On 2/27/06, Joseph M. Gaffney <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > * Knowing it isn't going anywhere - Now don't get me wrong, I really doubt > suseforums.net and suselinuxsupport.de are going anywhere, but one of the > very big things I like about an official forum is that its here to > stay. Its > not going to be sold off, be replaced by advertising, or forgotten about > by > the owner. I have recently (and not so recently) experienced this on too > many forums to list here; several of which being major forums for major > F/LOSS software and several being completely unrelated, but the result was > the same. The site was sold, and because of the popularity, became a > place > for advertisers to easily get links and prominent google results, or the > new > owner really didn't care and was only interested in advertising revenue, > and > the site went downhill, etc, etc. Knowing that an official forum exists > means knowing this will never happen to the official forum.
So basically, you had bad experiences elsewhere and think it might happen to the existing forums. I know suseforums.net is not going anywhere, and I highly doubt suselinuxsupport.de is either. I also don't think either forumswill be sold of, replaced by advertising or even start advertising. > * openSUSE is the community, and an openSUSE forum shows a more linked > community. - There are people who go on mailing lists, people who go on > newsgroups, people who go on forums, so on, and so on. Sometimes they go > on > several of these. The fact is, many new users are very familiar with > forums, > and know that if these forums exist, they are there to support them in > some > way. Not having an official forum, imho, does not show us to be a > contiguous > community, but more of what we seem today - scattered, uncommunicative, > and > disinterested in cooperation. So why start a new forum and make it more disorganized and look like the community can't communicate. Why not just start communicating better, see if that works and if not come back later to this decision. > Against a Forum: > > * Angering existing forum maintainers - This is the only reason I'd have > against a forum, and I don't believe its a good reason either. I don't > believe they should be angry honestly, because I don't think an attempt at > unifying our community into a cohesive whole could possibly be something > to > be against. It's not that it is angering. It is the way this is going about. It is asking for the opinions of the maintainers but no one "in charge" going to ask. It is asking Viras to start a discussion on suselinuxsupport.de but before he gets the chance, announce there will be a "technical" forum. It is everyone saying it will help unify the community and not trying to unfiy what we have already. How an official forum would work within the existing community: > > * Act as a central place of discussion - Bugs, packaging problems, > wishlist > items, etc, etc all pop up all over the existing forums. If the > maintainers > of those forums post on the official forum about the topic, there is only > one > place developers, maintainers, wiki guys, etc need to look. Theres no > reason > to have to monitor (yes, I know its basically 2 - but there are smaller > ones > elsewhere) multiple forums if theres one place for these topics to be > reviewed. If I remember correctly there were a lot of people, developers and maintainers, who said even if there was an official forum they would not use it (it was in the forum discussion last month I think). If that was the case then an official forum would not matter. * Single sign-on - The current openSUSE wiki (and thus, Novell site) logins > should be the same as the forums. By doing so, new registrants to an > official openSUSE forum could be told of how they can contribute to the > wiki > as well. Many posters will do lengthy tutorials, complicated packaging > information, etc, and all this information is extremely valuable and > welcomed > as documentation on the wiki. If there is an "official" forum, then this is a great idea. It is not that I am personally against the idea of a new official forum, I just wonder why everyone is so quick to want a new official forum instead of trying to fix the communication between the existing forums and mailing lists first. You never know, that might be all that is needed.
