Solution Coming Re: Fedora Community: Under threat?

[Rodolfo J. Paiz]

On Sun, 2005-02-06 at 15:04 -0600, akonstam at trinity.edu wrote:
> I don't know where is opposition to the list is coming from but I see
> no real problem with the list as it exists.

Good point, and one I would like to echo. This list *can* continue as it
is. It is not actively causing harm to the community.

Then again, it could be improved:

 - Better searching of archives
 - More flexible ways to access its content
 - Greater ease for newbies in learning its use
 - Greater ease for experts in wading through 8,000 messages/month
   trying to find questions to answer
 - Greater control over malware

Probably a few more I've missed off the top of my head. But moving from
the mailing list to web fora is not going to improve anything, and will
certainly cause some harm.

	1. I'm nearly the most-prolific poster on Piper Chat
(www.piperchat.com) and it watches to see whether there's a reply to a
conversation in which I participate. That's nice for newbies. However,
actively trying to find new things that might be of interest to me
entails a daily visit to the site, trawling the various areas to see if
something was posted. Takes a good five minutes of my time, and that's
on a board that gets 5-10 messages a day! Bleagh.

If fedora-list were only fedora-webfora, I would find it so difficult
and so time-consuming to help others that my current activity level
would be severely curtailed. I can go through a day's posts in fedora-
list within five to ten minutes... I cannot do that with web fora.

Without people who want to help others, or with any marked reduction in
those people, the Fedora community suffers grievous harm.

	2. Adding independent web fora to the mailing list (remember, Warren
said fedora-list would not close) is a recipe for disaster. Some people
would move to the web fora, some would stay on the mailing list, very
few (almost none?) would monitor both, and you then have a fragmented
community. And I'll bet you that most of the experts stay on the mailing
list, leaving the web fora an empty shell that's not very useful to
newbies since a neat interface is no substitute for content.

Let's find something that helps everyone, I say. So I repeat: let us
move to NNTP as a *base* protocol, with news-to-mail and news-to-web
gateways so that each person may choose whatever tool/interface they
prefer. All those protocols, gateways, and interfaces already exist! No
need to reinvent the wheel here.

If someone objects to NNTP, I am willing to listen. But please, let
proposed solutions be those that ADD flexibility and robustness instead
of removing it.

Cheers,

-- 
Rodolfo J. Paiz <rpaiz at simpaticus.com>