Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[David W Noon]

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On Tue, 07 Sep 2010 02:10:02 +0200, covici@ccs.covici.com wrote about
Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant:

>Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Volker Armin Hemmann wrote:
>> > wtf are you talking about?
>> >
>> > and who is using news anyway?
>> >
>> >
>> >    
>> 
>> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was
>> missing something in the message.  Maybe not.
>Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
>called?
>Then he can have it as a newsgroup.

I read this list through Usenet as a newsgroup.  However, I post my
follow-ups, such as this one, using email to the mailing list.

It's no big deal.

Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
spam count down.
-- 
Regards,

Dave  [RLU #314465]
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*
dwnoon@ntlworld.com (David W Noon)
*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*-*

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Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Gregory Shearman]

In linux.gentoo.user, you wrote:
> On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
>> >> I was trying to figure this out myself.  I thought maybe I was missing
>> >> something in the message.  Maybe not.
>> > 
>> > Isn't the list aggregated into that news site gmain or whatever its
>> > called?
>> > Then he can have it as a newsgroup.
>> 
>> It's not the question how I read it, but a question how a majority of
>> users can read and write to it. That influences the culture and
>> athmosphere of communication.  Also I think Volkers remark was very
>> ironical else he should best go back to his dishes.
>> 
>> Al
>
> up until today nobody ever mentioned news. Everybody was happy using mailing 
> lists, forums or irc.

I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.

> Or to phrase it differently: news is dying out quickly and gentoo never missed 
> anything not having a newsgroups.

Usenet is dying because it doesn't attract new users. The old ones are
slowly dying out.

If usenet dies I'll use something else. No problem.

-- 
Regards,

Gregory.

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> I'm reading your message via a usenet server. linux.gentoo.user is the
> newsgroup. Replies of course go via the mailing list address.

Is that seamless? Can you directly reply to a posting? Easy to set up? How?

> Usenet is dying because it doesn't attract new users. The old ones are
> slowly dying out.
>
> If usenet dies I'll use something else. No problem.

That the traditional usenet is dying, isn't surprising. It will be
replaced by sozial networks, which offer far more features for sozial
networking.

But that is something different from having a dedicated news server
for a technological project like news.gentoo.org. However that would
make only sense, if it is fully synchronized with the existing lists.
Else it would lead to an unnecessary split of the userbase.

Al

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[James]

Al <oss.elmar <at> googlemail.com> writes:


> But that is something different from having a dedicated news server
> for a technological project like news.gentoo.org. However that would
> make only sense, if it is fully synchronized with the existing lists.
> Else it would lead to an unnecessary split of the userbase.

http://news.gmane.org/gmane.linux.gentoo.user

Al,

Do everyone a favor. Go use Gmane and tell us what exactly
you'd be able to do that Gmane does not already do.
It's archived, search-able (via keywords) and many, many
other very cool features.


Furthermore, if you hose a computer, you just jump on another 
machine with a web browser and search or get help. You first
register your listserv account with gmane and then you can 
post to the list via gmane.


very cool, try it, you just might like it!


hth
(and goodnight)
James

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Peter Humphrey]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010 01:36:28 David W Noon wrote:

> Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
> spam count down.

An equally important factor is prohibiting subscriptions from 
dynamically allocated IP addresses. This has caused me to spend money on 
a fixed address.

-- 
Rgds
Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

> Al,
>
> Do everyone a favor. Go use Gmane and tell us what exactly
> you'd be able to do that Gmane does not already do.
> It's archived, search-able (via keywords) and many, many
> other very cool features.

I do you favour and confirm that it is a very cool web interface to
newsgroups. It is especially usefull if you have to switch between
machines. It is good that they mirror the gentoo mailing lists and
give them an archive. As long as you work from the same desktop a
classical newsreader seems still more comfortable to me.

However, my concern was why the Gentoo community doesn't make use of
those cool features and officially only advertises and keeps a mailing
list, that has no history itself for example and how this approach
influences and limits the culture of communication.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Arttu V.]

