[BackupPC-users] [OT] Re: silly question - is there a Forum for BackupPC

[Holger P. <wb...@pa...>]

Hi,

Bharat Mistry wrote on 2009-04-10 08:28:32 +0100 [Re: [BackupPC-users] silly question - is there a Forum for BackupPC]:
> On Thu, Apr 9, 2009 at 8:12 PM, Joe Bordes <jo...@ts...> wrote:
> 
> > I'm willing to set this up if there is need.
> > I personally like the forum a lot.
> > Space and bandwidth is on me.

well, your choice. Just don't pass on forum posts to the list. As has been
said before, there is already at least one site that presents the mailing
list archive contents as a forum and even sends back posts to the mailing
list. While this is convenient for clueless users that don't know how to
subscribe to the mailing list, the posts often tend to reflect this
cluelessness and be disruptive to the original intent of this mailing list:
letting users of BackupPC help each other in solving *real* problems (rather
than quoting documentation to each other). My impression is that this type
of forum post is increasingly ignored.

There are valid reasons for using a forum interface to the mailing list, and
it *is* possible to do so in a non-disruptive way, if you keep in mind that it
is really a mailing list. It would be a pity if it became necessary to blindly
blackhole all forum traffic (should be a simple exim postdata ACL ...).

> > Bharat Mistry escribió:
> >
> >  This type of mailing list is very hard to follow

Sorry, but just how do you suggest following this in a forum? Sure, you can
wait till a thread is two weeks old and then read it. Separating new messages
from old ones is something my MUA does for free. And while I get a threaded
view, I can still see all messages at once, which is particularly convenient
when there are three or four threads from one person to different aspects of
the same problem (as is currently the case).

You prefer a forum? Fine. But mailing lists are not, per se, harder to follow.

> I use Gmail and have setup a filter for BackupPC as suggested by others but
> I still find list very disorganised and I still think a forum is far, far
> superrior.

I think you are mistaken in the assumption that people would post in a more
organized fashion if you were to view the results through a forum interface.
If you're asking all of us to switch to a forum, that's ridiculous. People
answering question go wherever they choose. People asking questions go
wherever they get the best answers (or rather, they need to live with the
answers they get wherever they go). Simple. And fair enough. You get what you
pay for.

> With forums you can have different areas for:
> 
> Installation
> Howto
> General
> Bugs / Issues
> Development
> Feature Request / Wish List
> Further split up into versions

True. You can do the same with mailing lists. You get the same disadvantages
in both cases. "Where does my question belong? Oh, I'll just put it everywhere
that might be relevant." "My installation question turns out to be a bug (or
vice-versa). What now?" "Nobody answered my installation question, but there's
a lot of traffic on the development channel, I'll go there instead." "I've got
a howto question and a feature request. Do I need to write almost the same
message twice?"

We just haven't got enough volume on this list to warrant splitting it up.

I think the structure you're describing fits to a Wiki or FAQ rather than a
mailing list. Guess what - we've got a Wiki and an FAQ. Some people just don't
look there before asking here, which somehow makes me think they don't like to
search through a complicated structure like yours.

> Much better than the current mess.

Well, for a start, let's add an [OT] to the subject. You see, if there's a
mess, it's not in the infrastructure, it's in the usage.

Regards,
Holger