalized forums ?
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Should we have one official forum per language ?
e.g. http://de.forum.opensuse.org, http://fr.forum.opensuse.org, ...
As web forums are 100% geared towards user friendliness and mostly towards less technology-savvy
users, I think it makes a lot of sense as indeed not everyone speaks english (or at least not well
enough). Not to bash anyone but this is particularely true for e.g. fr, sp, pt/br, it, pl.
Agreed ? or not ?
5. Wait for and use Novell's proprietary forums ?
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I think everyone agreed to a clear "NO" on this one, doesn't need to be discussed further.
1) we don't want to wait
2) using proprietary forum software doesn't really make sense, but let's not discuss this item right
now, we'll have an own topic about which forum software to use later (although IMO that's a decision
that's up to whom will host it)
If you have other important aspects to address, add them.
But please, mates, let's try to make some decisions and actions items out of this, don't post just
to make some noise or to start discussing something unrelated or that doesn't need to be discussed
_right now_. Let's concentrate on the items above (or anything else that fits into the decision
process as of now).
cheers
- --
-o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/
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