Forums vs Mailing Lists

[Scott]

Derek Broughton wrote:
> Jeff Waugh wrote:
> 
>> <quote who="Daniel Robitaille">
>> 
>>> I'm not sure it is a good thing on the long run to have a growing
>>> resentement that we have 2 separate community, one mailing list based,
>>> and one forum based, and the developers tend to hang in one side of the
>>> fence.
>>> But is there anything we can do?  It's not like we can force people to
>>> join the forums, and we cannot force people to join the mailing lists.
>> 
>> This has been tugging at my conscience for a while now, too. While I would
>> like to suggest that we have every mailing list mirrored on the forums, I
>> know that many of the mailing list contributors [1] regard most of the
>> stuff coming from the forums as noise.
> 
> I can see how Forum users could feel that way.  Personally, I killfile the
> lot of them - it's not that I believe they have less to contribute, I just
> can't follow their conversations when they all have the same name and don't
> quote.

When I read what you wrote here the first time, I was ready to jump in 
with  "but they do all have different names and most of them quote".
Then it dawned on me you were referring to the forum posts that end up 
on the ubuntu-users list.   That's a whole different ballgame.

 >  If the Forums would at least allow people to create an account (I
> expect they do) and use that account information to create the From header
> on the mailing list, I'd stop ignoring them.

I participate in both the forums and the mailing lists.  Because I'm a 
mailing list "vet" and because I've seen what a mess forum posts become 
on ubuntu-users, I completely ignore the list form the forum side and 
generally ignore most of the forum posts from the list side.  I'm 
willing to bet 99% of the forum users who appear on ubuntu-users as 
"Forum Post" have an actual forum user name.

The problem is the software.  The ubuntuforums.org folks need to figure 
out how to better interface with mailing lists.  Frankly I've been of 
the opinion for quite some time now that they should just bag the 
interface all together.  I think it does more "harm" than good.  It's 
just messy.

But, if they can figure out a way for it to work and make sense, then 
I'm cool with that.


-- 
Scott
www.angrykeyboarder.com
© 2005 angrykeyboarder™ & Elmer Fudd. All Wights Wesewved