On Tue, Aug 23, 2011 at 5:40 PM, Jean Weber <jeanwe...@gmail.com> wrote: > Idle curiosity: I wonder how many people who offer support do it in both > places: mailing list and forum, or more or exclusively in one or the other. > > Personal observation (not intended as a generalization): my preferences vary > with whether I'm a consumer or a provider of support services. As a consumer, > I generally prefer a forum, but as a provider I prefer an email list. Perhaps > I'm just weird, or set in my ways... :-) >
I think it is like this: a mailing list is best for a long-term relationship. It has some a user to subscribe and set up filters and folders and such, to optimize it for the mail app. But once done, it works smoothly. You have a local, searchable archive, etc. But if you are a user who has a quick question, but are not savvy about mailing lists, then the forum is the simplest solution. It allows you to have a few exchanges about your problem and then go away and come back 6 months later with another question. But very little overhead. Forums are also easier to research your issue in, since they are fine grained, e.g., a forum for Calc, another for UNO, etc. If we tried to replicate this same capability with mailing lists we'd need 10 languages x 15 forums per language = 150 mailing lists. But my previous point was this is all about differences in access methods -- list versus forums. We also have access methods via archives and nntp for mailing lists. It is reasonable for each of us to have different preferences for access methods. But if we satisfy these access method preferences by fragmenting the discussions and the accumulated knowledge from these discussions, into separate repositories, then we are making a suboptimal decision that will have longer term consequences. I'd prefer to think about the knowledge architecture of what we're doing, and the long term implications. We could, for example, have a single repository for these discussions, a mailing list or forum (an I have a slight preference for forums) and then build multiple access methods onto that single repository. That single repository then becomes the nucleus on which we can build other things, like mail-in support, auto tweeting of new threads, etc. But that argument appears to be losing to the recurrent impulse to make more mailing lists. I assume this is a natural tenancy and explains why OOo has several hundred mailing lists, most of them rarely or never used. > --Jean > > On 24/08/2011, at 6:04, "Marcus (OOo)" <marcus.m...@wtnet.de> wrote: > >> I can understand Rob's arguement that we have to split ourself to give >> support for mailing list(s) and forum in parallel. However, I believe that >> it would be an advantage when the normal, average user has a choice where to >> go to get an answer. >> >> Marcus >> >> Am 08/23/2011 09:50 PM, schrieb Dennis E. Hamilton: >>> +1 >>> >>> There is no one-size fits all here. We should have the list and the forum. >>> They are not redundant. Some people will use both. >>> >>> - Dennis >>> >>> -----Original Message----- >>> From: Marcus (OOo) [mailto:marcus.m...@wtnet.de] >>> >>> And there are users that try to avoid mailing lists. ;-) >>> >>> At the end it seems the best solution is still to go 2 ways: ML and forum. >>> >>> Marcus >
