On 8/24/2011 1:28 AM, Terry Ellison wrote:
I've just been catching up and reading this thread. Most of the main
points have been made and discussed. But I think that there is one point
that hasn't: so let me summarise so far:
* DLs and Forums each have their sweet-spot advantages and
disadvantages.
* In general individuals have a strong preference for one or the other.
* IMHO, true end-users rarely use emails or DLs for this type of
user support. They seem to prefer asking google which then points
at somewhere they can find an answer, which for something like OOo
support will be a wiki or a forum.
* Developers as a breed are often more email oriented.
However, here is my point. Giving support of a FLOSS product is not so
much about being able to ask questions; /it's about getting volunteers
willing to provide quality answers/, so a critical success factor is how
we cultivate and make it easy for the power users to contribute. I say
power users, because my experience is that in general OOo developers
want absolutely nothing to do with answering users questions. (And the
people who are willing to answer in general hate using email.)
Excellent points, nicely explained!
Personally, if there were some committers who would volunteer to
moderate, I'd just create an ooo-user@ mailing list now. Almost all
projects already have a user list, so it'd be worth creating one if for
only to give interested users a place to start asking questions about
the future plans of the podling.
It also seems clear that with the OOo history and end-user base that
some of the existing forums (whatever kind) will need to be continued.
That's up to the project to figure out how to do and maintain. The only
bigger ASF issue is ensuring that any new content added to forums that
the ASF hosts is compatible with AL wherever possible.
- Shane
