On Mon, May 21, 2007 at 07:03:44PM +0100, Roger Leigh wrote: > andreimpopescu@gmail.com (Andrei Popescu) writes: > > > On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 11:57:42AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > > > >> Joey is, I believe, referring to a healthy level of off-topic > >> discussions on *any* list, not to creating a specific area for > >> "off-topic" messages. For the messages to be "social lubricant", they > >> need to be *interspersed* with the on-topic discussions in a way that > >> doesn't detract from the discussions. > > > > IMHO forcing people to take off-topic discussions out of the forum (read > > Debian community) is not good. > > Yes, it is. I would read -user more frequently that I do if this sort > of rubbish wasn't present. As it is, I grep the subject headers for > relevent keywords to pick out support requests for my packages--every > few months. If it wasn't full of junk, I might attempt this more > regularly, but it's currently a waste of my time. I think my proposed solution (a separate list) would help move off-topic discussions away from -user. > > Debian is based on volunteers and for some contributors (yes, > > answering questions is also a way of contributing, so you - the DDs > > - don't have to do this here) the community might be the thing that > > keeps them here rather then some other project or FOSS in general. > > debian-user is a user support list, not a social gathering. While the > occasional off-topic post might be tolerable, repeatedly offtopic > postings between "regulars" make the list unusable for the people who > it is intended to serve--users. So you agree to a separate -offtopic list? > The same concerns were levelled at the #debian IRC channel a while > back, and there are certain parallels. I don't monitor that either, > for much the same reasons (though it may have improved since it moved > From FreeNode). Maybe a #debian-offtopic would help there too. Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)
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