Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

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Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Yes WE know that the forums are used and many people are "passing" by!

But that doesnt help on this topic! There is no way in closing the email lists as equaly is no way to close the forums or IRC!

I expect you, as member of the council, to try to hold this community toghether not to split them apart (I have the strange feeling I am not the first to tell this!)

And yes as part of both the mailing list and TMO, as I try to take both views to find a solution...
I am offended by a post showing bare numbers to show-off, for a second I thought about moving it to the "look how many people are here" thread but then I decided to shout out loud.

This is an absolute no-go!

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

To be clear there is no proposal to close multiple lists. The question on the table is should there be one form of formal communication to the maemo community. So that users wanting to know whats happening do not have to setup email to participate in the process.

The very thing I am trying to do is bring this community together, be removing the line of separation. Perhaps you disagree?

I think the point I was making was quite relevant to the topic. If it somehow offended you, I dont know what to tell ya, I have said many more offensive things.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Reggie, is there a reason why we cannot implement this for the community mailing list / Community forum.


http://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=43

I think it would only involve some special formating when you reply via email.

Is this doable, is this acceptable, whats needs to be done to make this happen?

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

As I said before:

I certainly do NOT want to close the maemo-developers list, and I don't care about the maemo-users list.

This is the response I expected. A small handful of influential people will block any attempt to move the community list to a more public location, because it is less convenient for them, and for the very reason that it is more public, hence more noisy.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

qole, with all due respect, if you expected this reaction, why are you surprised then?

I don't see how the mailing lists aren't public? They're published on HTTP hosts, anyone can join. Both tmo and mailing lists provide services to the community, and they are not mutually exclusive.

Yes, the mailing lists are less noisy, can we honestly blame people for not having to filter through copious amounts of responses when they only have limited time available to spend on the subject?

I don't think we should penalise anyone, and we are penalising ourselves, the whole community by having this discussion over and over again.

I honestly believe that communication flows pretty nicely between the current channels. People who have a good grasp of a specific subject do a very good job of either recapping the discussion for the other side or representing an understated opinion in either media.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I don't want to close the mailing list because there are people on that list who I respect and whose opinions I value rather highly. People who do not and will not participate on these forums.

I don't see the selfishness in not wanting to alienate these people by closing down the list.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I'm really concerned about the strong schisms I'm seeing lately on numerous important subjects. Stark polemics are forming or solidifying. We're starting to look like a microcosm of the US political landscape. Black and white. Us and them. I hope it's just my perception and not a sign of anything real.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I think that's an unfortunate side-effect of pretty much any long-standing community Tex. In almost every facet of life... from middle school on up you have various clique's that will vehemently stick to their topic/subject of choice and refuse to let go.

Everyone has a different push point.. while 2 people can operate and agree perfectly fine on one subject - they can be on opposite ends of the other.. and it can get defensive. As we grow.. it doesn't surprise me that we'll be seeing more and more of this.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Yes. Exactly. :(

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Which of course, there's nothing wrong with. ;) People should participate and contribute to the mediums they're comfortable with.

The really simple solution here is to integrate vBulletin with the list software. This is an idea we agreed upon months ago and only seems to be waiting on somebody to implement it.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I think that's a little unfair. Certainly noise seems to be a factor. But Dave clearly listed a collection of functions of email he uses which he simply couldn't do with forum posts.

Personally, I prefer the forum because I can close my browser and say 'not now'. But I can well see advantages to email for others.

The question in my mind is what sort of integrated shared methods are possible?

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I think the simple, non-technical solution is for discussion leaders on maemo-community to realize that any consensus reached on the mailing list is not a community consensus, merely a starting point to propose to the wider community.

This kind of core-group consensus can be very useful to focus the discussion that must occur on Talk on issues that affect the wider community.

What we need is a commitment from the discussion leaders to bring the topics here before making big decisions. In practice, this means the council, Nokia contacts (Quim et al) and maemo.org team (dneary et al).

