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|On Sat, 2005-02-05 at 02:00 -1000, Warren Togami wrote: |>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. |>
|We have at least two problems: reduced participation and interest from |developers, and the ability and interest to help USERS who, in their |huge majority, do not have that "engineer" mentality nor any idea of how |to use many other features of the Internet/Linux community that the |veterans rely upon.
|Your solution ignores the users, particularly users who help others. A |*very* important omission.
| <... Snipped ...>
|I am always pleased and happy to see Red Hat's concern for its users, |and I have never met (virtually, even) a Red Hat employee whom I didn't |respect and like. That is a Great Thing [tm]. In this case, however, I |vehemently disagree with your proposed solution. I think it's horrible |and will significantly harm the interactions of this community.
|I thought this was going to be a brief note, but hey... just say "no" >to |web fora. Bad, bad idea.
|Cheers,
I spend a lot of time monitoring mailing lists of various kinds. Usenet does not do everything right. In particular, Usenet feeds generate a *lot* of traffic. Since I often connect via a 26.4 kbd modem link, I am for any means to reduce traffic.
The wonderful thing about *good* web fora is that they provide a good means for selecting what you want to read off line, such as email subscription to subtopics/threads, getting just replies to your posts, seeing just posts from a particular user, RSS support, etc. This means that on a list with 1300 messages/day, I can see (and download) *five* and then search the archives and read more when I have a faster link. With Usenet, I have a great ability to read and sort messages off line, *once I download them all*.
Bad web fora on the other hand means clicking on 35 links to see the 1 message you want to read. On a slow connection, it can take all day just see if anyone has replied.
I prefer to read posts in my mail reader- that's what it is good at. The ~ problem is having the means to control what my mail reader sees. It might to be good to look at a solution which is closer to a "web-enhanced" mail list rather than a "web-forum" per se.
- -- - -------------- Eric Vought
Technical Director, Diversity Ink Morgan Family Enterprises -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.2.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org
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