Re: Linux Forums
[uhm, dude, line length?]
On Wed, Jan 25, 2006 at 06:04:25PM -0800, Will L (sent by Nabble.com) wrote:
> My view is that commiters will favor mailing list because it requires
> commitment, as Adners said, it has a sense of "seriousness". But, is it
> reasonable to expect a general user to be committed?
I'd certainly hope that they'd be at least somewhat committed if they're
expecting to have a conversation with committed people.
> For exmaple, suppose a user just wants to ask a question, is it reasonable
> to require him to subscribe, receive unrelated emails, then unsubscribe?
Yes, quite reasonable. If you're requesting my volunteer time, it seems
reasonable to ask that you make at least a minimal effort to become a part
of the community. I actually find it quite useful to watch the flow of
messages across a list -- I pick up quite a bit of useful information just
scanning messages. Also, the questioner might be able to answer some
questions as well, helping to relieve the general support burden.
> Why should asking a question be complicated? Why can't the list be
> designed to let him receive only replies to his post instead of receiving
> all emails? Because, by design, a list favors commiters, not the general
> users.
Who are these "commiters" you speak of? People who are actually part of the
community? Those are the people we want on the lists. People who just want
the answer to their question and don't want to contribute back can pay for
their answer.
> Why are we discussing this? I think we want to show some love for the
> general users, no? They do contribute by finding bugs.
Anyone who reports a bug who isn't also willing to engage in a conversation
isn't worth a hill of beans to me.
> What's more, without them, why doing the project?
I'm doing this for me. Benefits which may flow to others are coincidental.
> I am a member of a new project called Nabble - the goal is to improve
> public discussions on the web. It works like Gmane with regard to mailing
> list - it provides mailing list with a searchable archive, a threaded
> view, and a web gateway for posting. But it tries to improve upon existing
> solutions by providing a better search (using Lucene) and a clean UI.
And apparently a broken posting interface.
Gating mailing lists to forums for people who haven't realised that mail
filtering exists is a fine thing, but if you start promoting Nabble or
anything else as a "come here to get your questions answered for free"
gateway to Debian lists, I think a lot of people are going to get awfully
irritated.
- Matt
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