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On Wed, Jun 12, 2019 at 8:16 AM Michał Górny <mgorny@g.o> wrote: |
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> |
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> But if I were to consider your question more deeply, then I believe |
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> there are differences: |
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> |
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> 1) ...On Forums, the best |
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> *I* can do (as regular developer) is point out the mistake in a reply |
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> and hope that user reads it before applying a bad idea presented |
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> earlier. |
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I think the -user list suffers from some of the same issue. |
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These sorts of forums can seem "democratic" but often I see 12 people |
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going on and on about a really bad solution, and some dev can point |
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out the right solution, and often the other 12 just ignore it and keep |
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going on about the bad solution. So, everybody gets an equal vote and |
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competency tends to get drowned out. |
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If anything the forums are a little better in this regard in that the |
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devs at least get more obvious flair. There is also the potential for |
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moderation to deal with this but in practice I don't think we're doing |
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that. Some kind of "approved answers" feature might create more value |
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in the forums. |
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Really though I think users also have to accept responsibility to some |
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degree. If you go with the popular vote and ignore the minority voice |
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that happens to have a dev flair or an @g.o email you're probably |
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going to have issues. I don't think devs need to feel obligated to |
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offer paths forward for whatever breakage users create by following |
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bad advice. |
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And of course we have the issue that most devs don't have time to |
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handhold everybody, and part of the cost of accepting free help with |
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support is that you are going to have varying levels of expertise. |
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Personally I don't have an issue with having Forums - I think they're |
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a mode of communication that has certain advantages as well as |
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disadvantages. My issue is more with the fact that we are tending to |
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get some kind of schism in the community along with them, in part |
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because there isn't universal agreement around certain values (not |
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just the CoC though that is part of it). |
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-- |
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Rich |
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