[plug] Forum Software

[Gavin Chester]

On Thu, 2007-07-26 at 06:41 +0800, Mark J Gaynor wrote:
> My challenge to others on the list is do nothing, expect nothing!
> Become
> part of the solution and not part of the problem - apathy. One or two
> well
> meaning people cannot do all that is required in the long term, it
> requires
> a team effort. At the moment that team is small but dedicated to
> change.

I may be missing the point here, but here goes. It seems, reading
between the lines, that this thread started from a workshop wherein an
'expert' advocated a support forum over a mail list. No? Since then the
debate has raged over the comparative merit of that idea and the impact
of each approach on 'newbies'.

I think in Mark's reply the answer lies: eventually no one wants the
responsibility and commitment of maintaining a forum as moderator. I
have volunteered in community work and the same sort of thing always
happens. The _very_ few working unpaid for the many. It breeds
resentment. 

But, guys and gals can't it been seen that the two methods are analogous
to open source vs closed source? An email list becomes self-regulating
and its members are the maintainers and contributors whereas a forum has
an elite moderator (or more) and the success or otherwise relies on
their exclusive control of the group (project) by those elites.

Sure you get some stupid and nasty people who bring their baggage to a
mail list, but usually they are filtered out by the other members. Plug
is small enough that counter-productive flame wars are usually little
fizzers and then we all get on with the business of learning linux. As
for the claim that the list has been 'dumbed down': get real. I have not
been with linux long, just struggling to learn different things since I
first picked up RH7.0 several years back. There is no need to be a 'CLI
warrior' anymore, but if you have got those skills then you can
contribute that help when someone needs a bit of scripting advice or
some quick hack.

Move along, nothing more to see here ;-)

I'm up to contributing $0.10 worth by now ;-)

Gavin      
>