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Nor is "consensus" on Talk. :)

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I don't see pro-mailing list folks using it even if it gets implemented. As some folks points out:

• discussion will not show as threads
• no easy way to collect contacts, or contact folks offline
• they will just refuse to use it
• no time to learn bbcode
• it's not as easy

Maybe this is the 'open source' developer mentality that I don't completely understand. In my neck of the woods, I design/develop/implement software for my customers and I work closely with them, since without them, I can't feed my family. They ultimately have the last say and I'll be out of work if I tell them it's my way or the highway.

Anyway, I've used a lot of programming tools and third party libraries at work, and support for those tools was never through a mailing list. It was all through forums, and it works.

Btw, I know Forum Nokia has discussion boards. Do they also use mailing lists?

Well, I've travelled this road several times before. Good thing we have the council to sort this out. Maybe, we could take the easy way out and just leave things as it is...

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

RevdKathy: As always, you're right, I'm not being fair; I'm letting my frustration get the upper hand and I'm writing stuff that I shouldn't.

GeneralAntilles: You're right, too, consensus on Talk isn't community consensus either (There's a rare beast! Consensus on Talk!) but it is important to expose big issues to the wider community. More people need to hear about these things, so it isn't a shock when decisions are made.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I think that last point is an important one.

There have been a couple of occasions when things have appeared and it's been obvious that discussion has gone on elsewhere. I assumed that was 'behind closed doors' stuff, but I suspect now it was stuff that had been debated in email. I wouldn't call it a 'shock' but a bitty of a surprise.

To be absolutely honest, I wasn't even aware that there was a specific email-list for community issues. (I thought the mailing lists were mostly for the complicated stuff I don't understand.) I should probably be on it (despite my aversion to mailing lists!) as my primary interest is the community and keeping it running smoothly. But for many of us raised for years on bulletin boards, this is the 'obvious' method. I'd wager a shilling that most of the thousands of new posters have no idea that there's a mailing list.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

You can skip those threads which you do not care for with mail, this is analogous to: I go to many forums and much I see on the screen does not interest me but I still have to read all the topics to find the ones I like.

There should be a mail-tmo bridge IMHO, then only high S/N ratio from forum should be somehow handled.. anyways usenet did this all better, but what can you do, when many people think internet is web browser..

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

OK, so you look at the topic in email and magically the ones you don't care for are skipped over and in a forum you have to read the topic to see if you care? cmon on people, can we get real.


To be clear, when the community forum is merged with the community mailing list, whether you read it in mail or on a webpage there will be a larger number of topics and a larger number of contributors.

I feel like many people on the mailing list don't want to hear peoples opinions on the forums, "its to much noise" "people on the mailing list are more engaged contributors" and so on.

Community is not "us vs them" its is "us vs us" We are all the same, developer, admin, hack, marketing, bloggers, and the list goes on.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

How do you figure that? The lists certainly don't have a bouncer at the door, so to speak; anyone is free to join and post.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Here's my analysis for what it's worth, and it's on something we are dancing around:

- the lists seem developer-heavy
- the forums seem enthusiast (etc) -heavy

I think this continues to point back to our legacy of once being maemo.org and internettablettalk.com. We've shoved the two together but still have yet to integrate the populations.

So maybe the solution is just time, patience and a lot more listening to various viewpoints with due consideration. And more physical encounters like the Summit and Barcelona event (but smaller).

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Yes but people like me don't particularly like mailing lists for partly the reason Reggie says... you have to create filters every time someone discusses something you don't care about.

Subscribing to threads gives almost all the same benefits as a mailing list except the ability to respond via email. If there was a way to configure it to subscribe to an entire subforum (so all new topics created in community, for example) then it would also work very close to a mailing list but again without the reply capability.. but does *add* the capability of unsubscribing to stuff you don't care about.

My mailbox gets flooded and filled with crap from 4 different freelancer sites, a dozen linux security/bug/etc mailing lists that have actually gotten to the point that they just filter to their own folder and I find myself rarely ever reading them anymore.

