Warren Togami wrote:
Speaking as an end-user, I agree that the current mailing list leaves something to be desired as a medium for "end-user" support. But then, end-user support has never been Red Hat's strongest suit in my book.D. D. Brierton wrote:
I've been a RHL and FC user for quite some time. I've been on the mailing lists, and had bugzilla accounts for a long time now. But this mailing list is strangling itself. The volume is way too high. Look at the beginning of the Fedora Project and see how many Red Hat engineers regularly posted to this list, and now look at how many do (Tim Waugh and Dave Jones make an occasional appearance here these days, and we're lucky to have them). That's it. Who's driven them away? WE HAVE.
Totally in agreement, please read my post on this subject here.
http://www.livejournal.com/users/wtogami/2005/02/04/
Key to the problem is that mailing lists are far from the best medium for end-user support. We need to steer end-users to an entirely different medium in order to scale effectively. Official project change in that direction is happening soon. Read the link above for details.
Warren Togami wtogami@xxxxxxxxxx
Drawing on first hand experiences in installing and running RH 4.1/4.2, RH 7.1, RH 8.0, and now Fedora Core 2, I say unequivocally that the fedora-list has provided the strongest end-user support. Fundamentally, the proposition that Red Hat has ever considered providing support for ALL types of Fedora users an objective is dubious. That point was driven home by Red Hat's change in business plan to offer official support only for RHEL and unilateral suspension of support agreements for RH 8 (five months early in my case) and RH 9. Spare us the pretensions of effecting change to improve or enhance support for end-users.
If Red hat wants to limit the population of fedora-list to system administrators, it should make that point clear at the outset. If Red Hat wants to promote continuing expansion of the linux market and the market for linux support services, it will lend greater support to SOHO desktop end-users. Expansion of the linux market -- and breadth and depth of de-bugging feedback to Red Hat for product improvement -- can be achieved at minimum expense and effort by strengthening Fedora Core Release notes in a few places and posting new FAQs relevant to particular problem areas which surface with each new release. Jettisoning of detailed list archives in favor of some issue summaries/abstracts for use in FAQs would also be helpful to both Red Hat and users. All arcive users encounter a tremendous amount of noise in searching for information relevant to their issue of concern.
As for the absence of regular postings to fedora-list by Red Hat engineers, maybe that is due more to the emergence of rapid responses to problems and issues from knowledgeable members of the Fedora community-at-large than to any other factor.
