Re: question/answer website for user support: shapado.debian.net
On Mon, 04 Oct 2010 02:44:04 +0200, Jesús M. Navarro wrote:
> On Sunday 03 October 2010 20:10:28 Camaleón wrote:
>> > Thus disgregating limited "work force" between two competing
>> > environments. Remember web forums (and spam) was what killed NNTP as
>> > a general usage tool (and I don't think it has been for the better).
>>
>> Newcomers seem to be more confortable with forums (mostly young users)
>> so why not provide as many options as we can (mailing lists, forums,
>> nntp...).
>>
>> I see them not as "competing" but as a "complement" of each other.
>
> The problem here is that knowledge is an intensive resource, not
> extensive.
(...)
> In the end, you have to subscribe to *both* knowledge centers in order
> to get proper coverage. This has already happened: ten or fifteen years
> ago, I could go to an easily indexable single source (NNTP) and get my
> answers. Now I have to trim a lot of resources (web forums) with always
> the chance to overlook "the good one" (i.e. a new web forum that has
> became the cool place now and I am still not aware of). I can't think
> of this situation to be any better than current one.
I see your point that splitting the sources to get the knowledge is a big
drawback and I agree with that.
But that situation does not negate the fact that today there are several
ways to get the information we need (IRC, forums, mailing lists, RSS
chanels/planets, NNTP, twitters, blogs...) and we should handle all of
them with care and integrate as much as we can to get not just happy
users... but to get users to stay.
There is no "one size fits all" and I'm afraid many users will become
ungry if we (take this just as an example) drop the forums and
concentrate our efforts in mailing lists. Or viceversa.
You (or me) may not be familiar with the Shapado service but people who
don't like to write big chunks of texts may find it more friendly and
effective to get their doubts solved. And as per the "waste of
resources", well, I think that's up to the users in charge of the
service :-)
But despite the service (Shapado) itself and what it can provide to
Debian community, the most I appreciate of this initiative is seeing
people to start a new project and make things to happen. That kind of
people is very scarce in these days.
OTOH, yes, I'm also with you that having to keep track of all of this
"maremagnum" of data is not easy. For that reason I'm stuck to the
mailing lists and leave the forums a bit apart :-P
Greetings,
--
Camaleón
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