Sounder is a valuable Ubuntu community asset.

[Basil Chupin]

On 09/04/11 13:01, Samuel Thurston wrote:
> Alan Pope feels that "the Ubuntu community doesn't need this list anymore."
>
> I feel that sounder provides a very valuable function in the Ubuntu
> community. I have only my own perspective to offer, limited as it is.
> As Alan seems predisposed to press the case for the closure of the
> list in the face of vocal and vehement public disapproval, I'd like to
> enlist your help.
>
> What do you value about the sounder list?

Sounder is a safety/relief valve.

If you didn't have sounder you would have people in the "real" mail 
lists wanting to go "off-topic" occasionally but with nowhere to go [and 
typing in OT at the beginning of the Subject Header is NOT the way to 
go!] - as it has happened in the past, and will happen in the future. 
However, when this happens someone will always say, "Take this to the 
off-topic list Sounder you naughty-type person you!" but if sounder is 
not then.............

There has been more discussion over the past few days in Sounder than 
there has been in something like ubuntu-users. Why? Because, as I 
mentioned, it is a "safety/relief valve".

And I don't know if anybody noticed, but those who have been writing in 
Sounder over the past few days are totally unknown to most (?all) of us 
who normally read the ubuntu-users list (or even the little used, 
"'cause everyone is frightened shitless for stepping out of line", 
Kubuntu-users list). I have seen names of people in Sounder over the 
past few days which I have never seen before!

Now is that a GREAT thing!

People who are users of Ubuntu but have been lurking without even 
casting a shadow have suddenly come out and expressed themselves!

Woo-ho! Wonderful! Absolutely, mind-bogglingly, *wonderful*!

People are COMMUNICATING and letting their ideas - good or bad - flow to 
others!

One is not confined to reading NoOp giving a list of URLs to read as a 
response to some dreary techno question :-) (no offence meant Gary!) in 
ubuntu-users.

So, don't anyone be a anal-retentive person and stop this mail list from 
existing!

Now, having said this there is a need for some guidelines concerning 
what is posted here.

The best example I can come up is what occurs in the OFFTOPIC mail list 
in openSUSE.

Firstly, OFFTOPIC is *NOT* allowed to be captured by Google so that 
whatever is posted there is not searchable by anyone.

Secondly, that list is *not* moderated *per* *se* - there IS a moderator 
but he will only step in if a number of mother's boys/wankers/religious 
fanatics/tossers/and those of similar tendencies consider that a 
person(s) is/are being exceptionally vulgar/annoying/pains-in-the-arse.

Naturally, the conditions of use of this openSUSE Offtopic mail list are 
written down, and of course there could be someone who would be thrown 
off the list for "not following the guidelines" - as someone who is now 
here on this list knows because the odds where stacked against her/him 
by some tossers who wanted her/him out from OFFTOPIC.

BTW, just for the record, that OFFTOPIC mail list in now 
dead-in-the-water because people who made some contribution to its 
vibrance simply left to use other distros or gone to another mail list 
where discussion is not considered to be something which is subject to 
people with anal-retentive dispositions.

Sounder needs to remain alive!

There is NO arguments against this. None.

BC

-- 
"I believe what I am programmed to believe."
                     A robot in Futuruma