Re: suggestion

[Seth Arnold <sarnold@willamette.edu>]

D, while I don't want to reject the idea out of hand (noting that my
only affiliation with Debian is enjoying it on my own computers, and
spending far too much time helping people on the mail lists) I don't
see any reason for changing our current system.

Perhaps if you would point out the faults of the current system, and
why you think usenet will solve those faults, your suggestion may be
taken more seriously.

The positive points to our current system is that all information is
currently located at one point: http://lists.debian.org. One can use
the archives for historical research, seeing what problems have been
solved recently and how, and participate in active communities.

Changing to usenet would decentralize sources of information; a user
would no longer know ``lists.debian.org has the answer'' -- instead,
users would be reduced to trying the various usenet archives, which,
despite trying, are never quite complete nor intuitive to use. Often
attachments are stripped on such services.

This is setting aside two of the worst problems of usenet -- not all
users have easy access to usenet news, while email is ubiquitous. #2
is the horrors of spam. When on a debian-controlled server the email
lists can be kept free of spam. On usenet, only moderated groups are
free of spam, and being a moderator for the amount of traffic debian
does in a day would quite simply be hell for the moderator.

I just don't see how using a newsgroup could possibly be better than 
reading debian-user@lists.debian.org for typical user support.

Debian is not like most distributions. It is a very close-knit group
and while it may make it difficult to attract new users (I went four
years running Linux before trying Debian) once a user is `converted'
to the Debian way-of-doing-things, few want to go back. In my humble
opinion the lists are the glue that cements the distribution into one
cohesive body.



* D. Stimits <stimits@idcomm.com> [010216 17:04]:
> This suggestion could probably be sent to a number of different
> departments of Debian, but it is most likely a general policy decision
> on how to support your product. I am recommending to several
> distribution packagers that the newsgroup comp.os.linux.* could benefit
> from a comp.os.linux.distributions.*, among which
> comp.os.linux.distributions.debian would be one. This would allow
> reduction of support costs at the individual packagers while allowing
> some of the users to better aid in helping each other with problems that
> are specific to individual distributions.

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