When all the old forums were closed and new ones started, there don’t seem
to be any Gnome or KDE support forums. Why Not?
I’m a KDE user. I don’t know much about Gnome except that I don’t care for
it very much, but KDE is another story. And the old kDE forum was quite
busy, too. Please bring it back.
–
Bob Smits - Open Suse Linux User and Open Source Supporter
You’re not the first person to ask about a dedicated KDE forum, and we’re quite interested in what the community thinks.
If we try to keep from moving threads as much as possible to keep from breaking the NNTP threading, it means we need easy categories for members to use when posting. The problem with dedicated KDE (or Gnome) forums is what to do with applications that ship with a desktop environment, but are really not part of the core. Say, for example, Kmail or Evolution…questions about both of these would most properly reside in an Applications category, but ship with KDE and Gnome, respectively.
Keeping the forums content in the right place is essential to searching and browsing, so we’re trying to balance complexity versus ease of use. What would you (and others) suggest for how to handle this?
I like the idea of a KDE or Gnome forum (or combined), but, to be honest, like kastorff suggested, most problems or questions about Gnome or KDE will involve an application from one or the other. Most questions pertaining to the desktop environment can be asked in the boot/login or applications forum. I like the idea, but I’d rather see more simplicity, rather than having tons of different forums.
I like what you have now unless you wanted to go with a “Desktop” forum and then have Applications, KDE, Gnome, etc. as sub-forums. That’s the only possible improvement that I can see. But yeah – totally agree with keeping it simple and easy to navigate.
A desktop forum with sub-forums of kde, gnome, other d.e.'s and definetly a second kde for KDE4.
As kde4 becomes more usable and used it requires a seperate sub-forum.
I think KISS is in order here. As has been said a couple times before, it’s the applications that people have problems with, not the core (for the most part). So having a generic Software forum is appropriate. By having many forums and sub-forums it complicates things a lot. It also means moving threads a lot which clutters the forum.
Here is a good example of what a cluttered forum looks like; SUSE Forums -> Miscellaneous
Would you really want that?
Also keep in mind that people are lazy and don’t like to do a lot of clicking. There is also the matter of where do you draw the line? Do we just have KDE, KDE4, and GNOME? What about the others? XFCE, Window Manager, OpenBox, Sawfish, Metacity, Fluxbox, and the list goes on and on. Where would problems with X.org go? By keeping it simple with just a Software forum, we resolve all those issues with simplicity.
This sort of thing was discussed before the forum went live. I used to be part of the team, but for my own reasons, I stepped down.
If there will be no GUI/Desktop Environment forum then I vote for having an Applications/Console subforum to have at least GUI v console apps separated.
I’m not a big NNTP fan (no surprise) but I am committed to help make this forum work based on how the admins/mods/members have set it up. If that overall forum view includes NNTP then I want to make this and the rest of the forum work as best possible.
Hence as an interim (and possibly permanent) solution, I recommend we have this covered under “applications” and modify the description there to state *
“Questions about desktops (KDE, Gnome, xfce, etc … ) software applications (configuration, usage, bugs, documentation):”
*That will hopefully make this more clear. … In truth, I had thought we agreed to this addition (in the description of the forum area) sometime back, and I confess I forgot to track to ensure our agreement was followed through.
That’s definitely an improvement for the forums description. I’ve made the change.
kastorff wrote:
>
> You’re not the first person to ask about a dedicated KDE forum, and
> we’re quite interested in what the community thinks.
>
> If we try to keep from moving threads as much as possible to keep from
> breaking the NNTP threading, it means we need easy categories for
> members to use when posting. The problem with dedicated KDE (or Gnome)
> forums is what to do with applications that ship with a desktop
> environment, but are really not part of the core. Say, for example,
> Kmail or Evolution…questions about both of these would most properly
> reside in an Applications category, but ship with KDE and Gnome,
> respectively.
>
> Keeping the forums content in the right place is essential to searching
> and browsing, so we’re trying to balance complexity versus ease of use.
> What would you (and others) suggest for how to handle this?
>
>
Actually, I think discussion of Kmail or Kontact DOES belong in a KDE
newsgroup/forum. As far as users are concern, Kontact/Kmail IS KDE,
although I appreciate the distinction between desktop managers and
applications.
Perhaps the solution is one newsgroup/forum for the desktop manager and one
for KDE applications. (And the same for Gnome, of course.) I think I’d
prefer that to ones for just desktop managers and one for applications. You
might even want to have separate newsgroup/forums for really popular
applications like OpenOffice, GIMP, or Gnucash.
Bob