Hi Marc, *, On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 10:38 PM, Marc Paré <m...@marcpare.com> wrote: > Le 2012-09-27 08:11, Christian Lohmaier a écrit : >> On Thu, Sep 27, 2012 at 7:33 AM, Marc Paré<m...@marcpare.com> wrote: > > Users who have problems with installs generally do not come to a forums/list > with the idea that the be directed to a tutorial, they are more interested > in advice with a real person. Tutorials are nice as extra resource, but the > primary reason for a user who has come to a forums for installation help is > to get help by an informed person, which is what we are offering.
Oh, you're oversimplifying things here, while of course the goal is that people get help by informed person, just creating separate categories will not magically assure this. >> * Catch-all/General (also the place to ask installation/configuration >> problems if not covered by the tutorials) - might even consider to put >> Base into this forum as well. >> >> For installation related questions, people can be asked in a sticky to >> prefix their topics with [win] [lin] [mac] (, [sol], [and] [ios],...) > > We tried to do this on the contributor mailing lists and the results are > that even the contributors do not do this. I'll scream the next time someone comes with a "but on mailinglist.." argument. For heavens sake: We're setting up a forum because it is *NOT* a mailinglist. On a mailinglist new posters don't see existing posts. While they could visit the archives, they usually don't, and existing posts cannot be modified. So when someone doesn't follow the rules, it cannot be corrected. This is all the opposite for forums. When people see the tag being used, they'll use it. If it is forgotten once, a moderator will add it. Coming with the argument that it is more work for moderators is only halfway true. Moderators are initially expected to scan every message that is posted for valid content/whether it matches the forum it was posted in or needs to be moved. So the more in effort is in actually editing the topic. But that IMHO is a rather small burden. > So, if the people engaged in the > project do not follow this rule, how could we justify asking users to do > follow this rule? Again: It is the moderators' job that the forum rules are followed. And contrary to mailinglists, those rules are enforceable. In a well maintained forum you'll see many existing topics following that schema. And if the person asking a new question is not mentally retarded, he might get the idea just by viewing the existing topics, without having read the sticky post/some rules on a separate page. > I find it easier to categorize the forums to make it easier on both the > users and moderators-helpers; thereby making prefixes unnecessary. Empty forums / forums with only a handful posts are a nuisance. But hey, that's exactly the reason I didn't want to be coordinator, but leave the decision to someone else :-) > [...] > Whether a forums has fewer questions are not, IMO, is not a good reason to > combine them. I personally disagree on this. Within the OOo-Project there were many such dead mailinglists, and that just lead to people posting to more general lists just to reach more people, either leaving out the dedicated mailinglist completely, or only including it in cc. And yes, now I did myself come up with "but on mailinglists" argument :-) <puts head onto pillow ans screams/> ciao Christian -- Unsubscribe instructions: E-mail to discuss+h...@documentfoundation.org Problems? http://www.libreoffice.org/get-help/mailing-lists/how-to-unsubscribe/ Posting guidelines + more: http://wiki.documentfoundation.org/Netiquette List archive: http://listarchives.documentfoundation.org/www/discuss/ All messages sent to this list will be publicly archived and cannot be deleted
