Re: rampant offtopic and offensive posts to debian-user

andreimpopescu@xxxxxxxxx (Andrei Popescu) writes:

IMHO forcing people to take off-topic discussions out of the forum
(read Debian community) is not good. Debian is based on volunteers
and for some contributors (yes, answering questions is also a way of
contributing, so you - the DDs - don't have to do this here) the
community might be the thing that keeps them here rather then some
other project or FOSS in general.

This ignores the repellent effect of allowing those rampant off-topic
threads to continue. There are an unknown number of possible
contributors that stay away precisely because of the noise level.

As a side note I must say that I have been a member of a volunteer
organization for 11 years and I have seen a bit of the dynamic
involved in such a group. The best "contributors" were mostly the
same persons participating in "off-topic" activities, but still
organized within the "community".

In my experience, allowing noise anywhere near the level demonstrated
by Joey's initial post in this thread is far more harmful than losing
the few high-volume "contributors". The gain comes from people who
don't feel overwhelmed by the noise and see the direct benefit of
on-topic contributions.

--
\ "If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing |
`\ is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. |
_o__) You see, we build to that." -- Jack Handey |
Ben Finney


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