Hello, On Sun, Aug 08, 2021 at 11:35:15AM +0200, to...@tuxteam.de wrote: > any ideas on how to make the situation better?
To be honest I don't think that mailing lists are a very good venue for user support and I would these days prefer to direct people to a Stack Overflow-like site. The chief advantages of such sites are that posted problems are narrowed down to contain the required information, and answers are ranked so as to make poor answers (and ultimately, disruptive posters) disappear. Ask Ubuntu. I think, works well. There have been a few attempts to set up such sites for Debian, so that people could be directed to a site running on DFSG-free software instead of proprietary platforms like Stack Overflow. Sadly each of these efforts have foundered through lack of use. I don't see the lack of use as an indictment of their effectiveness; rather I think it's just because it's too hard to change the status quo without significant work. The previous attempts have sort of started as an announcement that such a site is available, but not followed up by any level of advertising on Debian's web site. The announcement threads on the mailing lists then got dominated by arguments from the same small group of people loudly and repeatedly arguing how they would never use or support such a thing. That's fine, but without a way to continually advertise a site as a support venue, it will not get used. The main reason why I see mailing lists as inappropriate for user support is that there is a severe signal to noise ratio problem. In debian-user there's a relatively small group of people who value getting their opinions on a vast variety of topics across more than they value actually answering on-topic questions. So we endure mega-threads of opinion-based off-topic content that regularly descend into personal attacks. It is hard to sift through all of this for nuggets of on-topic wisdom and even when a post is on-topic, a newcomer often doesn't have the base knowledge to distinguish good answers from bad. I find it hard to justify subjecting someone to that. Naturally the voluminous opinion-posters are mostly against anything that would reduce their ability to treat debian-user like a debating society, so effecting change is going to be hard if the only metric one would use to justify the change would be a simple noise-based sentiment analysis of the response to any proposal. If we have to continue using a mailing list for user support then my best suggestion would be to severely tighten up the on-topic requirements so that every post must be about use of Debian, and giving time-outs to posters who repeatedly can't stick to this. This would be a difficult and dramatic change since debian-user has practically no oversight; currently even severe breaches of Debian's Code of Conduct need to be reported to the Community team directly and at most result in a post weeks later saying, "please don't do that" directed at no individual. So the idea that there would be people actively dealing with off-topic content and taking action against individuals would be quite a departure from today's reality. So in summary, I don't think any of the things that would be necessary to improve the way this list works are going to be popular with the regular posters, while starting over with a different solution requires consensus and support from the Debian project that has up until now not been there. We can try to self-moderate by asking ourselves, "does my reply help the poster? Does it belong on debian-user?" Unfortunately for some the mind set is, "I'm a user of Debian so any opinion I wish to post is on-topic on debian-user". I appreciate I have also failed at this from time to time and I include myself in the list of those who should do better. Ways of making us do better are needed. Cheers, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting > I'd be interested to hear any (even two word) reviews of their sofas… Provides seating. — Andy Davidson