[OT] For your amusement

[jdow]

On 2015-04-07 09:50, Pete Travis wrote:
>
> On Apr 7, 2015 2:37 AM, "Joe Zeff" <joe at zeff.us <mailto:joe at zeff.us>> wrote:
>  >
>  > On 04/07/2015 12:56 AM, Tim wrote:
>  >>
>  >> There's a difference between saying it's "a" support forum, versus
>  >> saying it's "the" support forum.  The first means it's a place you can
>  >> go, the second means you should go there instead of everywhere else.
>  >
>  >
>  > All forms of Fedora support are community based, even this one when you come
> down to it.  My impression has always been that ask.fedora is run by Fedora, but
> ICBW.
>  >
>  > --
>  > users mailing list
>  > users at lists.fedoraproject.org <mailto:users at lists.fedoraproject.org>
>  > To unsubscribe or change subscription options:
>  > https://admin.fedoraproject.org/mailman/listinfo/users
>  > Fedora Code of Conduct: http://fedoraproject.org/code-of-conduct
>  > Guidelines: http://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Mailing_list_guidelines
>  > Have a question? Ask away: http://ask.fedoraproject.org
>
> ask.fedoraproject.org <http://ask.fedoraproject.org> lives on Fedora
> infrastructure, is maintained by the Fedora infra team, has a fedoraproject.org
> <http://fedoraproject.org> domain name, and carries the Fedora branding (to some
> extent, anyway, and iirc there is better branding in some state of progress).
> It uses the EPEL askbot package, also largely maintained by fedora-infra folks.
> You can log into the site with your FAS account.  It is even cited in the footer
> of every message on this list.
>
> A third party is definitely not running this site, and a boilerplate disclaimer
> that user supplied content on the site is not the product of Fedora or Red Hat
> as legal entities should not be confusing.
>
> As for the rest, well, everyone has preferences.  Lists are conversational, and
> that doesn't play well in a Q&A site structured for directly addressing a given
> issue.  I'm glad that people that prefer lists and people that prefer fora both
> have a place to go.
>
> Also, I didn't want to ruin the joke, but shouldn't it be /var/credits ? :P
>
> --Pete

Forums don't work after a remarkably short time unless there is a strong 
moderator presence and participation. For over a decade I moderated one of the 
most active Amiga developer related forums on any online service. I have grown 
to prefer mailing lists. They don't search any worse than forums, arguably 
better. And mailing lists tend to feature fewer discussion chains that directly 
contradict each other's advice absent strong participation by well clued 
moderators. I also have found that mailing lists are handier for "browsing" or 
scanning. Look over all the message subject lines, at least. You find things 
worth opening that way, things you'd never find on forums or would tend to 
ignore because they take too long to load pages and generally do not allow 
proper comment chains. For people who want to maintain themselves up to date 
with the community thoughts the process of reading messages sucks dead ponies 
through garden hoses. You have to back out of the current batch of posts at 
least one level, often two or even three. That takes page loading time. Then you 
have to drill down to the next topic that looks like it might be interesting. 
That takes page loading time. With a mailing list that's all gone. It comes up 
in T'bird just fine, sorts by subject, and pages load in milliseconds vs 
seconds. But, given the direction Fedora and Red Hat have been going with their 
OSs, somehow something as dysfunctional as web forums sounds appropriate.

Of course, if you guys get clever and develop something akin to the off-line 
readers CIS, GEnie, and BiX supported, I might change my mind a little, 
especially if it looked somewhat like an MUA such as T'bird. That mitigates page 
loading delays if T'bird is setup right. A strong moderator presence is still 
needed, though. Message hiding should exist that runs in two levels, one is 
removed as off topic. Users can restore that for themselves. The other level is 
removed for profanity or other similar offenses. Those messages would be gone 
forever.

{^_^}   Joanne