[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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