Re: On improving mailing list [was: How to Boot Linux ISO Images Directly From Your Hard Drive Debian]
Hello,
On Sun, Aug 08, 2021 at 11:35:15AM +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote:
> any ideas on how to make the situation better?
To be honest I don't think that mailing lists are a very good venue
for user support and I would these days prefer to direct people to a
Stack Overflow-like site. The chief advantages of such sites are
that posted problems are narrowed down to contain the required
information, and answers are ranked so as to make poor answers (and
ultimately, disruptive posters) disappear. Ask Ubuntu. I think,
works well.
There have been a few attempts to set up such sites for Debian, so
that people could be directed to a site running on DFSG-free
software instead of proprietary platforms like Stack Overflow. Sadly
each of these efforts have foundered through lack of use.
I don't see the lack of use as an indictment of their effectiveness;
rather I think it's just because it's too hard to change the status
quo without significant work.
The previous attempts have sort of started as an announcement that
such a site is available, but not followed up by any level of
advertising on Debian's web site. The announcement threads on the
mailing lists then got dominated by arguments from the same small
group of people loudly and repeatedly arguing how they would never
use or support such a thing. That's fine, but without a way to
continually advertise a site as a support venue, it will not get
used.
The main reason why I see mailing lists as inappropriate for user
support is that there is a severe signal to noise ratio problem.
In debian-user there's a relatively small group of people who value
getting their opinions on a vast variety of topics across more than
they value actually answering on-topic questions. So we endure
mega-threads of opinion-based off-topic content that regularly
descend into personal attacks. It is hard to sift through all of
this for nuggets of on-topic wisdom and even when a post is
on-topic, a newcomer often doesn't have the base knowledge to
distinguish good answers from bad. I find it hard to justify
subjecting someone to that.
Naturally the voluminous opinion-posters are mostly against anything
that would reduce their ability to treat debian-user like a debating
society, so effecting change is going to be hard if the only metric
one would use to justify the change would be a simple noise-based
sentiment analysis of the response to any proposal.
If we have to continue using a mailing list for user support then my
best suggestion would be to severely tighten up the on-topic
requirements so that every post must be about use of Debian, and
giving time-outs to posters who repeatedly can't stick to this.
This would be a difficult and dramatic change since debian-user has
practically no oversight; currently even severe breaches of Debian's
Code of Conduct need to be reported to the Community team directly
and at most result in a post weeks later saying, "please don't do
that" directed at no individual. So the idea that there would be
people actively dealing with off-topic content and taking action
against individuals would be quite a departure from today's reality.
So in summary, I don't think any of the things that would be
necessary to improve the way this list works are going to be popular
with the regular posters, while starting over with a different
solution requires consensus and support from the Debian project that
has up until now not been there.
We can try to self-moderate by asking ourselves, "does my reply help
the poster? Does it belong on debian-user?" Unfortunately for some
the mind set is, "I'm a user of Debian so any opinion I wish to post
is on-topic on debian-user". I appreciate I have also failed at this
from time to time and I include myself in the list of those who
should do better. Ways of making us do better are needed.
Cheers,
Andy
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