Now.. I'll admit being able to respond through email would be tremendously easier on my phone on the go than loading the website and posting on a forum.. but it's not enough of a convenience for me personally to add even more junk to an already massive amount of junk I receive every day. Luckily, few of it is spam: but another reason I hate signing up with mailing lists is sometimes (especially if they get put on public websites) your email address can get picked up by spambots and then you get REAL junk. That's why I use a separate email address for every website or list I sign up with (whatever@mydomain.com) - so I can track exactly where my email is getting stolen/given/sold from.

Anyway... my contributions have been significantly less than almost everyone involved in this thread.. so I know I'm on the bottom of the totem pole.. I'm just offering some examples of why maybe someone may not like to use mailing lists.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Another thing to keep in mind, to add to fatasaint's points above: email is push, a forum is pull.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

----------------------------------------------


I'm just reading? I know its hard, you have to read on the forums and in the mailing list to get the full picture.

Lets engage the entire community, itts time..

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Let's to summarize the discussion:

1) There are people who want the Community discussion in the forum.
2) There are people who want the Community discussion in the mailing list.

It's an endless discussion. Some prefer forum and some prefer mailing list. So, the forum shouldn't be closed, and the mailing list shouldn't be closed.

Solutions:

1) Leave everything as is. Very easy.

2) Synchronize the forum with the mailing list and viceversa.
This is very different to the possibility to use the email to reply/create threads here.
It should be a complete sync, for example: posts to the mailing list are visible here, and posts here are visible in the mailing list.

I'm completely for the solution 2, of course it's the most complicated technically, but the best solutions generally are the most complicated.
With a first look, there are some options like m2f or NNTP gateway

The 3) solution is to be discussing this until that the climate change ends the world.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I disagree,

Option 1 is make them either mailing-list/forum/other, but only one.

Option 2, is sync them in some way to make both sides happy.

Keeping things the same is not an option, if we want to fix the problem that exists?

Seeing how this was posted less than 24 hours ago, I think we can discuss it a little more, maybe not until the climate changes, but perhaps until the weather changes?

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

This is not an option, we'll miss key people if we remove one of the two methods. And we don't want miss people but join people.

Agreed.

Yeah, I didn't mean stop the discussion right now.
Just that there won't be an agreement to remove the mailing list, so the only known solution is the sync method. Of course I'm completely open to listen and discuss other solutions different to remove the mailing list,

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I think the point being made is that having a single, consolidated access point into community discussions as a whole is more important than a couple individuals that refuse to participate.

Yes, we lose people either way - but in the end, the argument is that it would be better for the community as a whole to have one centralized form of communication instead of scattered thoughts missed by half.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Perfectly said

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Here's a great example of an engaged community member. Now that she's found out about another community communication avenue, she's willing to check it out (despite her aversion!). If only other community members would be willing to sacrifice a little for the sake of the community like Kathy. Instead of taking her toys and going home.

A combination/sync is probably the best option.

I'll go out on a limb and say that anyone that flatly refuses to make a some sacrifices for the good of the community communication isn't really interested in the community communication to begin with.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Are we all on the same page about what "community discussions" means?

There are a number of things it could mean:

1. A talking shop where everyone gathers
2. A workplace where anyone can look in & see what people are working on
3. A forum for interacting with Nokia
4. A forum for interacting with the council & maemo.org staff

These are all very different - for example, if you use a forum as the primary contact point for interacting with Nokia, I would question how effective that'll be. If you want a place where anyone can trace what people are working on & ask questions if they're not getting enough information, or join in if they have the time, energy & ability, then the mailing list is that. If you want a talking shop, then there will always be people who opt out, regardless of whether it's IRC, a mailing list or a forum. And if it's a place for the entire community (by the way, is there anyplace where I can find the entire Maemo community???) to interact with the council & the staff, again, I'd question how effective that would be, especially since people appear to have issues with both the high volume and low SNR on forum threads.

So - penguinbait, if I may, what activities *exactly* do you want to see happen in the community forum? Some illustrative examples might help.

Thanks!
Dave.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Good points Dave, and it's sort of a side topic but you make me wonder... is it worthwhile to create a subforum here just for the council? I'd love to see a "Ask the Council" sort of subforum, maybe even under Community.

A lot of the noise people complain about here is due to catch-all talk sections...

