Hi, On Sun, Jul 28, 2024 at 06:32:58PM -0400, Michael Grant wrote: > I never read web forums, I only really search for things in a > search engine and then end up on a forum with possible answers.
The fact is that millions of tech questions are asked and answered on Stack-like sites, probably more than on all mailing lists at this point. When you search the web for an answer there's a good chance you'll end up on one of these sites long before you will find an archived mailing list posting. So the concept is proven to work for user support in my opinion. > Maybe one of you younger folks can teach me how one deals with keeping > up with a forum like that. I'm not young and I don't try to keep up. There are plenty of people looking to provide answers, especially because of the Internet Points they amass for having their answers upvoted and selected as the solution. On these typical sites you can set certain tags that you are interested in, and then view a list of questions that match those tags. Optionally only view ones with no answers yet. I just dip in to that from time to time. On slightly more discussion-focussed Discourse forums I set it into mailing list mode and get a copy of all posts as email. In the rare case that I feel like I have something to contribute to a particular post then I click the link at the bottom of the email to view it in its web interface to compose my reply. I understand it is possible to reply to such things by email too, but I actually do appreciate the editing facilities (e.g. markdown) of the web site. But this is largely moot as I don't expect Debian support will move away from mailing lists any time soon. > tabs open in a browser all the time, perhaps on a laptop, desktop > and phone and constantly checking out if there's new messages. It > seems insane. I'd just end up letting things build up and not > check daily. This model does not work for me. Nor me. > getting all forum posts > in email becomes overwhelming. It's not like this list, it's often > like 10x more when people post micro-follups like a back and forth > chat. I don't find it a problem especially when compared to the ridiculous threads that happen here. Another thing to consider is that a strictly support-focussed web site like a Stack site actively penalises off-topic chatter. That's actually when I think is one of the best things about them when compared to a mailing list. On here it's down to whoever can post their nonsense the most often and most stridently, which is seen every week from the same small group. > if this list moved to a forum, I advise against using this set of words because there is no real chance of it happening yet it is enough to trigger some people who are extremely devoted to mailings lists explaining at length why that will be awful. For an academic discussion about something that isn't going to happen. > what you could do is cross post links to the forum for say a year > to nudge people to use it. That might finally push things over. Doesn't really seem feasible. Bad as this place is, I wouldn't want to see links to posts on forums.debian.net posted here and there would be no point posting list archive links to a web site that the person asking the question isn't even on. I don't see any chance of success without Debian being willing to prominently list such a site on its official web page as an official place to get support. > it would suck for me big to post stuff in a forum and get a load of > crap responses just because people are trying to push up their score, > or get no responses at all. Bad answers on Stack sites tend to lose people Internet Points and eventually get hidden. It's why useful answers appear more often in web searches. Whereas on this list, volume tends to win by attrition. Thanks, Andy -- https://bitfolk.com/ -- No-nonsense VPS hosting