On 9/7/10, Al <oss.elmar@googlemail.com> wrote:
> However, my concern was why the Gentoo community doesn't make use of
> those cool features and officially only advertises and keeps a mailing
> list, that has no history itself

What do you mean by "no history"?

http://archives.gentoo.org/

-- 
Arttu V. -- Running Gentoo is like running with scissors

[gentoo-user] Re: Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Jörg Schaible]

Al wrote:

>> Al,
>>
>> Do everyone a favor. Go use Gmane and tell us what exactly
>> you'd be able to do that Gmane does not already do.
>> It's archived, search-able (via keywords) and many, many
>> other very cool features.
> 
> I do you favour and confirm that it is a very cool web interface to
> newsgroups. It is especially usefull if you have to switch between
> machines. It is good that they mirror the gentoo mailing lists and
> give them an archive. As long as you work from the same desktop a
> classical newsreader seems still more comfortable to me.
> 
> However, my concern was why the Gentoo community doesn't make use of
> those cool features and officially only advertises and keeps a mailing
> list, that has no history itself for example and how this approach
> influences and limits the culture of communication.

Gmane is actually not only a web interface, it *is* also a news server. 
Infact this posting is written from my newsreader ...

- Jörg

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Volker Armin Hemmann]

On Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al wrote:
> > Al,
> > 
> > Do everyone a favor. Go use Gmane and tell us what exactly
> > you'd be able to do that Gmane does not already do.
> > It's archived, search-able (via keywords) and many, many
> > other very cool features.
> 
> I do you favour and confirm that it is a very cool web interface to
> newsgroups. It is especially usefull if you have to switch between
> machines. It is good that they mirror the gentoo mailing lists and
> give them an archive. As long as you work from the same desktop a
> classical newsreader seems still more comfortable to me.
> 
> However, my concern was why the Gentoo community doesn't make use of
> those cool features and officially only advertises and keeps a mailing
> list, that has no history itself for example and how this approach
> influences and limits the culture of communication.
> 
> Al

wow, do you get paid for posting so much crap?

'Cool features'... 'no history', 'limits the culture of communication'.
No, no and no.

Wrong on all three. The mailing lists exist since the first days of gentoo. 
Almost all questions asked can be answered by a quick look into the archives. 
For some reason most people don't use archives.

And the fucking same is true with news. The only 'advantage' of news are:
more work for some poor sod responsible to keep the crap running.

[gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Grant Edwards]

On 2010-09-07, Al <oss.elmar@googlemail.com> wrote:

>> Do everyone a favor. Go use Gmane and tell us what exactly
>> you'd be able to do that Gmane does not already do.
>> It's archived, search-able (via keywords) and many, many
>> other very cool features.
>
> I do you favour and confirm that it is a very cool web interface to
> newsgroups.

Just as importantly, it allows access to mailing lists using NNTP
clients.  I read all mailing lists using slrn.  I find the "news"
paradigm vastly superior to the "mail" paradigm for following mailing
lists.

Once in a while I use it for web access as well, but that's rare.

> It is especially usefull if you have to switch between machines. It
> is good that they mirror the gentoo mailing lists and give them an
> archive. As long as you work from the same desktop a classical
> newsreader seems still more comfortable to me.

I work from a variety of machines, and I still use the "classical
newsreader".  I do keep my .newsrc files at a central location where
they are used from all the machines where I run slrn.

> However, my concern was why the Gentoo community doesn't make use of
> those cool features and officially only advertises and keeps a
> mailing list, that has no history itself for example and how this
> approach influences and limits the culture of communication.

I'm afraid you lost me there.  Why does it matter where the archive is?

-- 
Grant Edwards               grant.b.edwards        Yow! I just had my entire
                                  at               INTESTINAL TRACT coated
                              gmail.com            with TEFLON!

