30 Jun 14:24
Re: [mb-users] Future of this mailing list
From: Frederic Da Vitoria <davitofrg <at> gmail.com>
Subject: Re: [mb-users] Future of this mailing list
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.audio.musicbrainz.user
Date: 2009-06-30 12:24:54 GMT
Subject: Re: [mb-users] Future of this mailing list
Newsgroups: gmane.comp.audio.musicbrainz.user
Date: 2009-06-30 12:24:54 GMT
From a new user's point of veiw, I agree: forums are probably the best option, they are more focused, allow better searching / browsing, are clearer to read...
But, don't forget the people who answer, old-timers or not. I don't have any problem asking something on a forum. But answering to a forum is another matter. Let's use a small example:
- newUser asks question A
- oldUser1 receives the feed and decides that he has no answer to offer.
- oldUser2 has an answer and posts it (PunBB does not send anything to users who have not subscribed to the thread)
- newUser raises a new question because he did not understand everything in oldUser2's answer (PunBB does not send anything to users who have not subscribed to the thread)
So we'd need either to switch to another forum which offers full feed (RSS/Atom or mail) or find a plugin for PunBB to correct the issue.
2009/6/30 Jeroen van den Brink <Jeroen <at> v-d-brink.eu>
My vote goes for closing down the mailinglist and go to the forums.
Apart from the regulars here that are used to mailinglists, I believe a
(very) large portion of general users are not familiar with
mailinglists. Many sites offer forums for their discussions, so the
concept of a forum is usually very familiar to most people. I therefore
also believe it would be easier for a normal/new user to go to a forum
for questions as opposed to subscribing to a mailinglist. And this being
a user support list/forum, I believe the focus should be to help these
newer users, and not use what the "old-timers" are used to (no offense
intended of course).
It would be even better I think if we could integrate the users of the
main site to the forums, so you don't have to create a new account for
the forums. This would lower the barrier for new users to access the
forums. But I do understand this can be challenging from a technical
perspective.
Furthermore, I think it would be wise to close the mailinglist, or at
least merge it with the forums, since I think MusicBrainz currently has
way to many communication channels. It's very hard for a new user to
find the correct information he is looking for since there are way too
many places to discuss stuff (e.g., the mailinglist (/nabble), the
forums, IRC, discussion pages on the Wiki, bugtracker, uservoice,
whatnot). This I why I also wouldn't use yet another service like Google
groups, unless everything can be hosted there (and it would become yet
another additional means of communication).
Regards,
Jeroen (MightyJay)
Nikolai Prokoschenko wrote:
> Dear MusicBrainz users,
>
> as you know, there is an ongoing effort to reorganize and simplify user
> support at MusicBrainz. One of the usual suspects are mailing lists as
> opposed to forums -- many users are confused as to where
> they should ask for help. It has been noted that only one of the mailing
> lists has any relevance for the users (this one), all the others are
> relevant either for developers or customers.
>
> A proposal has been made about moving all user-relevant discussion to
> the forums at http://forums.musicbrainz.org. However, nobody wished to
> close this mailing list without hearing what its inhabitants think of
> this idea first, so here it comes:
>
> 1. What do you think in general of putting user support at one place at
> forums and shutting down musicbrainz-users mailing list?
>
> 2. Do you see any technical or usability reasons against using the
> forums?
--
Frederic Da Vitoria
(davitof)
Membre de l'April - « promouvoir et défendre le logiciel libre » - http://www.april.org
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