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. > 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. 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). Regards, Roger -- .''`. Roger Leigh : :' : Debian GNU/Linux http://people.debian.org/~rleigh/ `. `' Printing on GNU/Linux? http://gutenprint.sourceforge.net/ `- GPG Public Key: 0x25BFB848 Please GPG sign your mail.
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