[Wine] Mailing list <-> forum gateway

[Alan McKinnon]

On Wednesday 27 February 2008, Marc wrote:

> I am a wine newbie and I suscribed to this list just one month ago.
> Since then, I have been surprised by the kindness and nice attitude
> of the answers to all the newbie questions. Specially surprised me
> the very positive answers to some bad-formed, unclear, already
> answered and with an unadequate subject questions.

That's pretty normal for the majority of linux help forums :-)

Trust me on this one point - there will not be an exodus of experienced 
wine people from this list, there never is. If the number of answers 
drops for a few days then a few lurkers step in to give a hand. This is 
just the nature of humans and it's how these lists work in reality.

Forums, by their very nature, are attractive to new users. Those users 
need other newish users that have been in the game a little longer to 
help them out and not confound them with deep technical issues. Forums 
also encourage mass "me to!" responses, again, this is by their very 
nature and I just don't want to read them. Others don't mind this.

I know I'm not the best person to answer such requests for help - they 
annoy me and I tend to snap back. I get about 5 such calls a day at 
work and deal with it all day long when giving Linux training. I'd 
rather someone else took on that role and I devote my time to the kind 
of assistance I most like to give. And I have every intention of 
remaining on the mailing list itself

> It would be a pity for us, newbies, that all experienced users just
> flee now, that's why I think that it could be interesting for
> everybody ( both newbies as myself and also experienced users of wine
> ) that some specifical forum rules and FAQ were written in order to
> direct newbies to the direct source of information, specially having
> in mind the huge amount of info we can find so clearly written in the
> WineHQ webpage.

That's a good idea, but don't be surprised when it is disobeyed many 
times a day, by people who probably don't know any better. The FAQ is 
something to gently nudge violaters towards, not enforce.


-- 
Alan McKinnon
alan dot mckinnon at gmail dot com