[gobolinux-users] Gobolinux Forum?

[Michael Homer]

On 5/25/07, molfar <molfar.ua at gmail.com> wrote:
> On 5/25/07, Michael Homer <gobo-users-dufus at wotfun.com> wrote:
> > Because some discussions would be on the lists, and some would be on
> > the forum, and there'd be no link between the two. Some people would
> > be on the list, and some on the forum, and the two would diverge.
>    +
> > I should be clear that by "nobody" I mean "none of the developers".
> And... BINGO! It seems that was the main reason for its failure. If
> all the developers agree to leave behind mail-list altogether and move
> on to forum - there won't be any problems with fragmentation etc. Why
> not? What keeps you here? What advantages does it have comparing to
> forum?
Yes, that's exactly the reason - nobody wanted to use it, so it died.
Marketplace of ideas, etc etc.
> > meant is that since there's so few people in total, and many of them
> > wouldn't be there, the forum wouldn't be monitored well enough. When
> > there are thousands of users it can be relied upon that a few of them
> > will be there at any given time. Without that, and without the
> > developers, it's a bit of a flop.
> Abandon mail-list. Create one centralized forum. Problem solved.
No. That would solve the other problem, yes, but it wouldn't address
this one - there still wouldn't be many people around. You can argue
that that isn't so much of a problem so long as it gets enough reading
over the course of a day, and that might be so. It depends a little on
what our expectations are for that, and how we can set up other
people's so they're not disappointed.
> > Somehow, I think unanswered messages and requests are a little worse
> > than people being forced to endure the everlasting travesty that is a
> > mailing list.
> There are many unanswered posts in mail-list too. So, I don't think
> this one is a solid a argument. Sorry))
Bollocks. Having (even) more unanswered posts is bad.
> Anyway, in this case it is not the problem of means used, but of
> people that are part of this community.
> Thus, if you say that having mail-list makes your whole "project" look
> more active and striving - you are wrong. To me, as an outsider, it
> doesn't.
I don't think anybody said that. But yes, well done, we can all make
up arguments and attribute them to other people. You're right that
people here seem to prefer the mailing list, and so any change to that
situation will have to be convincing to them in order to succeed. I
don't think that's going to happen, but we'll see. I'm not really that
fussed one way or the other, to be honest.

On 5/25/07, MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> > molfar <molfar.ua at gmail.com> wrote:
> > Nonsense.  It is still a good simple form of push communication.
> It is a form yes, but "good"? "simple"? I would totally disagree.
> When I first joined the community several months ago I had a lot of
> pain in the *ss to be able to use this mail-list swiftly. It is just
> so clumsy and old-school. And then, can you edit the message you
> wrote? Can you have an avatar? Can you use graphic smiles in your
> text?
Thank god, no.

You can avoid the problems of harvesting by using another,
special-purpose email address (shockingly, "gobo-users-dufus" isn't my
day-to-day email address), and filtering appropriately after that.

However, if it does turn out that we end up with a forum (and it does
seem that some people do want it), can we please at least make it a
first-class citizen this time? forums.gobolinux.org or something? It's
just ugly to have the forums head off to who-knows-where on somebody's
personal or LUG site. I will host it in the same fashion as
lists.gobolinux.org if we want it somewhere network-distant from the
main site.
-Michael