Re: rampant offtopic and offensive posts to debian-user
On Sat, May 19, 2007 at 11:43:08PM +0000, Tyler Smith wrote:
>
> I think you missed Amy's point. It's great that there are
> technical solutions to the OT problem. However, if we take that as
> license to continue posting messages that are far, far removed from
> the world of Debian, we are going to lose two very important groups of
> users.
>
<sensible stuff - but snipped in the interests of space.
>
> Balanced against losing these two important groups of people, the loss
> of one of thousands of venues for political/religious/philosophical
> rants seems like a very small price to pay.
>
The situation appears, at first glance, to have got significantly worse
in, say, the last six months or so BUT there have been other odd bursts
of significant OT at other times in the past. Debian-devel also has its
fair share of rants, less OT. Certainly, I, as a DD, hang around -user
in case there are users whom I can help: large amounts of OT tend to get
in the way - if I killfile OT threads, then I can't see if useful
technical questions are being inadvertently answered when the OT itself
goes OT by actually becoming useful again :)
> A little consideration would make this a better resource for all of
> us. It was very eye-opening to see the gentoo list archives. There's a
> lot of good info there, and it reflects well on the whole gentoo
> community. Like it or not, all the rants that show up on debian-user
> do not reflect well on us.
I _suspect_ that Gentoo, as Debian was, is the second or third
distribution that Linux users try out. The easy install of Debian (and
Ubuntu) and a vastly increased publicity now means that we get new users
who ask different questions - some of which would have been
inconceivable five or ten years ago on this list.
> All things considered, I can find other venues for my rants and
> ramblings if that helps improve the quality of support offered by this
> list. Ultimately noone can impose a code of conduct on anyone else,
> but please give a little thought to the idea that your entertainment
> is diminishing the pleasure of others, others who may, now or in future,
> be able to help you out.
>
Agreed. It may be a good idea to add to the mailing lists code of
conduct a couple of extra lines:
A lot of questions asked on debian-user and debian-devel are asked
regularly. Please consider searching using an Internet search engine
and reading the mailing list archives, Debian install notes and Debian
reference manual before you post. If you can't find the answer, it is
very helpful to others to show that you have attempted at least some of
the above and your degree of success.
If you have a problem, please be prepared to give hardware/installed
software and version information if requested to as part of the process
of problem resolution.
Politeness and precision in use of language both help to narrow down
issues and constrain extraneous discussions and flame wars. If tempted
to start or continue contentions threads, please consider moving these
to private email or to debian-curiosa. Both debian-user and debian-devel
are high-volume lists read by people worldwide: consideration should be
given to the fact that the views and attitudes of others may differ from
your own.
Uust my 1p / 2c
Andy
> Tyler
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