On Tuesday 20 Jul 2010 16:26:00 Brian K. White wrote:
On 7/20/2010 10:35 AM, Bob Williams wrote:
On Tuesday 20 Jul 2010 14:38:48 Felix Miata wrote:
On 2010/07/20 09:11 (GMT-0400) dwgallien composed:
Would someone please explain the difference in purpose between this mailing list and the openSUSE forums? I try to provide assistance on both, but do notice there is often overlap, i.e., occasionally questions posted here have been previously asked/answered at the forums and vice-versa. (I ask the question only in the interest of everyone's most efficient use of time.)
In many many years on the internet, I've found people tend to prefer one or the other.
Forums: 1-invariably mousetype (rude, tiny text; certainly applicable to forums.opensuse.org) 2-higher ratio of unanswered questions to answered questions 3-higher ratio of good answers to unhelpful answers 4-better moderation 5-subject miscategorization widespread (leads searches in wrong directions) 6-pulled (more work to get, but get no processing forced)
Mailing lists: 1-displays text legibly and comfortably at users preferred size 2-better ratio of questions asked to questions answered 3-better ratio of good answers to unhelpful answers 4-poorer moderation 5-topics lack categoration within particular lists (hard to narrow searches) 6-pushed (less work to get, more work to process)
My only contact with most forums is whatever shows up in Google results. I can only deal with mousetype on an as-needed basis.
I may have misunderstood, but your items 3 above seem to claim the same thing for both forums and mailing lists. A high ratio of good:unhelpful answers means there are more good answers than unhelpful answers.
Bob (in pedant mode)
No, he said nothing illogical.
He merely used two different forms to say things on opposite sides of a single comparison, which is more work to parse and thus can be less immediately clear. But, after parsing what was said, it works out to being perfectly valid and meaningful.
He said "higher ratio" and then "better ratio" which are neither the same words, nor imply the same ultimate meaning in this context. A better ratio of good to bad answers is not a higher one.
It is merely a little inconsistent to use two different forms for the two sides of a comparison. It's more work to parse.
It would have been more clear to say "worse" and then "better" or to say "higher" and then "lower". Pick one form and use it everywhere for consistency and clarity. Instead of "higher" and then "better", but, what he did say was not actually wrong or meaningless.
As long as were being pedants. :)
Thanks for the explanation. I never said Felix was wrong, merely that I didn't understand. Maybe I shouldn't have used the word 'pedant'. :) I'm still unclear which of forums or mailing lists produce more good answers compared to unhelpful ones. I rarely visit the forums, but lurk here a lot, where I find an abundance of useful answers. I often find, however, that long threads have a lower signal-to-noise ratio than shorter threads ;) Bob -- Registered Linux User #463880 FSFE Member #1300 GPG-FP: A6C1 457C 6DBA B13E 5524 F703 D12A FB79 926B 994E openSUSE 11.2, Kernel 2.6.31.12-0.2-desktop, KDE 4.4.4 Intel Core2 Quad Q9400 2.66GHz, 8GB DDR RAM, nVidia GeForce 9600GT -- To unsubscribe, e-mail: opensuse+unsubscribe@opensuse.org For additional commands, e-mail: opensuse+help@opensuse.org