Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

Jake

it is a pity when well working systems are replaced by systems that
are less good. But the high cultures of the ancient world also have
been replaced by dark medieval times and italien restaurants are
beeing replaced by burger burners (here in Europe).

> Why say that "lists are dead early"?  This list I find takes a certain
> amount of maintenance to keep up-to-date, otherwise it grows to an
> unmanageable number of e-mails in my Inbox.  If anything, it's "too

Well that is the first advantage of a newsreader. It does not spam
your mailbox. You select yourself what you want to read by the header.
The other contents are never delivered to you, eat up neither traffic
nor space. People don't really need to complain of to much traffic.

> alive" with too much communication, it's nowhere near dead.  That's not
> to say I'm complaining about the amount of mail this list generates; I'm
> just saying that it's certainly not dead.

Here people in fact complain about to much mail. Usually you should be
able to anser frankly: "Use a news reader". In a mailinglist you
can't.  Instead here people get made a bad conscience when they are
posting or discussing. That I consider rather contraproductive. That
drives people to IRC with the result of a big loss of living
documentation and a split within the community.

>
> Everyone's got their preference; some like mailing lists and come here.
> Others like forums and go there.  Still others prefer IRC.
>
> Also, a quick Google search of "gentoo newsgroup" showed me
> alt.os.linux.gentoo, and that it's been posted to as recently as less
> than a month ago.  What's wrong with that newsgroup?

1.) It's not even officially anounced on gentoo.org
2.) It is not on a public available gentoo server. I first would need
access to alt.os.linux.gentoo.
3.) It is not synchronized with the mailing list.
4.) The leaders of the community don't support it.

How should it work then? Just because it has gentoo in it's name?

>
> And I, for one at least, use Thunderbird to read my e-mail; the
> interface is pretty much the same for mail and news.  A little
> configuration change and I'd be using news.  But I like the mailing
> list, not newsgroups.  (shrug)

Right for a thunderbird user there is no real difference at all. He is
already "advanced". Probably one should say less retarded.

Saying this I currently write from google web on windows. But the
reason is, that I try to port Gentoo to Cygwin.

I still think a newsserver should be the backbone of a good community.
Mail and forums should be additional doors for those which are brought
up in the world of windows and google. Best they are fully
synchronized and it is the same database.

Al