On Tue, Nov 23, 2010 08:57:45 AM -0800, plino (pedl...@gmail.com) wrote: > > I do agree that volunteer-friendly user support is the key for the > success of any Open Source project. However, in my opinion e-mail > and mailing lists are obsolete and ineffective tools.
The problem I describe did not happen because OOo had no support forum. They happened because many volunteers did not want to use them but the official mailing list sucked big time because of certain "policies". Now, in my **opinion**, forums are very limiting and ineffective tools compared to email and mailing lists. But this is my opinion, so we can safely ignore it. What I know for a FACT, which is embarassingly evident from the ooo-users archives, is that, regardless of your opinion, there ARE many people who were only available to provide support by email, were driven away by the dumb strategies I describe in the article and never used the forums that OOo does have. So, if you want to engage those potential contributors too, you have to give them an email environment that is purged for good from certain bright ideas. If you don't want that, no problem. The "form that sends the help request" can certainly send it to a forum instead of a mailing list, if that's the only channel TDF decides to offer for LibreOffice. Marco -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Archive: http://www.documentfoundation.org/lists/discuss/ *** All posts to this list are publicly archived for eternity ***