[ubuntu-uk] Where do 'normal' UK Ubunteros cluster? (Was: Re: Online Discussion Forum - To be or not to be?)

Caroline Ford caroline.ford.work at googlemail.com
Mon Oct 9 21:48:06 BST 2006


On Mon, 2006-10-09 at 20:16 +0100, John K Masters wrote:
> On Mon, 9 Oct 2006 20:02:19 +0100
> Alan Pope <alan at popey.com> wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 09, 2006 at 07:56:30PM +0100, Sean Miller wrote:
> > > I believe this to be a Mailman list, hence do we not already have a
> > > way of reading the list threaded?
> > > 
> > 
> > https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk
> > 
> > Linked at the bottom of every mail.
> > 
> > Cheers,
> > Al.
> > 
> > 
> Useful, but you can't reply to mails from that view.
> 
> John
> 

Exactly - it's read-only. I'm forced to download all of this to
participate. I'm told that gmane would allow people like me with poor
net access to contribute to the mailing list without having to download
all the messages. Email lists are not that accessible, although they are
certainly better than IRC..

Email is ideal if you have access to the address at work, and have an
always on internet connection. By the time I get to download the email
the conversation has passed...

Complaints about top-posting etc make me wonder who we are targeting.
Only long-term geeks care about such things - and yet the point of
Ubuntu is to bring linux to the un-converted, to 'normal' people. Our
target groups will use HTML mail, web mail and won't care about old
mailing list and usenet netiquette. 

I agree that dead forums are a turn off - but if you look at the Ubuntu
forums they have much more life than even the busiest Ubuntu mailing
list. Web forums do attract people - people know what they are, they are
easy to search and people like to use them. 

When we had broken patches it was the Ubuntu forums that took the brunt
of it - it seems to be where our new users instinctively go for
information. The mailing list users have a different skill set. 

I think having a UK forum would be a good step towards opening up the
community. Some may hate the 'hassle' of having to click to see messages
- but many more are not even aware we exist. 

Rather than have our own forum I think it would be better to see if we
can get a sub-forum of the main Ubuntu forums. There are many UK
Ubunteros there but you never see them here, or on launchpad for that
matter. It would be great to reach out to that community - I know we
have wiki space but the Ubuntu wiki is quite frankly a mess.

I don't know how many subscribers we have but I can see that the number
of individual posters is pretty small. There is a comfort in small
groups but I don't think our self-exclusion is working in our
interests..

Caroline




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