[ubuntu-uk] Online Discussion Forum - To be or not to be?
Nik Butler
nik at butlershouse.co.uk
Tue Oct 10 07:07:10 BST 2006
Of course what this topic is about is not technical merit or technical
delivery. It about the emotional attachment people have to how they wish
to locarte and organise their data. I can think of several cases amongst
the community where people have expressed preferences for Email over
IRC, Web Forum over Email, IRC over Web Forum and Web Forum over Instant
Messenging. We a group of very smart individuals who are good at finding
ways to get information from one place to another to be acted upon. So
its not suprising that we all have a "preferred" mechanism by which we
like to share and cogregate.
Whats interesting is how we treat inclusion, permission and responsiblity.
There is nothing stopping anyone from creating a web forum and then
promoting it as part of the community. Just like there is nothing
stopping anyone from writting a new application and promoting it. it is
the people and their commitment to a platform that defines the success
or death of a particular medium for sharing information. How simple it
is to become included and be involved is one factor that determines this .
Once within this community an ability to contribute to new ideas and to
promote certain agendas or concepts by being given permission from the
group to speak and be responded to will ensure that the community can
create growth and generate new avenues of communication and activity.
Finally who ensures that this community is maintained, monitored and
provisioned to enable the above will be responsible for shaping and
directing that community.
If anyone wants an online forum, or IRC or even Chat list then they can
take responsibility for creating the environment, enabling people to
join and allowing them to access it. Technically nothing is stopping
anyone from achieving this. Whether it becomes a thriving community or
barren postland will be down to the people who can become involved. In
general thuogh I believe people tend towards people and in the case of
the Ubuntu-UK team we ( as a larger part of the mail list ) seem to
prefer mail llists and wikis.
Let me conclude by offering this thought.
Open Source software development is as much about Peer approval as it is
scratching some itch. No developer of a OSS project ever stopped to ask
the community if they wanted it, or if they should be doing it, they
went ahead and created it , released it and then waited for others to
come to it. Why should we treat any other aspect of our community any
differently ?
Thanks for reading.
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