Solution Coming Re: Fedora Community: Under threat?

[jdow]

From: "Gain Paolo Mureddu" <gmureddu at prodigy.net.mx>
> Gustavo Seabra wrote:
> 
> > Robert wrote:
> >
> >> jdow wrote:
> >>
> >>> From: "Warren Togami" <wtogami at redhat.com>
> >>>
> >>>> http://www.livejournal.com/users/wtogami/2005/02/04/
> >>>>
> >>>> Key to the problem is that mailing lists are far from the best 
> >>>> medium for end-user support.  We need to steer end-users to an 
> >>>> entirely different medium in order to scale effectively.  Official 
> >>>> project change in that direction is happening soon.  Read the link 
> >>>> above for details.
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> Eeeewwwww, web forums. Bye guys.
> >>> {^_^}
> >>>
> >>
> >> Yes.  And then there was this shopkeeper who was upset that his shop 
> >> was so disorderly until he ran off all his customers. EXCELLENT 
> >> SOLUTION!
> >>
> > The point here is not /his/ solution, but I think he's just expressing 
> > what he'd do (and I believe most of us dumb-mortal-users would do as 
> > well) if the RedHat guys go ahead with this idea. That is definitely a 
> > very bad idea, one that would probably jeopardize the whole 
> > "fedora-users-community" idea. There's been plenty of solutions 
> > proposed here on this thread there are *much* better than the dreaded 
> > web forums.
> >
> > I second JDow's opinion. / Eeeewwwww, web forums. Bye guys. /. If they 
> > *want* ideas, they'll certainly find within this (so far) community.
> >
> I still don't get why are Web forums so dreaded, but that's just me... I 
> haven't seen a *single* reason why not to make it so... Unless, of 
> course you still want to recieve 500+ e-mail messages if you are away of 
> your computer for a day or two and could not cancel mail delivery 
> temporarily (if you don't get the digest, of course). To each their own, 
> I just don't get why people don't like the web forums idea... Maybe a 
> private NTTP server would be more suitable for this, where Red Hat could 
> even set the caducity of messages. You still need a helper application 
> to read the messages like Evolution, Thunderbird or whatever, and still 
> avoid having *your* inbox flooded.

20 years of experience with messaging systems ranging from the late
lamented BYTE Information Exchange to nntp to mailing lists and of
course web boards lead me to the conclusion that of all the alternatives
web messaging systems are pretty uniformly dreadful, even the one I
made for myself for reading BIX offline.

Any such system should support "guaranteed threading unless the poster
screws up seriously." Mailing lists and nntp fall down here. Web boards
are actually pretty good in that regard. The old BIX CoSy system was
excellent in this regard.

Any such system should include noise reduction features. I consider nntp
as a noise enhancement tool. Web boards are generally noise enhancement
tools of modest to extreme degrees. Mailing lists enhance noise as well
as provide a built in dampening mechanism. My email tools lead to a set
of VERY good noise reduction tools even with poor threading. CoSy as we
left it when BIX died provided twit filters, thread killing, and so forth.
It also provided "forever memory" that made a troll's bad behavior a
rather permanent part of the record. That does lad to some additional
civility. Now, a custom nntp can also provide this "forever memory"
which might make it a good thing.

Any such system should provide some filtering for potential malware
inclusions. HTML is entirely too flexible in this regard. Email at least
is plain text reader accessible. And a private nntp could also be plain
text accessible. Custom pretty much makes this list plain text. With
nntp tools out there we'd have to rely on custom as well. Heh, CoSy WAS
pure plain text, no HTML need apply. (Well, it DID have some provisions
for NAPLPS that nobody ever used.)

On the whole I have nice filtering setup for email already. I don't even
have a newsreader that I use at present and don't want to set one up.
(I REALLY find nntp repellant, almost as repellant as HTML. I guess I
must figure cute is for puppies and little children, not for serious
endeavors. And this should be a serious discussion group.)

But then, FC3 sorta drove me away to the point I'm giving Mandrake a
serious test. So don't lay too much stock on what I say at this point.
Maybe make my vote a tenth of a vote. I'm mostly here for old times
sake.

{^_^}