Mailing lists, like forums, have advantages and disadvantages. My own issues with mailing lists are:
- Some folks have the misfortune of using rubbish mail clients (aka Lotus Notes) and so we have no threading etc. - This email is going to however many thousand people, but 95%+ will have no interest in it. In the case of Forums or StakeExchange or Google Groups, users only see what they have an interest in, rather than being forced to wade through everything. Fundamentally I'm with Bernd though: The issue isn't so much which method is used to get support, the biggest problem is that its scattered across a dozen different methods and there's no easy way to search between them all. No central portal with a decent search and knowledgebase which allows a user to easily find the answer to a question that has been asked before. For myself I'll do a web-search and if the answer doesn't come up, I'll have to ask the community. Things like Facebook and twitter won't turn up in the results. Some forums do, and some mailing lists do (via nabble) but its hit and miss. Tickets don't turn up usually (search engines don't seem to like tickets) but stack overflow does. Of course, searching only works when you know what you're searching for so this is best for non-new users who know much of the terminology. Jonathan From: Nick Hopton <nhop...@gmail.com> To: qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org Date: 01/04/2012 13:17 Subject: [Qgis-user] Re: Closure of forum Sent by: qgis-user-boun...@lists.osgeo.org It's difficult. The people who don't like forums don't like them because forums don't take a nice, clean, top-down, structured approach. This is true of course, forums are informal, are quite often rambling, but they can also be very friendly places. I don't know how many people have downloaded and installed QGIS over the years. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, perhaps. My guess would be that most of these people were not trained GIS professionals at all and they won't have nice, top-down structured brains. They'll be like me, wanting to start in the middle with something they half-understand and then work outwards from there. I don't think that Stack Exchange will suit them (for reasons that I mentioned earlier) nor I think will this place (Quantum GIS - User). For what it's worth, I still believe that QGIS needs an informal, friendly place of first resort for newcomers and the less-experienced. Everyone has to start somewhere and the most important thing is to get them doing something, anything. Plot a few GPS tracks, trace a few shapes from Google Earth and turn them into a map, anything to get them going. Having said all this, I still don't know about the best way forward. The old forum was good, Google Groups are good too. As suggested, even a new list on Nabble perhaps, informal and aimed at newcomers and the less-experienced, a beginners corner. A new list on Nabble would at least fit into an existing hierarchy, if this is important. -- View this message in context: http://osgeo-org.1560.n6.nabble.com/Closure-of-forum-tp4674587p4676332.html Sent from the Quantum GIS - User mailing list archive at Nabble.com. _______________________________________________ Qgis-user mailing list Qgis-user@lists.osgeo.org http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user This transmission is intended for the named addressee(s) only and may contain sensitive or protectively marked material up to RESTRICTED and should be handled accordingly. Unless you are the named addressee (or authorised to receive it for the addressee) you may not copy or use it, or disclose it to anyone else. If you have received this transmission in error please notify the sender immediately. All email traffic sent to or from us, including without limitation all GCSX traffic, may be subject to recording and/or monitoring in accordance with relevant legislation.
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