Le 2010-10-18 10:51, James Wilde a écrit :
Originally posted on the Discuss list, where the suggestion, quite rightly, was
that I move it here.
I've been reading the comments on list vs forum, traffic problems and so on,
and taking a look at the options available to users. Why, I wondered, are so
many questions that should be on [users] coming to [discuss]? So I took a look
at the options for user support. It was when I was about to suggest that list
moderators should be able to redirect list messages instead of just approve
them, and then realised that list moderators only see about five out of every
thousand messages, that I realised that it was a forum we needed, and began
looking at LIbO's interface with the world. And discovered what a mess, sorry,
eight-armed octopus it has become, from the users' point of view.
This is what I found:
I'm a libreoffice user and I want help. I test libreoffice.org and I'm
redirected to documentfoundation.org. Hello, who are these TDF guys and what
do they have to do with my problem? I want help with LibO, not TDF.
Action point 1: redirect TDF to LibO and not vice versa or have TDF as a
'corporate' site.
The Supporters page gives me a list of companies and individuals who think
we're doing a great job, but nothing on how to fix my problem.
Action point 2: Rename 'Supporters' to 'Admirers of what we're doing'.
On the TDF site as it is, I _may_ find my way to the Contribute page - not the
most intuitive. I want support, I'm not ready to contribute yet. If I stay
on the Contribute page long enough, I _may_ notice that there is a bunch of
lists, and I _may_ go and take a look at those lists and discover, if I scroll
a looong way down that there is a Users list, which is for support.
Action point 3: Rename 'Contribute' to 'Support'. Move Users to the top of
the lists list. But see below.
There is also a forum. How I'm going to find that there is a
libreofficeforum.org I don't know. Maybe it's referenced somewhere. I think
there was a link on the Contribute page, alongside the link to 'some lists'.
However, the forum address should be forum.libreoffice.org, so that one can get
there from libreoffice.org, via a link at the top, saying Forum.
Action point 4: Put a redirect on the libreoffice.org site to
libreofficeforum.org. Or better yet, sink libreofficeforum.org altogether, and
use forum.libreoffice.org.
Now I have a lot of respect for Barbara Duprey, who is far and away better than
I will ever be at helping users. Barbara prefers a mailing list to a forum for
non-technical users. Unfortunately, I'm a technical user so I'm not typical,
but I have to challenge her view on that. I'm a member of a site for those who
read e-books, and help there is via a forum. If there's one place where
technical illiterates could be considered to gather, it's on a site devoted to
e-books. But the forum there functions well. Another forum which works well -
for writers, perhaps even more technically incompetent - is on the Scrivener
site.
An advantage of a forum over a mailing list is that the moderators can move
threads which land in the wrong place - like all these user questions in
discuss, for example.
Another advantage of a forum over a mailing list is that I can come and do a
quick search for my problem (which I can in the list archives also, of course)
and then open a thread for my problem. When I come back I just need to look at
that thread - I can browse the others if I want, and that way I may get
involved - and get my replies. And when I've solved my problem, if I'm not
interested in staying with the community, I just don't return until I have a
new problem. I don't have to unsubscribe, which, since I'm illiterate as well
as technically illiterate, I can't see how to do from the lines at the bottom
of the email. So no 'help me unsubscribe' messages.
Action point 5: Let the list system fade out, or at least move it down the
priorities for user support. I know there are people in here who live in the
Unix world - I did myself once - and use text-only email readers, and who
therefore prefer mailing lists, but ordinary users don't like them. So keep
and monitor the lists, but plug the forum.
Thanks for listening. Now, Houston, help us get back to Earth. :)
//James
I'm also leaving this note from the discuss thread and am adding this:
>
> yes, indeed, Mailman does support something like a
> mailinglist-forum-bridge. I am also involved in the new Mageia
> distribution and one of the participants there has for test purposes
> created such a forum-mailinglist gateway. You can read his
> introduction to the forum and the link to it in this email:
> http://www.mail-archive.com/mageia-disc...@mageia.org/msg01602.html
>
> I'm sure he would be willing to help out a bit - if asked nicely. ;)
>
> Sigrid
>
Thanks Sigrid, I was exactly going to recommend the same thing. I am
also part of the Mageia marketing team and a lot of the mailist/forums
problems are similar for both groups. It may be a good idea to "team up"
with the Mageia people who are in charge and compare notes just for the
sake of expediency.
Marc
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