Ideas and discussion on the future of the forum

[ricklinux]

7 Minutes? I’m struggling for half that!

[Kresimir]

@fbodymechanic

There’s nothing more insulting or hurtful than wasting someone else’s time. That’s what help vampires do, knowingly or unknowingly.

True, but they can only waste your time if you give it to them voluntarily. It’s up to you to decide who is worthy of your time.

[Bryanpwo]

Yes, but you got 30% of Canada’s bandwidth coming into your house.

[ricklinux]

I just did Bspwm on v-box in half that time.
Edit: I was thinking of cranking up my speed so i could do less than 3 minutes but is expensive.

[ricklinux]

Best part is i don’t get any failed installs either.

Edit: My motto is hardware…hardware…hardware.

[fbodymechanic]

@Kresimir

True, but they can only waste your time if you give it to them voluntarily. It’s up to you to decide who is worthy of your time

Yes that is true. But they can still likely waste yours or someone else who doesn’t realize their time is being wasted. I value everyone’s time equally.

[Trekkie00]

A 5 litre can of beer or some bottles of good dry red wine will do.

[freebird54]

@Bryanpwo

So a little fluff is allowed

The fluff is fine - it just needs a bit of leavening perhaps…

It seems to me that an emphasis on the wiki’s existence could be increased - perhaps pointing to a Wiki entry on how to get help easily on our forums! That way we get improvement (hopefully) with only one modded slide (and a how-to on the Wiki)…

More detail if requested…

More detail

The wiki entry could include a ‘form’ to be filled out as a template for a help request example, for instance… or a couple of example ‘posts’ done up as OK, and excellent… or…

[Trekkie00]

@TheRaOct

without even doing a bare minimum of googling yourself is not acceptable in any forum

Most of the time, it might not even be necessary to use a search engine. The forum itself provides a very good search function. A lot of people don’t care, if acceptable or not. I’ve been experiencing this in a german forum, where I’ve been a moderator for a few years. A lot of those even don’t care, if they are told to get rid of this laziness. I’m not stating, that this is always the underlying attitude. There might indeed be some people, who don’t have any experience at all in how to search correctly. Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference and the more you experience this kind of “exploitation” and the higher your level of frustration gets, the higher the risk, that you’re overreacting yourself, or you start answering inappropriately. This challenge can only be mastered, if all members work together and indeed set up kind of a guideline.

Only my 2 cent

[fbodymechanic]

I have bookmarked this and will start using this regularly.

@TheRaOct

I guess one reason why many “noobs” choose EnOS is that it has build up a reputation of a very welcoming forum. And I could imagine that being able to ask lazy/stupid questions while still getting an answer did contribute to that reputation.

I love and I’m very excited to have new users eager to learn Linux. I just don’t want our welcoming of everyone to turn is into complete pushovers and a door mat. I don’t want to imply we lead off with “hey you’re a help vampire.”. We need to have more tact than that.

@Zircon34

This is new, and hope will not take over this forum. It’s difficult to flag these posts and also I don’t feel like answering them, it’s not fun or relaxing. It’s a tricky situation. Perhaps it will pass, perhaps not.

I’ve seen this scenario happen before. We need to be proactive so it doesn’t happen again, other it will eventually. Burn out is a real thing.

I think some of what I said was taken to overly literal. As someone who manages a pretty big crew and anticipates possible future problems, I’m always trying to stay ahead of them. @nate I’m not going to find people who make one post. But when we have someone making 4-15 posts in a week of either run around never ending questions or very easily to find searchable setting based questions, they may just not realize it. We’ve done a hell of a job getting to where we are, but the top can be a very tough place to be. This Endeavour is quite aptly named and it will take more team work going forward, and I think there’s a solid group that has gotten us here and preparing for more help and helping each other not burn out will increase the longevity of everyone.

Even the greatest ships can be lost to the sea if not for the valent efforts and preparation of the crew at hand.

[keybreak]

In all seriousness - i believe we shouldn’t change anything at all, we’re doing pretty damn good.

And attempts for more control / herding only would lead to worse results, exactly as it was with forum of some known green distribution

[s4ndm4n]

As I say after a big change on our servers. Will see what happens.

[Bryanpwo]

We have a wiki link on the forum, Reddit and the websites (ARM included) Discovery has a higher visit rate than the website. So, I do know that a lot of people find their way to it.

I’m not saying that your idea is a bad idea, but you have to keep in mind that there are a lot of people out there who just ask without searching, no matter if we have a big red blinking banner that leads to that info.

You all are amazing by helping people, but it has been said before, YOU can choose whether you want to help someone.

Two and a half years ago we started this project with four founders, one of us, Fernando, has left, just because he couldn’t combine it with his real life.
People come and go in the Linux world and I think for a project like this we’re doing a very good job. If a member is too much for you, take a step back, breathe and always take care of yourself.
This is the only way we can maintain this friendly vibe over here.

[Bryanpwo]

@s4ndm4n

As I say after a big change on our servers. Will see what happens.

Could you elaborate?

[NX-01]

Personally I prefer open, welcoming and friendly forums with a minimum of rules and a minimum of moderation.
If you don’t like a topic or the way a topic takes, just ignore it. If you think a question could be solved by duckduckgoing the question then either tell the user, provide a simple link or just ignore the question. Don’t be rude, don’t be offensive. If you want to help then do so.
I really don’t see a problem here and I like the forum as it is.

Just my 2 cents

[EitanSomething]

Having canned responses for common mistakes made in forum posts(no hardware information, etc)could help improve the efficiency of the forum and reduce burnout.

Adding clear instructions on how get involved in the forum, responding to help requests, and bug reports would lower the barrier for entry.

[Bryanpwo]

There is one and it is pinned on top of the forum

A friendly intro about our community rules and tips for the forum

[Stargazer] We are so happy that you’ve decided to be a part of this friendly and helpful community, and frankly, we don’t care which flavour Arch you’re actually running on your machine (s), as long as you want to help your fellow community members and us, the devs, by giving advice or feedback, you are more than welcome to stay over here. This forum is a technical support forum in the first place, but there is also room for chit-chat over here. That’s why the forum has technical areas and lo…

Welcome on the forum BTW.

[ricklinux]

Personally i would like to see a user post their issue short and to the point and say and here is my hardware output.

inxi -FAZ --no-host | eos-sendlog

[Bryanpwo]

I have added it to the post.

[s4ndm4n]

Emphasis on the “Will see” who knows what the future holds for enos. Let’s face it as it comes. And the other thing I’ve thrown out what I think about the new user and what should be a good idea to do to improve the posting quality.

It’s up to the high table to decide what to do with the ideas. I just see no point going back and forth now in this thread.

As I said if it becomes worse high table knows what to do because we said it here now and help in the way we can. That’s all we can do.