Re: [linux-audio-user] [OT?] Fun with numbers - Means of communication

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On Thursday 15 January 2004 21:33, Florian Schmidt wrote: Let me add a few random thoughts here: I am asking myself: what are the differences between the means of communication mentioned above? What kind of problems do newbie users have with IRC, message boards, mailing lists and documentation? Things I like about mailing lists: You take time to sort out the problem. You won't hurry from one probable point of error to the other like you maybe would on IRC, and you can read some more documentation until an answer to your question comes back to you. There is a difference between being told to RTFM, STFW, STFU and HAND in a mailing list and being squashed by a bunch of users in a crowded IRC channel. Thoughts about IRC: It helps to formulate problems concisely. It is quick. It helps to not depend on suggestions, because odds are, there will be none. Compared with a mailing list, IRC is a pretty emotional kind of communication. How long does it take for newbies to sort out the obscure social art of successfully asking questions on IRC? Message boards: I am not a Gentoo fan anymore, but I really liked their approach to how step-by-step documentation and their communication infrastructure work together. That's just great for a lot of users. I remember that quite a few suggestions on the forum pages were very useful. Maybe someone familiar with the Gentoo community can tell me about the situation today, and if the mailing lists or the forum pages provide better solutions. The forum approach may be promising, but hey: There is this friendly tone, mutual respect and so many technical problems solved on LAU - and the postings come without a member status label, like they do on the most message boards, and they won't get removed by moderators. All this helps the troubled user to take some time and understand the problem without haste. To get back to the topic Dave was initially writing about, I think the forum approach is good for huge numbers of users, or good for a situation where the popularity of a project is increasing rapidly. I doubt that mixing both is a bad idea, because they are too different. 700 LAU readers - +10000 pageviews of Dave's columns. Wow. Let's make 'em all file bug reports, to name-drop another form of communication. Regards, - - Burkhard - -- Public key available here: <http://blackhole.pca.dfn.de:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xFD82303B> key FP 0A65 5E83 F44F 47A5 3DFC 19C5 7779 E411 FD82 303B