Kevin Donnelly wrote:
On Monday 12 June 2006 08:20, Pascal Bleser wrote:
* should we not create a _new_ list, (keeping the suse-linux-e also),
moderated for the ones that prefere this. I know I rarely answer on
suse-linux-e for many reason mostly in rapport with the fact 90% of the
posts are OT
Ouch.. is it really that bad on suse-linux-e ?
Haven't been subscribed there for years now, the only reason being that
it's so high-traffic.
Yes, there is quite a lot of traffic, but it is quite untrue that 90% of the
posts are OT. What *has* happened over the years I've been subscribed is
that the type of questions/answers has changed, mainly because of how SUSE
has developed.
When I first joined in 98, a lot of the questions were about getting things
like soundcards, scanners, etc to work, and wider installation issues. A few
years ago the questions were more about usage, eg what programs are best for
what, how to share files over your LAN, etc. A lot of these installation and
usage questions are now redundant because of the advances made in the distro
- about the only one that comes up now is wireless networking (and of course
the recent updater problems caused a temporary flurry).
Current questions seem to be much more "varied", which may account for the
"90% OT" view. To take a few at random: 32-bit machines hit physical RAM
limit at 4GB? - burn photos onto CD - dvd::rip dependencies for
SuSE10.0/x86_64 - Firefox on 10.1 is segfaulting on me.... - How to compile a
series of jpg files to a pdf booklet?
My (very subjective) impression, however, is that this is actually because
there is a new type of subscriber, one who has heard about Linux, is more
willing to try it because it has been in the news, and finds that it is
installable without much trouble. Most of it works, so the questions that
the new user asks are much less specific than in earlier years, and could
actually be asked on any distro's list (or even on a Microsoft Windows
list!). They are more "comfort" questions, rather than "showstopper" (I need
this to work before I can do anything else) ones.
Hi Kevin,
I can talk about my feeling that only 10% of articles are information
90% is noise, just as is this article that I write. It is not off topic,
it is just useless waste of time.
The estimate should not be this drastic, but defending overloaded list
where is hard to find information as newcomer's help haven is not
realistic too. It is the mailing list, not an usenet group, to see >100
mails some people need long download before they can start to browse.
That means if they look for smaller list I don't blame them. I recall
dialup times, and paying for Internet access per hour. Sure that they
will try to keep online time as small as possible. Some people don't
like crowd, and others something else and they all land here.
BTW, if all that typing energy and time would be applied to writing and
editing articles on opensuse.org, soon we would have openSUSE
encyclopedia :-)
--
Regards,
Rajko.
Visit http://en.opensuse.org
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