27 Dec
2006
27 Dec
'06
12:19 a.m.
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On Mon, Dec 25, 2006 at 08:16:25AM +1100, Erik de Castro Lopo wrote:
Ivica Ico Bukvic wrote:
I rely heavily upon mutt/procmail, but I consider it to be a hack. I don't want a
threaded discussion, I want rapid, high-quality access to authoritative answers to
technical questions, preferably in documentation where I can find it immediately without
having to wait for an answer or navigate down tons of blind alleys to get it. I know how
to filter a threaded discussion in order to find it, but it's still sub-optimal.
I will chime in here to suggest a "none of the above" type of answer:
Wiki along with forums + IRC.
For years I hated wikis, for the same reason I still dislike forums, which is the reason
you outline above: lots of noise and random flailing about, and few, if any, useful
answers. Of course a lot of mailing lists have the same problem, but I use mutt and
procmail to wade through the noise.
But then I discovered by far the best Wiki I've ever seen: the wiki for OpenWRT
(http://wiki.openwrt.org/)
It is well-maintained. No endless noise of "I tried that and it didn't work"
or apples-to-oranges comparisons or random stabs in the dark... all that crap gets deleted
or hashed out in the forums and/or IRC, and all that remains on the wiki is *the answer*
to how to do what you want to do, or why it's impossible. Their wiki has some great
maintainers ([:mbm:], nbd, florian, and others). The information is organized, clear,
complete, and correct.
They also have an excellent forum, which I say even though I hate forums. One way they
keep the S/N up on the forum is that [:mbm:] wrote a little hack to PHPBB which connected
it to a bot. The bot sits in the #openwrt on OPN, and whenever a new post comes in, the
"chatty cathy's" and the real developers with the deep knowledge-- both of
whom sit on IRC all the time-- are alerted immediately. Blind alleys get closed off nearly
immediately. Interesting topics or serious bugs get attention immediately. Thus, it has a
"push" component like email, which is sorely lacking from most forums.
I find OpenWRT to be the best-documented, highest-quality FOSS project I've ever used
or contributed to. It just works. I think the combination of great developers and clever
use of information tools are the reasons for its success.
- -ken
A quick look at some of the successful
forum/mailing list projects, for
instance Ubuntu, reveals that not only they have both, but also both methods
of communication are teeming with activity.
Teeming with activity but close to zero signal amongst the noise.
I keep on searching google for solutions to Ubuntu based problems.
All of the top hits on google point to UbuntuForums and when I
go there there is almost never an answer. The UbuntuForums are
absolutely chock full of "Me too" or people saying "that didn't
work for me".
FWIW, as far as the "speed" of forums
is concerned, it largely depends on
what you use in combination on what kind of hardware you run. I've seen some
that are quite fast despite the often dubious eye-candy.
Connecting to some web server on the other side of the planet
will always be slower than accessing mail that has been delivered
to me and is sitting on my hard drive.
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