I agree with Rob that there is something about how the use cases don't seem to fit. Alternatives would be valuable.
I am not clear how the StackExchange sites are appealing for novices though. It strikes me that those venues are definitely oriented toward power users and enthusiasts, at least: <http://stackexchange.com/sites?view=list#questionsperday>. I have a standing query for StackExchange posts that mention OpenOffice and there are 1-2 per day, tops. These are usually not beginner questions. Some could be answered on the Community Forums but I would not ever expect to see most of those on this list, for example. If there were an OpenOffice exchange for the OpenOffice.org-lineage products, I am not certain that the StackExchange requirements for a sustaining site would be satisfied, although I see a large number of low-activity StackExchange sites on the end of that list. I think there is another factor too. My sense is that many users do not want to bring their problems to a public setting. That may well be without ever using a public list. The "fear of embarrassment" threshold appears to be very low. I suppose that is an invariant, but it is probably a good reason for us to be very careful with newcomers who have shown the courage, perhaps the anger, to bring themselves here or to a forum. I think that ways to provide assistance via the product is also important to consider, although it is known that help systems are under-used. I support consideration of all the avenues that may improve the success of users who stumble in their installation and use of the software and/or their use of support resources. Meanwhile, I also think there is significant room for improvement of list operation and removal of some of the friction that appears to be a barrier to so many. - Dennis -----Original Message----- From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 09:43 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: A moderator's view of this list [was: Re: I Hate Your Product] On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 12:07 PM, Dennis E. Hamilton < [email protected]> wrote: > Fioretti's auto-replier idea is more interesting than a bounce with > instructions to non-subscribers. It in effect makes a moderated-in > non-subscriber an automatic subscriber to the thread which they have > initiated, and to only that thread. I think that such a mechanism should > notify the OP that is happening and provide other information as well. > > It is an intriguing proposal. I am not so sure about the edge cases, but > they can't be as messy as what happens now in reality. > > Can anyone thing of an end user product with a user base the size of OpenOffice that is successful doing user support via an email list? The all-to-all paradigm seems doomed to suffer from information scaling problems, as well as the obvious signal/noise problems and the disproportionate impact of a handful of novice users without list skills. Marco's ideas sound like a different list paradigm that might work, but would require some custom coding. Another option is to consider that there are more off-tue-shelf tools available for support than just forums and mailing lists. Collaborative Q&A sites like StackExchange give a lot more ability for the community to police itself, rating question and answers up or down, tagging questions, a better search interface, cross linking of questions, etc. -Rob > - Dennis > > PS: Readers should not presume that there are unlimited resources > available to others. The extent to which ASF is operated by volunteers > with a wide range of different skills (collectively, not necessarily > individually) is quite remarkable. > > [From one moderator to another, here] > > -----Original Message----- > From: Rob Weir [mailto:[email protected]] > Sent: Saturday, March 31, 2012 08:28 > To: [email protected] > Subject: Re: A moderator's view of this list [was: Re: I Hate Your Product] > > On Sat, Mar 31, 2012 at 10:11 AM, M. Fioretti <[email protected]> > wrote: > > > > > On Sat, March 31, 2012 3:57 pm, Rob Weir wrote: > > > > > What do you think? What is the purpose of this ooo-users list compared > > > to the support forums? On some project communications we advertise > both > > > as equal support avenues for users to raise problems. > > > > Rob, > > > > email vs forums is an almost religious issue. IMO, one if not THE purpose > > of ooo mailing list is to provide users with support ALSO from those > > volunteers who will never ever use forums because they like email better > > and since they aren't paid they're free to say no to forums, period. > > > > > But for the people having problems, like with the previous thread, I don't > think it is a religious issue. They are not expressing a strong preference > for the list. They are just looking for help and for unknown reasons they > ended up here. But they could just as well have ended up elsewhere. For > example, we get user support questions to ooo-dev as quite a few to the > bugzilla admin address (!). > > > > This is just my opinion, feel free to ignore it, it's no problem, but for > > heaven's sake: > > > > > However, I think a user that is in this state is not best served by > > > sending a note to this list. > > > A) First, since the original poster is not subscribed to the list, he > is > > > not receiving any of the responses, unless he was explicitly copied on > > the > > > response. > > > > please do ban immediately from this list whoever tries to propose or > > practice even here the "sending again to unsubscribed user" idiocy that > > plagued the OOo lists for a decade, details here for those who ignore the > > background: > > > > > > > http://stop.zona-m.net/2010/11/a-proposal-for-effective-volunteer-friendly-user-support-in-libreoffice/ > > > > The Apache foundation should have inside enough skills and/or money to > > implement the autoresponder trick I've explained in that post and, many > > times before that, on the OOo lists. > > > > > The autoresponder thing sounds interesting. So you don't allow any > non-suscriber traffic. Any posts from non-susbcribers get an automatic > response that presumably outlines their support options, tells them they > would need to subscribe first if they want to post to the ooo-users list, > maybe gives some hints for writing useful support request posts, etc. > > I think that would be an improvement. What do others think? > > -Rob > > > > If nobody wants to provide support by email, and everybody wants to use > > the forum, no problem, close the list and go for the forum. But if > support > > via mailing list is needed hire any decent programmer for a day or two to > > implement the autoresponder I proposed, and then forget the whole issue. > > > > HTH, > > Marco > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > > > > > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- > To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] > For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected] > > --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [email protected] For additional commands, e-mail: [email protected]
