On Sun, Aug 08, 2021 at 03:26:25PM +0000, Andy Smith wrote: > Hello, > > On Sun, Aug 08, 2021 at 11:35:15AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > > any ideas on how to make the situation better? > > To be honest I don't think that mailing lists are a very good venue > for user support and I would these days prefer to direct people to a > Stack Overflow-like site [...] I stringly disagree on that one. There's tooling and there's politeness, and they are, IMO, uncorrelated variables. Some people are rather wired towards "forum style", others more towards "mail style" -- and I think that's why this kind of discussion tends to come up time and again. Personally, I tend strongly towards "mail style": I have my MUA and have taught it to work "my way". I'm infinitely more effective (and happy) with that. I cringe at nearly every Webby interface. But I am aware that there are people who work the opposite way. I don't have a solution to that. There is that big temptation to imagine something which works "both ways" (there are fora, like Discourse, which offer a mail interface, I'm taking part in one of those), but my experience is that, since in a webby forum the presentation itself is controlled, it ends up being part of the "language". This part gets "lost" in translation to mail. For those users, it feels "unnatural". > The main reason why I see mailing lists as inappropriate for user > support is that there is a severe signal to noise ratio problem. I think you'll get the same on unmoderated fora. A moderated mailing list has a higher S/N ratio, but Debian User isn't, for a very good reason. I feel we aren't doing that bad, considering the volume. > In debian-user there's a relatively small group of people who value > getting their opinions on a vast variety of topics across more than > they value actually answering on-topic questions [...] These are strong judgement calls, and I think our community is so highly diverse that the thresholds will vary enormously. It is thus, IMO, important to be extra careful. Things which to one may be a funny joke can be to others hurtful. > We can try to self-moderate by asking ourselves, "does my reply help > the poster? Does it belong on debian-user?" Unfortunately for some > the mind set is, "I'm a user of Debian so any opinion I wish to post > is on-topic on debian-user". I appreciate I have also failed at this > from time to time and I include myself in the list of those who > should do better. Ways of making us do better are needed. Everyone "fails" some times and according to some criteria. I believe things work out generally if we keep trying. But then, I'm said to be an optimist :-) Cheers - t
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