Re: [gentoo-user] Gentoos community communication rant

[Kevin O'Gorman]

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On Tue, Sep 7, 2010 at 8:05 AM, Peter Humphrey <peter@humphrey.ukfsn.org>wrote:

> On Tuesday 07 September 2010 01:36:28 David W Noon wrote:
>
> > Moreover, keeping this as a subscription-only mailing list keeps the
> > spam count down.
>
> An equally important factor is prohibiting subscriptions from
> dynamically allocated IP addresses. This has caused me to spend money on
> a fixed address.
>
> --
> Rgds
> Peter.          Linux Counter 5290, 1994-04-23.
>
> Really?  I pay because I have a use for a fixed IP, but if the above is
your only
reason, there are free email accounts to be had that can forward to wherever
you
like.  I yet another gmail account like that for some specific sensitive
traffic that I
want semi-anonymous.  I'm sure there are other free accounts that can do the
same.

Save your money for the things you really need.

-- 
Kevin O'Gorman, PhD

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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

>
> I'm afraid you lost me there.  Why does it matter where the archive is?
>

Sure, it is most important to have an archive at all. When using a
newsreader the minimun I do is to scan the headers of the past, to
avoid the discussion of a solved question. That is faster then
openenig a webbrowser to search an archive. When subscribing to a
mailinglist, I don't even know the topics of yesterday.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Neil Bothwick]

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On Tue, 7 Sep 2010 16:29:48 +0000 (UTC), Grant Edwards wrote:

> > However, my concern was why the Gentoo community doesn't make use of
> > those cool features and officially only advertises and keeps a
> > mailing list, that has no history itself for example and how this
> > approach influences and limits the culture of communication.  
> 
> I'm afraid you lost me there.  Why does it matter where the archive is?

Because trusting someone else to keep your archives puts you in their
hands, which is probably why Gentoo maintain their own archives of these
lists.


-- 
Neil Bothwick

If you think the problem is bad now, just wait until we've solved it.


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Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 18:48 on Tuesday 07 September 2010, Al did 
opine thusly:

> > I'm afraid you lost me there.  Why does it matter where the archive is?
> 
> Sure, it is most important to have an archive at all. When using a
> newsreader the minimun I do is to scan the headers of the past, to
> avoid the discussion of a solved question. That is faster then
> openenig a webbrowser to search an archive. When subscribing to a
> mailinglist, I don't even know the topics of yesterday.
> 
> Al


Dude, 

Do you comprehend the simplicity of what folk here are telling you?

We do not have a news service because we[1] do not feel we need one and do not 
desire one. Therefore it is *highly* unlikely there will be one. You can use 
gmane. 'kthanxforplayingbye

Hardly anyone here is listening to you or taking you seriously, and here's 
why:

You are self-confessed new to Linux and Volker already spotted by are likely 
new to Linux as well. You are not (yet) part of this community for real, and 
you have no street cred in this meritocracy. What you need to do now is

- build up a posting history
- to do that you need experience
- to do that you need to ask and listen
- then help others in turn

I've been here for 4 years. I'm one of the conceited loud-mouths and I still 
get myself regularly bitch-slapped by people who are just as good as I am. 
From that position, I actually feel quite personally offended by your 
attitude. I've earned some of my attitude stripes. You have yet to begin.


[1] In this context, "we" shall be understood to mean "the majority, by common 
consensus"
-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Al]

Hi Alan,

> You are self-confessed new to Linux and Volker already spotted by are likely

I am self-confessed new to Gentoo, but I use Linux for over 10 years
as my main OS. Still I don't have all the insight, what is going on
under the hood.

> new to Linux as well. You are not (yet) part of this community for real, and
> you have no street cred in this meritocracy. What you need to do now is
>
> I've been here for 4 years. I'm one of the conceited loud-mouths and I still
> get myself regularly bitch-slapped by people who are just as good as I am.
> From that position, I actually feel quite personally offended by your
> attitude. I've earned some of my attitude stripes. You have yet to begin.

I am not interested to offend you and I really don't want to discredet
your merits. However, I think you should not take it personally when I
express my opinion, that advertising a mailinglist only has it's
influence to the discussion. How is that related to your merits?

