Announcing #ubuntu-irc-helpers

[Robert Wall]

Hello all,

On Wed, Feb 3, 2010 at 3:05 AM, Lorenzo J. Lucchini <ljlbox at tiscali.it> wrote:
> On Wednesday 03 February 2010 11:11:45 Alejandro Riveira Fernández wrote:
>> El Wed, 03 Feb 2010 03:08:27 -0500
>>
>> idleone <oneidle at gmail.com> escribió:
>> > Hey everybody!
>>
>>  Why yet another channel? Those things you describe can not be done
>> in #ubuntu-irc already?
>>
>>  We end up with ten's of quiet channels where nothing happens ever.
>
> These are my thoughts exactly.
> What John described seems to me to fit perfectly the current scope of
> #ubuntu-irc.
>
> If #ubuntu-irc is not currently used as much or as well as it should, then the
> solution is not duplicating it and hoping the new name will attract people
> more. The solution is using it.

Having been in #ubuntu-irc-helpers for the past few days, I agree with
Lorenzo. The discussions in the channel seem compatible with
#ubuntu-irc, and the level of traffic of a combined channel would be
acceptable. When it came up in #ubuntu-irc-helpers, others seemed to
agree. I personally do not see a need for yet another channel.

Considering that this seems to be the immediate reaction from the
community, and that I don't see any discussion with the community
before implementing this idea (though I've been known to miss things
:), perhaps it would be a good idea to discuss things like this more
in the future, before rushing ahead with "unapproved draft"s (wording
from the IRC helpers wiki page). I apologize if I'm mistaken in this
characterization, but that's how it looks from here.

I'm also concerned that several times now, people have come into the
channel asking for Ubuntu help. I assume this is either because of the
channel's name, or because "Regulars:" in #ubuntu's topic isn't hugely
descriptive. Either way, it should probably be looked at if the
channel stays.

Robert Wall (rww)