-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Sonja Krause-Harder wrote: ... > The first question is: do we need/want an official openSUSE web forum? > Why? What would you expect from it, compared to the existing SUSE > community forums?
I'm not a friend of forums myself, but it seems like many people were asking for it. The point is that I'm against the idea of an "official" openSUSE web forum. The reasons are: 1. Don't work against the community ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As I said during the IRC meeting, if I was one of the guys investing so much of my free time to help others and moderate one of the currently existing SUSE community forums, I would be really p***ed to be left standing in the rain by Novell/SUSE. 2. Legal ~~~~~~~~ Often, questions and discussion topics are about the "legally gray zone" (mp3, dvd playback, ...) and having an "official" forum endorsed by Novell/SUSE would mean that those topics may *not* be discussed on that forum. I think that most of the people who were asking for an officially endorsed web forum are not aware of that point and actually don't want that. 3. Don't split the expertise ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ As in every Linux/FOSS/... community, there is a "kernel" of people who have more experience than most others - in this case e.g. long-time (SUSE) Linux users, developers, sysadmins, packagers, SUSE staff members, etc... When you create more communication channels, you also split the "concentration" of such people on every single channel, because no one has the time to be active on all of them. - From my experience, web forums are more for less experienced users, more for basic questions (installation, hardware support, "how can I play my MP3s", etc...) and mailing lists are preferred by more experienced users, mostly because they are very active on such communication channels and have witnessed that it is much more effective to work with. Now, that being said, if there is an "official" Novell/SUSE/openSUSE web forum and there is a very low concentration of "experts" in there, what's the point of it ? To make it short: let's keep our communication channel as now (mailing-lists + IRC), where many experts are present, and let the community run web forums - when complex or seemingly unresolvable issues arise, they can redirect to the mailing-lists. > Let me summarize some background information to the question. > - We do not want to take resources away from the distribution itself or > the work on the build service to set up and maintain a web forum, as > we don't see it as a high priority for the openSUSE project at the > moment. If you don't agree, we would like to hear your feedback now. Definitely. Web forums are probably important, but we already have "official" help channels (the mailing-lists), which makes the forums less of a priority, especially compared to the build service, the openSUSE wiki and the documentation server. > - When we started the openSUSE project, we wanted to honor the existing > SUSE community. This means that we would like to integrate them into > the openSUSE project if and as much as desired, and that we don't want > to create competition to existing community projects. That is a *very* important point. It's about embracing the community, not putting those dedicated people aside. Furthermore, it's quite ineffective: it would split the number of people on the forums, because the community forums would continue to exist as well, so part will stay on the community forums, part will come over to the "official" forum. No one has the time to be active on all of them. > - We were offered to use a new forum solution provided by another > Novell department. However, at the moment we do not know when this > solution would be available. It would also be most likely a closed > source solution. On the plus side, there is an existing user community > already answering support questions (as on all the other forums linked > from the opensuse.org wiki). Don't underestimate the effects in terms of reputation and image for a company that a) says its strategy is opensource b) prefers closed-source software for running its community I'm not a die-hard-opensource-only guy, when the closed-source tool is much more effective and better than its opensource alternatives, choose the right tool for the job. But in this particular case, I do think it's different: "openness" and opensource are the very key factors of Novell's strategy (at least, as far as I can tell/decrypt from the outside). > Possible solutions right now would be: > - Do not change anything. We link to established web forums in the SUSE > community from the "Communicate" page in the wiki. Everybody looking > for a forum should find one to their taste. None of them is "the" > official openSUSE forum. I'm in favor of that option, for the reasons cited above. > - Create a new forum running on an open source web forum software and ... Strongly against it, would leave the existing community forums aside. > - "Bless" one of the existing community forums to be the official one. Not feasible, unless the 2 or 3 largest community forums agree to regroup. But AFAIK none of them is currently _the_ biggest forum that would be natural to everyone to be elected as "the" community forum. > - Wait for the new software for the Novell support forums and use them. Worst option IMHO ;) ... > Thanks for your feedback, Thanks for asking :) - -- -o) Pascal Bleser http://linux01.gwdg.de/~pbleser/ /\\ <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> _\_v FOSDEM 2006 -- 25+26 February 2006 in Brussels -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.2 (GNU/Linux) iD8DBQFD15Mzr3NMWliFcXcRAinpAJ98WFYnJp4gEE35cr+53PoIzvV6ZwCgkphC E4OkSzqbX87Bv4iAHrjhTgA= =nrYS -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- --------------------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED] For additional commands, e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
