[OT] For your amusement

[Rick Stevens]

On 04/07/2015 12:50 PM, jdow wrote:
> 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.

I might also mention that Joanne did a bang-up job as the moderator.
I was also a member of that Amiga forum (Joanne, I had CIS PPN
"75006,1355") and I was always impressed by Joanne's professionalism
and (rather dry) sense of humor.
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- Rick Stevens, Systems Engineer, AllDigital    ricks at alldigital.com -
- AIM/Skype: therps2        ICQ: 22643734            Yahoo: origrps2 -
-                                                                    -
-     Better to understand a little than to misunderstand a lot.     -
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