On Sun, 2005-02-06 at 15:04 -0600, akonstam@xxxxxxxxxxx wrote: > I don't know where is opposition to the list is coming from but I see > no real problem with the list as it exists. Good point, and one I would like to echo. This list *can* continue as it is. It is not actively causing harm to the community. Then again, it could be improved: - Better searching of archives - More flexible ways to access its content - Greater ease for newbies in learning its use - Greater ease for experts in wading through 8,000 messages/month trying to find questions to answer - Greater control over malware Probably a few more I've missed off the top of my head. But moving from the mailing list to web fora is not going to improve anything, and will certainly cause some harm. 1. I'm nearly the most-prolific poster on Piper Chat (www.piperchat.com) and it watches to see whether there's a reply to a conversation in which I participate. That's nice for newbies. However, actively trying to find new things that might be of interest to me entails a daily visit to the site, trawling the various areas to see if something was posted. Takes a good five minutes of my time, and that's on a board that gets 5-10 messages a day! Bleagh. If fedora-list were only fedora-webfora, I would find it so difficult and so time-consuming to help others that my current activity level would be severely curtailed. I can go through a day's posts in fedora- list within five to ten minutes... I cannot do that with web fora. Without people who want to help others, or with any marked reduction in those people, the Fedora community suffers grievous harm. 2. Adding independent web fora to the mailing list (remember, Warren said fedora-list would not close) is a recipe for disaster. Some people would move to the web fora, some would stay on the mailing list, very few (almost none?) would monitor both, and you then have a fragmented community. And I'll bet you that most of the experts stay on the mailing list, leaving the web fora an empty shell that's not very useful to newbies since a neat interface is no substitute for content. Let's find something that helps everyone, I say. So I repeat: let us move to NNTP as a *base* protocol, with news-to-mail and news-to-web gateways so that each person may choose whatever tool/interface they prefer. All those protocols, gateways, and interfaces already exist! No need to reinvent the wheel here. If someone objects to NNTP, I am willing to listen. But please, let proposed solutions be those that ADD flexibility and robustness instead of removing it. Cheers, -- Rodolfo J. Paiz <rpaiz@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
