From the forum home page today:
Threads: 123,504, Posts: 698,364, Members: 40,000
Another membership milestone of 40,000 members
Nice, but I bet 90% of those are one-timers 
Just looked at the member list, and there are 19,420 (48.55%) zero post zombies 
One-time single post members are 6,768 (16.92%).
Two-timers with two posts are 3,639 (9.10%).
Anyway, looks like you lost your bet 
A village with 40000 inhabitants, only 10% active in social life, is still a 40000 inhabitant village.
Readers that joined may not have anything to post, yet they wanted to belong to the community. They might even be regular poster in other forums…
I don’t see why you would want to register if you don’t have anything to post? You can read anything as a guest just fine.
I just wanted to point out that I found it strange that there are so many people (about half of all members) who joined, just to disappear and never come back, without even doing a single post :sarcastic:
Are there any freebies or other things associated with just joining?
You would be, you are surprised…
There’s a lot of forums that don’t allow you to read all posts unless you become a member. That’s one.
Then there’s people who feel they are a member of the community by signing up.
And there’s a kind of people who feel they give support by just signing up.
On Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:06:02 +0000, Tokugawa-Ieyasu wrote:
> Are there any freebies or other
> things associated with just joining?
Searching without entering a captcha.
Remember as well that the login is the same as for www.novell.com - so if
someone was logged into the novell.com website and then visited the
forum, an account would be set up for them automatically on that first
visit, regardless of whether they posted or not.
Jim
–
Jim Henderson
openSUSE Forums Moderator
microchip8 wrote:
> How come there’s no German subforum
there is a full German forum…
go to http://forums.opensuse.org/
press Ctrl+f (in firefox)
type german
see: Deutsch (German) (External Link) <http://www.linux-club.de/>
it is (ironically) right above/over/before Hebrew…
–
palladium
I was asking about a native German subforum on this forum, like the ones for Hungarian and now French users… not some link pointing to some 3rd party forum 
I understand but isn’t re-use rather than re-invent a basic principle of Unix? If German speaking users are happy with what is on offer, why re-invent the wheel?
Congratulations on your well-earned success 
- microchip8 wrote, On 01/06/2010 01:16 AM:
> I was asking about a native German subforum on this forum, like the
> ones for Hungarian and now French users… not some link pointing to
> some 3rd party forum
It’s an official partner forum with a along history and a good user base. Competition isn’t always good
Uwe
Then why have a hungarian and french forum them? Why not just redirect them to a french and hungarian forum instead, just like German people? Don’t reinvent, just redirect them… 
And do you have any proof that German users are happy or is it just an assuption? I’ve seen on this forum quiet a few German threads scattered all over the place because German users don’t know where to post nor do they have their own subforum
@bucksfeld
Fair enough, but that forum isn’t SUSE centric at all. There’s only one subforum that’s about SUSE and that’s it. The rest is general Linux. It’s amazing that the official SUSE forum offers hungarian and french subforums but neglects its German audiance, which just so happens to have it biggest userbase (probably) and Germany is the origin of SUSE
- microchip8 wrote, On 01/06/2010 01:16 PM:
> Fair enough, but that forum isn’t SUSE centric at all.
It is very openSUSE centric, that’s why we chose it. Please check their start page and the titles of the forum groups:
Server mit openSUSE-Linux aufsetzen und administrieren.
openSUSE-Linux Installation & Update.
Konfiguration der Programme in openSUSE-Linux.
etc…
Uwe
So your argument is that because there’s a 3rd party forum which has good SUSE support, the official one shouldn’t add a German subforum? That’s like saying because BMW and Mercedes (both care makers) have good relationships, BMW can choose to send its own customers over to Mercedes and vice versa because it doesn’t matter… Wow, you out of all people as a German mod and SUSE user should support a German forum on this one, not going against it. It seems to me that you’re just trying to justify why not to do it so in the end you can “win” the argument. This isn’t about winning or losing arguments. This is about the official forum having a German subforum because 1) SUSE comes from Germany and has strong roots in there and it should be acknowledged, 2) it has a huge userbase in Germany and 3) there are much more German people coming here (than there are French or Hungarian ones), not knowing English well enough, and then posting in different areas of this forum in German because there is no German subsection for them, and finally 4) you’re going in support terms against your biggest userbase
- microchip8 wrote, On 01/06/2010 04:16 PM:
> So your argument is that because there’s a 3rd party forum which has
> good SUSE support, the official one shouldn’t add a German subforum?
Yes.
> That’s like saying because BMW and Mercedes (both care makers) have good
> relationships, BMW can choose to send its own customers over to Mercedes
> and vice versa because it doesn’t matter…
Doesn’t apply. Different brands = different distributions. In your analogy, we’d just send our Mercedes customers to a more convenient mechanic.
> Wow, you out of all people
> as a German mod and SUSE user should support a German forum on this
> one, not going against it.
The decision to not create a German forum here is a result of a long discussion within the team, with participation of openSUSE board members. This discussion will start from scratch in case we think that linux-club.de doesn’t offer good support any longer.
Uwe
To answer your question, microchip8, the reason we point to a German forum instead of hosting our own is because there is a very good, robust German openSUSE forum and there is really no good reason to uproot them and move them here since they are happy where they are. There was no significant benefit to movign them. We had discussions with them and decided they would point to us and we would point to them. In reality, if we would have tried to force a move or would have opened our own German language forums in competition with theirs, it would have created hard feelings and probably split the German language knowledge pool. It also would most likely have fallen flat on it’s face since the Majority of German speakers have a place they are happy with.
Our goal here isn’t to be Borg-ish and draw everything into the collective, our goal is to support openSUSE users and the openSUSE project in the best way we can. After discussions, and careful consideration of the options, the way we currently are linked was agreed upon to be the best way to achieve our goals.
I hope that answers your question…and FWIW I, for one, do wish you would be less confrontational in your conversations here. I would hate to see the moderators take action against you, but I would understand it. You add value and it would be a shame to have you blocked for some silly condescending comments.
Fine, do whatever you want…
I’ll go tomorrow open a Belgian company and shout out proudly how much Belgian my company is and how much I support Belgian stuff, but then when a Flemish speaking Belgian comes for support, I’ll send him away with the message that “this is primarily an English speaking firm and there’s no real “support corner” for the Flemish language”, but after that I’ll go out again and shout how proud I am that my company has extremely strong Belgian roots
Makes perfect sense… :rolleyes:
- microchip8 wrote, On 01/06/2010 04:56 PM:
> I’ll go tomorrow open a Belgian company
Whatever keeps you busy… No wait that wasn’t what I wanted to write
See it from the other side:
You built a great Flemish company, your customers love the (free) product and feel comfortable with it.
Now suddenly a big Belgian company shows up, offers the same product and tries to drag away your customers with their big budget.
Who’d benefit? You, the owner of the Flemish company? Surely not. The customers? No, they’d get the same product. The Belgian company? No, the product is free and doesn’t make them any money.
Uwe
What a fantastic idea…we’ll do that. Thanks! Of course what we do is based of discussion and input of many people over an extended period of time and not just because one or two people think it should be so. That method of decision making is SOP here at the openSUSE forums.