Le 2010-10-04 11:41, Maât a écrit :
Le 04/10/2010 16:58, Marc Paré a écrit :
Ahh, I see. There seems to be a communication problem here. My
apologies if I was not clear.
I was taking the view that with the bidirectional gateway, allowing
the devs to see and participate in user discussions and they would
clearly not be forced to read any threads/discussions that they were
not interested in.
And you are talking about users participating in dev discussions and
devs not having the patience for "with useless mail reading or
questions that support or advanced users can perfectly deal with".
No.
If a user want to suscribe to a dev list and take the risk to raise his
"user voice" in the middle of an expert debate he's free to do so.
He should though perhaps prepare himself to a "somewhat virile welcome"
but this he should not be forbidden to do that :)
(and he is not)
I'm talking about users creating "pure" user topics :
-- how do i -- put a RTMF question here -- ?
-- look at my new wallpaper (isn't my new baby dog lovely ?)
-- i think that -- put an old secular troll here --
-- why do this fscking -- put the package you want here -- works like
that and not like that ?
-- who's the fsking b*stard that removed -- put the removed by upstream
feature you want here -- ?
-- i want to sell my old car to buy a new one... (http://blah) who wants
to make an offer ?
-- /et caetera/
These topics in a subforum are many. And these topics are precisely what
upset devs and packagers.
And reading those or trying to filter to "separate the wheat from the
chaff" is dev time waste that the
global community should want to minimize...
Is it not a rule to NOT post a reply to an someone who abuses. Then the
offending thread just dies. There is no problem, if we all follow this
rule. If we all followed this rule then there would be no problem. Why
would a dev or even for that matter a user answer an offending post? We
all know that it is useless.
So, in a way, we are talking about the same thing but from a different
perspective.
So, this thread is about the merits of a mailist-forum offering
bidirectional gateway allowing all people to see/communicate with each
other regardless of the means, mailist, irc, forums etc. If I
understand your argument, you are saying that devs may not be
interested in having non-knowledgeable users taking part in their
discussions as they could find this annoying and they could possibly
just quit participating in discussions where they are overwhelmed with
"novice" input.
No you dit not understand my argument at all :)
(see above ^^)
My argument, is that devs would then have, by the simple process of
the bidirectional gateway, the ability to "see" everyone's
conversations and that, whichever conversation would look interesting
to them, they could join in.
That they have already : some monitor forums and join in whenever they
want to.
(But this is time consuming. Hence very few do this on a regular basis.)
But this is quite understandable.The very few who do it then are
enjoying the threads that they follow. I don't think that there is a
problem with this.
Under this whole umbrella everyone would of course have to adhere to
the normal netiquette rules of conduct as laid out for mailists; irc,
forums. So, participation for everyone becomes a choice of their own
and if a discussion thread garners so much attention that it is
overwhelmed with questions by "less-informed" users/devs, then you
could either ignore their contributions to the discussion or try to
inform them of the issues. Often times this will fix the problem.
No because you start from the end. One you have a community of perfectly
educated users the problem will disappear beacause users will use
bugtracker and mailing lists... the need of a forum is just the proof
that your start point is a false statement :)
The second point is the volume... with a few list subscibers i am
something like 300 mails late
With 20 000 forum suscribers (or even 5000) posting that would change
many things. Devs would give up all the list :)
That's as simple as that.
If the volume of posts increase to that size, then we could all
congratulate ourselves for having such a great and vibrant distro. Devs
would still have the option of following the posts/threads that most
interest them. I would say that the conditions that you describe are
actually those of a successful distro. I would not think that a dev who
initially found a thread that was interesting would just quit on it
because it got too busy. That is when a thread becomes really exciting.
Especially since the news will spread that advanced users are answering
"magically" on a specific forum will push all users to try their chance
here and not in an other forum... resulting in a worst flood than you
could imagine :)
And moderators would have to educate people wanting to post there and
not elsewhere.
That's the better way to create a war between moderators and users :-(
If users are having to seek out and find devs to try to get their
attention, then I would hope that the mailist, irc, and forums
moderators would be vigilant enough to realize that somewhere along the
way the communication between the users and devs is NOT working. There
is a broken link and user dissatisfaction is growing. This would be a
sign to watch out for from an organizational point of view. It means
that somewhere along the way the communications link is broken. It needs
to be corrected to promote proper communications behaviour.
I have been following the thread on mirror infrastructure and have not
contributed to any of the discussions, but why would I not be
permitted to sit in on the sidelines?
Marc
That's the other part... very different matter. This could be dealt with
a read only forum section. But can you give me a correct estimation of
the extra volume needed for 3 years of forum + ml life with 1000 posters
on one side and 5000+ (more likely 10 000 or 20 000) ?
And about global system performance once filled with 5 million posts and
browsed by 400 simultaneous active members.
(And if you imagine to add also Cauldron which can reach the rate of 600
mails per day just to be able to "to sit in on the sidelines" the volume
is even huger)
That's why these questions need to be treated with caution :)
Unfortunately, then the distro would then have to re-evaluate its goals
if the volume of communications is limited by the physical capabilities
of their hardware. It may be that the "community" aspirations of the
distro has struck a serious lack of balance with reality. However,
usually when the participation is at such a height, a community will
rally financially and support the request for more funds for hardware
upgrades. We have to have faith in the overriding community wishes for
the good will of the distro.
Cheers,
Maât
Cheers
Marc
