On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Shrinivasan T <[email protected]> wrote: > 1. Many ILUGC members have fear on posting to mailing list. They have told > many times to me in person. They may have to learn many guidelines. They > feel that facebook has no guidelines.
I see a few issues interlinked. New participants in Free and Open Source Software are in a way getting drawn into specialized niches. As an explanation, there are enough programming language specific groups/sub-groups where a new participant finds interesting issues to dive into or, ask. Facebook/G+ are gradually making a move to be the "one single page" for any user. By which I mean that irrespective of the hardware platform being used (desktop, mobile), the social networks tend to be the firehose of information (and, sometimes of discussion) Requiring to learn guidelines to undertake an activity should not be the cause for fear. A lot of activities that one does eg, driving a car, operating a machinery, buying/selling goods/products, creating software applications/services need the operator to be aware of guidelines and instructions. At some point I fear that "the mailing list guidelines are too rigid" is a very easy throwaway excuse. Having being around long enough to have seen (and, be the recipient of) various mailing list guidelines hammers, I can safely say that the user group lists are far more welcome and tolerant. In fact, they go out of their way to help an individual learn how to clearly articulate their issues. It is indeed the case that English may not be the language we are most proficient in, however, it is the language that is most used when communicating on various platforms. To be able to acquire skills to communicate virtually is not something that is a cheap skill of no obvious use. Having said all of the above, I would request that you consider different platforms like Askbot for example, instead of having the content locked into a FB/G+ group. There will be some content generated and, having forums where a structured Q&A is possible ensures that the new participants can also feel encouraged to become regular contributors. -- sankarshan mukhopadhyay <https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan> _______________________________________________ ILUGC Mailing List: http://www.ae.iitm.ac.in/mailman/listinfo/ilugc ILUGC Mailing List Guidelines: http://ilugc.in/mailinglist-guidelines
