Fedora Community: Under threat?

[Gain Paolo Mureddu]

D. D. Brierton wrote:

>I've been a RHL and FC user for quite some time. I've been on the
>mailing lists, and had bugzilla accounts for a long time now. But this
>mailing list is strangling itself. The volume is way too high. Look at
>the beginning of the Fedora Project and see how many Red Hat engineers
>regularly posted to this list, and now look at how many do (Tim Waugh
>and Dave Jones make an occasional appearance here these days, and we're
>lucky to have them). That's it. Who's driven them away? WE HAVE.
>
>I work for a living. I have no idea what most of the other people on
>this list do, but I often feel in a minority. This list should have a
>narrow focus, restricted to using Fedora, and that's it. But instead we
>have all manner of ridiculous threads, not all of them flame wars, that
>go on and on and on. For the last couple of months I actually suspended
>delivery from this list because I just couldn't cope with the volume.
>Even as it is, I skim through messages, quite possibly missing things
>that i could either learn from or help others with just because there is
>too much traffic. Who's at fault? Well there is no one else to blame but
>ourselves. We *are* the list. Either we decide to only respond to
>genuine questions and issues, and ignore the trolls and flame-bait, or
>we give into our urges and wreck this community completely. Given the
>traffic the last couple of days I have myself considered unsubscribing.
>Which is a shame, as whilst that flame war was going on I was helping
>someone who was a complete newbie actually install Fedora. Shame on
>everyone who perpetuated that total waste of time with so little
>consideration for the silent majority on this list.
>
>All of you can say, "If you don't like the heat get out of the kitchen",
>but if the temperature gets any hotter so many people might leave that
>the Fedora community might end up as one long slanging match like the
>Debian community is. I assume that that is not what we want.
>
>So could all of us think twice about what to reply to? If someone says
>something stupid, or slags us off, or asks a question they could clearly
>answer for themselves if they just tried, how about just ignoring them?
>How about all of us exercising a little restraint?
>
>Best, Darren
>
>  
>
I must confess your post puzzles me... On the one hand you say it very 
clearly... But I wonder what is the purpose of lists such as this? Yes, 
there has been some bitter events in the past couple of days, but I 
think we can always overcome this. I agree with you that there's a lot 
of traffic on this list... As they say, it all depends on how do you 
look at it: for some people the high amount of traffic may indicate an 
active and healthy community, where as the lack there off means the 
opposite, what does it mean to you?. Don't get me wrong, I also find it 
difficult to keep up with the pace... And in cases like this, it may be 
better if there was some kind of official message board forum for the 
community given the amount of traffic (I just subscribed a few days ago, 
and already have (a dedicated sub-directory of my e-mail account just 
for this list) 1812 messages on it!! that is quite a bit!!). On the 
other hand I don't quite grasp what you mean... I don't think comparing 
the Fedora community to the Debian community is fair for either one... 
Yes many of us (including myself) have our own opinions about the Debian 
community, and sadly more often than not those opinions are not very 
optimistic, but to each their own!

I don't know how true is it to say that this list is meeting point of 
two aspects completely different from one another: The technological 
aspect, the distribution itself, Fedora, a software product which all 
that come and post to this mailing list use... But there is also one 
factor that is not as easily understood, let alone regulate accurately: 
the human aspect of it. One of the things Linux and in general Open 
Source communities have is that there is some kind of aura surrounding 
them... I'd rather use another word to describe it, but I can't find it 
(my vocabulary is so limited!), but it some times seems like some sort 
of "religious fanatism"... The only reason I find for this "phenomenon" 
to onset is that the community as a whole (and I mean de different 
communities who have as a common aspect Linux to them) "believe" in the 
Open Source, that it works and can change the way the world thinks today 
into a more open scenario... And even though I think that this can 
actually happen, I must confess that I'm impress how personal some 
individuals take this... And it is not one or two... are many more... 
much more. So in a mailing list like this, these two aspects, this 
"duality" colides... which is (at least to me) an interesting thing to 
watch.

In any case... I for one appreciate your concern about the community and 
what it might be happening to it... I can only sit tight and watch as 
the events unravel while we wait on the next Core release and pray for 
someone to answer to our posts.