Connecting users to LoCo's via IRC

[Jan Claeys]

Op maandag 03-08-2009 om 10:51 uur [tijdzone +0100], schreef Jorge O.
Castro: 
> Right now in our IRC clients when you launch them we autojoin them to
> #ubuntu. This makes the channel unwieldy, see
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu-community/+bug/392799
> 
> I was wondering how people felt about having the users join
> #ubuntu-COUNTRYCODE instead, so depending on your locale it would join
> you to that channel instead of #ubuntu. How do you feel about this,
> would it be useful for LoCo's or do you feel like you would get
> "spammed" by random users?

Ubuntu Belgium refers to #ubuntu-nl, #ubuntu-fr, #ubuntu-de & #ubuntu
for support (and we have some members who follow those channels to help
with support).

Providing help in #ubuntu-be is complicated for several reasons, but the
main reason is about language: there are 3 official languages in
Belgium, and all of them already have larger (often much larger)
communities outside of Belgium.  From the start of ubuntu-be we decided
to work with does "language communities" for things like support, and
because of that we also actively point people to those IRC channels for
support.

OTOH, #ubuntu-be is the place for those who want to help with local
activities (booths at computer fairs, etc.), or for people who have
issues that are specific to Belgium (Belgian banks, Belgian electronic
ID, etc.).  So we would need to auto-join at least 2 channels for each
of the 3 Belgian "locales".

To add some more complications, many experienced (or who think they are)
users prefer to install their OS in English[*] and of course the
"Europe/Brussels" time zone combined with an en_US locale doesn't say
anything about what someone's native language is...

So if something gets implemented, it would be nice if such "complicated"
use cases are taken into account...  ;-)


[*] <rant> Which is bad in itself, because as a result they often don't
know how to communicate about computers in their native language
properly. </rant>

-- 
Jan Claeys