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

The only question I have about everything you said is:

How is a mailing list any more of everything you just said than a forum? They provide an area that you can easily trace (as long as they aren't purged.. which is the same for archives of a mailing list) what people are doing/have done, ask questions, and join in any time...

In fact.. I think forums are a little better in that case just because in a mailing list - you either have to go through the entire history (or just the thread you're interested in) that is on the web anyway.. or you just get whatever quotes were included in the reply emails since you sign up.

Take me for example.. didn't even know it (-community) was there. I don't like mailing lists.. but if it came down to using that as the official resource I'd sign up... but just by signing up I don't automatically know or get an announcement of every important discussion ever made on that mailing list... I have to go back through the archives.

Exact same thing on the forum, except its the same interface to go through the "archives" as it is to actively post on new ones. You just sign up for the forum and look through the "community" section.

So far.. the only benefit I can see to a mailing list over a forum, logically (personal bias aside), is that replying to threads is simplified if all you have to do is reply to an email. That part of it is just easier.

Some people prefer Mailing lists, which is fine - others prefer forums - which is also fine. I also don't mind if both exist.. TBH. I believe people SHOULD have a choice. But, what I do think... is there should be an "official" channel.. and if you choose not to participate in the "official" method - you are making the conscious choice to not be heard by most people.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

fatalsaint, if this forum had a threaded view option, it would solve a lot of the issues brought up by citizens of the Mailing List World. ;)

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I guess that's where I'm confused... "threads" in a mailing list are the same thing as a "topic" on a forum - are they not?

What exactly makes the "threads" easier to follow than "topics"?

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

It all depends on the email format and reader... but you raise a valid point. AFAIK most of the email favoring crowd prefer raw text, ie with ZERO formatting... I call that worse than a forum.

And at least here I don't get flamed for "top quoting" :rolleyes: :D

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

As far as I'm aware, most people view Bulletin boards in 'flat view' which basically puts everyone's post in timestamp order, regardless of who they're replying to. (I never met anyone who used 'threaded' even where it was available.)

Threaded view means that instead of using 'quick reply' the user has to specify to whom they are replying. Then the replies are 'threaded' under the post they are replying to.

There are two problems with enabling this: one is that I'm not sure whether vBulletin even has that option any more. The other is that 99.9% of posters will reply using the 'quick reply' box, so the answers don't get threaded anyway. (And if you want to reply to someone specifically, you use the quote function instead, as I just did. ;) )

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

FYI, the forum actually has a threaded view feature but it's turned off. It can be turned on but you would have to select the post you are replying to, when doing a quick reply. This forces the replies to be built-up as a tree.

EDIT: yipes, RevdKathy explained this already above...

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

Here's the question that was bumbling through my head while I was supposed to be working this afternoon: how do you select/collate/send the useful material from t.m.o to the mailing list, and vice versa while filtering out duplication and 'noise'?

And I think I got as far as concluding that technology can't do it. Try as we might, we can't (yet) create software that can tell Orange Box from Fatalsaint. We can spot a 'bot' at 20 paces, and eliminate them before they post. We can even pick out most spammers pretty quickly (judging by the numbers that get through I'm assuming we catch far more in the net).

But technology can't tell signal from noise in post content - even if you created an algorithm to eliminate all posts containing the words 'iphone', 'sucks' or 'fail'. For that, oddly, the best tool is still the human brain. Funny old thing, but still capable of exercises in judgement and distilling of content that defeat our wonder-machines.

So, here's a proposal: we appoint a 'minute taker' - or better still several, for both the mailing list and the forum. They divvy up the content - possibly by topic, and post regular 'minutes' to each medium.

So... to illustrate: the minute taker is tasked with cross-posting content on, say, this month's sprint.

Every few days they post to the forum:

The they'd update the mailing list

It would be a big job for a few people. One could insist that the person starting the topic keep the minutes, but that would require that everyone have both media enabled. But we have of shortage of good people around, including a few looking for ways to contribute.

Re: Move maemo-community mailing list activity to this forum
 

I would GLADLY take the time to do so.