Then when you think a loud-mouth yourself, you shouldn't that quickly
be offended. Right? We can all learn something from outsiders. If you
take me more or less seriously, is not that import for me as I haven't
4 years of merit on this list. I take you seriously. I know what I
can. I know what I contribute and contributed in other communities.

Be calling the thread a rand I show that I am not taking the whole
topic that seriously myself, but important enough to reflect about.

Finally I really stay in one single thread tody, that I started  and
that has a lot of response. Everybody has the freedom to ignore this
single thread and should not be bothered about.  If that is not
possible -> see my theses.

Al

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Arttu V.]

On 9/7/10, Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@gmail.com> wrote:
> We do not have a news service because we[1] do not feel we need one and do
> not desire one.

I thought it's because this is the Gentoo *users'* list, not the dev list? :)

It doesn't matter whether we want it or not -- we users couldn't do
much about an Official Gentoo nntp-server even if we wanted to. That
requires (infra) dev access. Ergo, a user would most likely proceed by
filing a bug report / feature request -- just like was suggested quite
early on in the thread.

-- 
Arttu V. -- Running Gentoo is like running with scissors

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Dale]

Arttu V. wrote:
> On 9/7/10, Alan McKinnon<alan.mckinnon@gmail.com>  wrote:
>    
>> We do not have a news service because we[1] do not feel we need one and do
>> not desire one.
>>      
> I thought it's because this is the Gentoo *users'* list, not the dev list? :)
>
> It doesn't matter whether we want it or not -- we users couldn't do
> much about an Official Gentoo nntp-server even if we wanted to. That
> requires (infra) dev access. Ergo, a user would most likely proceed by
> filing a bug report / feature request -- just like was suggested quite
> early on in the thread.
>
>    

And I bet if a bug / feature request were filed, it would be closed as 
"ain't going to happen."  I know that doesn't exist but they may make 
that available for just this one purpose.  I think Gentoo has more than 
enough communication methods already.  Forums, the docs and a LOT of 
mailing lists.  One more way is not going to help anything.  If a person 
can't find a answer, either they ain't looking or it hasn't happened yet.

Dale

:-)  :-)

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Arttu V.]

On 9/7/10, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> And I bet if a bug / feature request were filed, it would be closed as
> "ain't going to happen."  I know that doesn't exist but they may make
> that available for just this one purpose.

As a long-time user I'm sure you've met Mr. and Mrs. van de
Closed-Wontfix? Sometimes they capitalize their name differently,
those ancient nobilities, like CLOSED-WONTFIX or so. The devs keep
reintroducing me to them every time I try reporting something stupid.
;)

Anyway, you're probably right that the devs might actually care even
less than the users on this thread have. They'd first get us an
Official Wiki, and IMHO that's probably what many users would really
like to see. *Fingers crossed that they won't make it only
dev-editable like some of them suggested/threatened.*

-- 
Arttu V. -- Running Gentoo is like running with scissors

Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Gentoos community communication rant

[Alan McKinnon]

Apparently, though unproven, at 20:52 on Tuesday 07 September 2010, Arttu V. 
did opine thusly:

> On 9/7/10, Dale <rdalek1967@gmail.com> wrote:
> > And I bet if a bug / feature request were filed, it would be closed as
> > "ain't going to happen."  I know that doesn't exist but they may make
> > that available for just this one purpose.
> 
> As a long-time user I'm sure you've met Mr. and Mrs. van de
> Closed-Wontfix? Sometimes they capitalize their name differently,
> those ancient nobilities, like CLOSED-WONTFIX or so. The devs keep
> reintroducing me to them every time I try reporting something stupid.
> ;)

I must be special then.

I keep hearing about his other fellow instead - Mr. NOTABUG


> 
> Anyway, you're probably right that the devs might actually care even
> less than the users on this thread have. They'd first get us an
> Official Wiki, and IMHO that's probably what many users would really
> like to see. *Fingers crossed that they won't make it only
> dev-editable like some of them suggested/threatened.*

-- 
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com