On 08/25/2011 09:33 AM, Mathias Bauer wrote:
Am 24.08.2011 22:47, schrieb NoOp:
Hmmm... OK. It was 'tongue-in-cheek' Drew. I'll not even comment on the
Sun->Oracle lists transition :-) But I will add this; if OOoA goes to
forums only, then I'll not be participating.
Mathias, thanks for the thoughtful response. My reply is in-line below.
I think we all should try to become more open for new development. It is
clear that mailing lists are easier to handle for the "regulars", the
most active participants. But OTOH a huge number of users looking for
help (if not the vast majority) aren't experienced mail users.
The results are known:
- posts without subjects
- destroyed threads
- frequent mails with "why do I get all these mails, please help me out
of here" (and that's just the polite version ;-))
- quoting disasters
etc.
So many of the benefits of a mailing list are partially destroyed.
OTOH most users are used to web fora - and they know how to use them.
And those 'new' users should be directed to a web forum with the option
to also use a mailing list instead. The primary issues with OOo was that
users (new or old) were immediatly directed to the mail list from the
main OOo support page. Hence we ended up with new users on the list that
had no clue that that they were joining a mailing list, or what a
mailing list is. To further compound the issue, users were allowed to
post without registering (still true today) and hence the 'regulars'
had/have to go hunting in headers to find out if the post is from a
subscribed list user. All of that is history that we all know very well,
so no sense rehashing here.
For many years my answer to the question "mailing list or web forum for
user support" would have been the same as yours - but times have changed
and so I tried to find out why I prefer mailing lists over web fora.
Remember, we are not talking about technical discussions or developer
talks, it's about supporting users that usually just want to drop a
question and not "join a community". Or maybe, they might consider
joining later, when they received a lot of help and started to like the
forum.
At the end there are only two things that really upset me:
- without threads longer discussions are a mess
- especially for power supporters it is important to track the status
of posts reliably ("read" status or other markers like "important" etc.).
There are already many fora that support threading, and as the
maintenance of the thread no longer depends on the capabilities of the
mail clients and their users, they might even do it better than the
average support mailing list (IMHO users@ooo is a mess in that regard).
So for me the second point (tracking of status) would be crucial: if the
web forum was able to support me *reliably* in that regard, I could come
to terms with it.
It would be even better if there was a forum software that interacts
with a mailing list in a bidirectional way: best of both worlds.
It would, but I've not seen one.
Please, try to think about your statement again: is it really impossible
to cope with web fora? It would be a pity to lose your valuable
contributions in case the discussion arrived at the decision to prefer
web fora for support.
I participate in many, many mail lists on a daily basis& cannot
possible begin to imagine trying to do so if all were web based forums.
I also eliminate the need to fill my mailbox with messages from each by
utilizing nntp via the gmane.org server. That way I can easily search
the threads, see the new subjects headers, mark a thread as read if it
is of no interest to me, mark threads as read by date if I've been away
for a few days, tag threads by headers, and killfile a 'VENDAS -
VITALLY' if I wish. Further I can easily switch from this list to the
user list, etc., at the click of a mouse. And finally, if I wish to have
an local archive of the list, I simply set my nntp reader (SeaMonkey) to
download for offline viewing/sorting/searching etc. I can't do that with
a web based forum.
Here is a sample screenshot:
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/402/screenshotgmanecompopen.png/
I participate on the Ubuntu users mailing list nearly every day. Ubuntu
have one of the best web based forums around - in fact I search it for
answers (via Google) on a regular basis. However I've probably posted
there once, and only login if I need to see an archived message that is
not available any longer to non-logged in users. For many Ubuntu users
the forum is the place to be& they are happy there. For me, the mail
list is the place to be& allows me to easily answer/ask questions with
a nearly immediate reply.
Would I abandon helping on Ubuntu were the usser mail list go away?
The answer is a resounding *yes*. Instead I'd put much more effort into
the alt.os.linux.ubuntu newsgroup (even with it's trolls and
detractors), or some other 'unofficial' mail list.
So, to answer your question: yes. For me if OOoA goes to
web based forums only, then I'll not be participating.
BTW, mailing lists also are limited in the way how you can work with
them - you can't offer new features as this would require to update all
the mail clients. In web fora everything is under control of the admin.
And that is the issue: "In web fora everything is under control of the
admin". In mail list fora the user has a reasonable amount of control.
Adding better search options (better than "download the archive and
search for it") or rating techniques could avoid a lot of questions that
have been answered already - wouldn't that be an improvement? We won't
be able to add any new features supporting users to a mailing list - web
fora can do a lot more and there are numerous examples for it.
Such as? Can you honestly demonstrate a web based forum that the user
can quickly and easily do as I do with my gmane.org nntp mail list setup?
Add to that the excellent point made by Andy Brown regarding
bandwidth/dialup issue. OOo targets all types of users, but is of
particular value to 3rd world (includes US areas) users with limited
and/or no regular internet connectivity.
Andy's post reminded me of when I was working for a startup company
years ago; they designed their website with features only high bandwidth
users could access (similar to the move to OpenGL now). It didn't take
them long to realise that users from international locations (and dialup
locations in the US) couldn't even view the website - at all. A lot of
business was lost in the 6 months that it took me to convince them to
change. The same is/was observed for websites that only had Adobe Flash
& no alternative.
As a developer I like "stackoverflow.com" where posts and replies can be
voted and posters get credits in return (simply put). Both means can
help users to get through the jungle of posts and find the best answer
just by searching, not by asking. And posts can be tagged, so you can
search for them much better and faster than just scanning subjects.
And you'd expect the same "new" users to OOo to understand:
http://stackoverflow.com/search
Again, we should try to become more open for new development and
evaluate it without preconceived opinions.
Yes "we" should. My initial post still stands:
The answer is quite simple: notify all posters in the thread that their
current thread& all further ooo-...@incubator.apache.org discussions
will be closed immediately and transferred to a web forum site instead.
In fact modify that to: The answer is quite simple: notify all users in
ooo-...@incubator.apache.org that all further
ooo-...@incubator.apache.org discussions will be closed immediately and
transferred to a web forum site instead.
I suspect the reaction to that would be somewhat violent :-)
