On 04/09/11 17:47, Christian Grobmeier wrote:
It might be different to discuss roughly at the dev forums were most
people know each other than in a public message boards were even my
grandmother might participate. At this project I heard the term "end
users" very often; I don't think you can use the same rules of heavy
geek-discussion for end users of OpenOffice.
I agree. But I think that just means that support forum
admins/moderators bring such discussions over here, to the project
mailing lists. Honestly, if a forum volunteer is not already on this
list, understanding what we are doing and how Apache project works and
how the code base is developing, etc., then they will have a very
difficult time fairly representing the project to the users. I don't
think the project benefits if support volunteers are detached from the
primary project discussion list.
+1
-0.75 Actually they don't really need to understand anything about how
Apache works or how the code-base is developing. They do end-user
support. The only need to understand how the product /as released and
shipped/ operates for the end-users. Knowing about futures is a very
low priority nice-to-have.
And we all are at a disadvantage if
the support volunteers are not contributing to this list. The same
arguments against fragmenting the project into dozens of mailing
lists, also apply here. Just as we would not create a separate
ooo-support-operations-discuss mailing list, we should not encourage
the same from happening via a forum. The fact that support operations
are also discussed in private only makes this fragmentation more
problematic.
This is really easy to resolve:
1) Discussions on evolving forum policies and rules must occur on
ooo-dev. These are tantamount to proposals, and they are subject to
Apache Way decision making, just like any other part of the project.
If I wanted to suggest a different editing policy for the community
wiki, or a new moderation policy for ooo-users, I would be slapped
down if I raised it on ooo-private. The transparency principle
applies equally to the forums.
2) Non-confidential, day-to-day operations of the forum should occur
in a publicly-readable forum, or on a new public mailing list. I'd let
the forum volunteers decide which.
3) Private discussions on confidential matters, including your
grandmother, occur either on ooo-private or on a private forum that
echos its posts to ooo-private. Again, I'd let the forum volunteers
decide which.
+1
-0.75 yes we should put this to the community, but this is not how they
operate today. I do know that the majority of the "big hitters" are
really unhappy with this. Please realise that if you force this one,
you will probably have a very obedient forum, but one with nobody
answering any Qs -- or some revolt where they take their service en-mass
elsewhere.
Policy discussions are one matter, but moderation must be the business
of the moderators. They have made it quite clear in the past that they
really don't want to have these discussions in public view. Again we
can only sound them out.
