Call for discussion to clarify the IRC guidelines

[Carl Karsten]

On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 8:46 AM, Juha Siltala <juha at siltala.net> wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 20, 2011 at 12:48, Matt Darcy
> <ubuntu.lists at projecthugo.co.uk> wrote:
>> On 20/07/2011 11:07, Alan Pope wrote:
>
>>>> to be blunt, if you are an inexperienced user, why would you be using the
>>>> unsupported beta product,
>>>
>>> For fun?
>>
>> Yes, that's fine, but then I don't expect to see "I NEED THIS TO WORK IT's
>> MY MAIN MACHINE !!! or "I lost all my work, HELP !!!!"
>>
>> what's the point of people putting these warnings on, setting up support
>> channels such as #ubuntu+1 for other people to decide they are not happy
>> with the level of support and use other support channels that explictly do
>> not support that software - I don't like that and I find it rude.
>
> I agree with Matt that we should simply direct +1 users to #ubuntu+1,
> away from #ubuntu. They are testing a new release and them taking
> support time in #ubuntu is not desirable.
>
>> the EOL stuff is very interesting, and I don't see a problem with "fixing"
>> something in EOL, eg: my host file is corrupted, but when it comes to
>> actually resolving a problem I find that a worthless task as the fix will
>> never make it into the repos as they are dead, 3rd parties will have swapped
>> focus onto non-EOL versions, and packages in the repos may have been
>> moved/removed, if we are going to support the EOL stuff, what's the point of
>> making it EOL, may as well say support runs for ever but package support is
>> dead after 18months.
>
> I also agree with this. Users who are on an EOL release for one reason
> or another should be given instructions on how to upgrade to a
> supported release. Very old software is a) difficult to support in the
> first place, and b) dangerous on the Internet with all the possible
> security issues involved.

I am only 1/2 kidding when I suggest the oxymoron #ubuntu-unsupported

Personally I think that would be dumb, but it might be a reasonable
compromise, and its existence might help people understand what
is/isn't appropriate topic.  This way we aren't telling someone to
stop (which is harsh, bad, makes people grumpy...) just to move.  It
wouldn't be much different than telling them to go to #linuxhelp,
other than it would still be ubuntu specific, and that's the point of
irc #channels: a common topic.  If someone needs help running foo game
under wine they will likely get better help form someone who runs foo
on wine on ubuntu than some subset of that stack.

I think it is worth considering the happy helper that is willing to
help out with unsupported questions: should we really discourage that?

One of the things that causes the channel to become 'bad' is too many
conversations going on at once.   This is a problem regardless of if
the conversations are about supported topics or not.   when #ubuntu
gets saturated, maybe asking the people discussing the lesser
appropriate topics moving to #u-overflow?  I pick "lesser" because it
doesn't really matter if it is/isn't un/supported, just it is
currently the one chosen to be most appropriate to be moved somewhere
else.


-- 
Carl K