On 2/23/06, Keith Kastorff <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I joined the OpenSUSE mailing list after suseforums staff made me aware > of the dialog regarding official forums.
I think that you should mention that you are an Administrator of suseforums, and have posted about 5% of all messages on that forum, and (quite understandably) a staunch defender of the forum and associated community: http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?s=9950955ec4ed435130242d75f4d16355&showtopic=20594&view=findpost&p=115472 I am in no way dismissing your following points because of this, but I think we should know you are more than a casual member of suseforums. I should also declare that I believe we should have a web forum, and was the first to propose so on this mailing list back in August: http://lists.opensuse.org/archive/opensuse/2005-Aug/0917.html Most of my arguments for doing so haven't changed. But responding to some of your points: > 1) community > ...in fact, IMO community doesn't really start until you've stepped > outside Linux, and began to explore each other in ways that don't depend > on technical subject matter. It's a dialog about music, movies, books, > philosophy, or politics that begins to truly define us, not what distro > we use and how much we know about it. I understand your point, at the moment most of our community is happening in this mailing list, which does not allow any such diversions. On the other side, most of us are not looking to create a social club. > "How much control/influence would > Novell/SUSE exercise over format/content in exchange for 'official' > sponsorship?" Other than standard terms of service that are already on openSUSE.org - none This would be a community forum, sponsorship is largely infrastructure. But will extend into having links to the forum from distro Welcome pages, etc, that is problematic to link to when not controlled. > 3) investment of those boards already running This is the best argument against an openSUSE forum. If in 2-3 years the openSUSE forum grows to an Ubuntu or Gentoo type forum, then the current SUSE forums I think will get hurt. There will always be niche forums covering things that can never be discussed or linked to legally in the jurisdictions that Novell is incorporated. > 4) what problem would "official" forums be designed to fix? Whilst SUSE staff will not be employed to moderate the forum. Many would take part, in an offical forum, that would otherwise not. As proven by previous post in this thread. > 5) is a one size fits all solution what people want? (the size of > linuxquestions) Yes the bigger the better in my view. Just keep splitting categories if some area gets too busy. If we had enough posts to support Hardware->Video Cards-->ATI I see no issue. > 6) what's changed to make this an issue now? > > Given SUSE's been around for some time, and the community seems to be > quite alive and well, what's different now that makes this issue > important? openSUSE happened. Peter 'Pflodo' Flodin.
