I am always wondering where to ask questions like “How to update to the latest KDE minor release?” or “How to do x in KDE?” or “How to work-around a bug in the KDE Activities management?”.
I usually end up posting them in “Applications”, although I don’t think of KDE itself as an application, but at least the forum subtitle includes “Questions about Desktops”. However, that subforum appears pretty busy and the topics range widely.
I think it makes sense to have a single forum for applications, since KDE users may use some Gnome Software, while Gnome users may use some KDE Software. However, questions about the desktop itself seem misplaced there, as I don’t care much about problems specific to Gnome.
So how about a “KDE”-, “Gnome-” and maybe an “Other Desktops-” subforum?
Do not forget that for typical KDE questions, there is a KDE forum (Index page • KDE Community Forums) where you might be served better then here for questions not related to openSUSE (which is oft the case). I guess for Gnome there is a similar posibility.
On 04/07/2011 11:36 AM, deano ferrari wrote:
>
>> So how about a “KDE”-, “Gnome-” and maybe an “Other Desktops-” subforum?
>>
> Hmmm… interesting idea. I can see the merit in this. I’d like to know
> what others’ opinions are here…
i don’t care one way or the other, but wonder if we have a KDE and Gnome
and “Other” forum, will we move any (like XFCE, LXDE, ROX, Étoilé, EDE,
Enlightenment or Unity) out of ‘other’ if they get more followers ??
–
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [NNTP via openSUSE 11.3 + KDE4.5.5 +
Thunderbird3.1.8] Can you believe it? This guy Ralph wins $181 million
in the lottery last Wednesday, and then finds the love of his life just
2 days later. Talk about LUCK!
I think that STurtles suggestion makes sense (compare in the German language area ‘Desktop’ with three subfora).
But on the other hand there are already many fora, sub-fora and sub-sub-fora in the English language area. This may already lead to more confusion than putting threads with a similar theme/topic together.
Example given: Someone has a laptop with openSUSE 11.4 and KDE installed with a not working wlan. He may post on the hardware forum (maybe because he suspects a ‘hard blocked’-issue), on the laptop forum (maybe because he suspects this related to his laptop’s vendor or just because he uses a laptop…) or in the wireless forum (because he could not use his wireless device).
Creating a new KDE forum may give him the additional ‘chance’ to post in the KDE forum (maybe because he suspects this issue being related to the KDE program knetworkmanager) …
So I would guess that using general tags like kde, wireless, notebook
(and maybe in addition more specific tags like acer, hard blocked or 14e4:432b)
seems to me a better choice than creating three additional fora in the English language area of forums.openSUSE.org .
On 04/07/2011 01:06 PM, pistazienfresser wrote:
> Example given: Someone has a laptop with openSUSE 11.4 and KDE
> installed with a not working wlan. He may post on the -hardware- forum
> (maybe because he suspects a ‘-hard blocked-’-issue), on the -laptop-
> forum (maybe because he suspects this related to his laptop’s vendor or
> just because he uses a laptop…) or in the -wireless- forum (because he
> could not use his wireless device).
or if it is an application, desktop, network, wireless or multimedia
problem it might be posted to the 64 bit forum, if there is a glimmer of
a suspicion it might be related to either 64 hardware or 64 software or
… . .
etc…
–
CAVEAT: http://is.gd/bpoMD [NNTP via openSUSE 11.3 + KDE4.5.5 +
Thunderbird3.1.8] Can you believe it? This guy Ralph wins $181 million
in the lottery last Wednesday, and then finds the love of his life just
2 days later. Talk about LUCK!
As I recall earlier discussions about it, there was some question about
how to deal with “I’m a GNOME user using K3B” or “I’m a KDE user using F-
Spot” and where those users would logically look to ask their questions.
That said, as stamostolias said, some of the non-English forums have
decided to offer KDE and GNOME forums.
But you raise a good point about questions about DE usage being misplaced
in the applications forum.
Let me raise the idea with the rest of the team and see what they think.
You are right, this might be often the case, but my first example question in the opening post is clearly not of this type. I think such question might be important to many openSuse/KDE users. So assuming further that no KDE/Gnome subforums will be created (just for the sake of the argument, I am happy that the creation is really considerd by the forum admins, thanks!) where should such a question be placed then? In “pre-release/beta”?
Also, directing people to anther forum might make it more difficult to communicate. Similar to the bugtracking: if I encounter a bug in KDE, am I supposed to I report it in Novell’s bugtracker or should I head directly to the KDE bugtracker? I always wonder about this, since from my user perspective, I am unsure which part of the software product I am using is KDE and which is openSuse.
It is often a matter of trial and eror. Alone the way people catagorize things may differ very much due to backgroud and experience. To many people (specialy those who earlier had Windows experience) the desktop and the system are one thiing (or they even think the desktop IS the system). To others the DE is just bunch of application programs, they might be usefull, but one can live perfectly without them on a Linux system.
I for myself had some KDE items I tried here first, then went to the KDE forums, got some answer and reported back here in my original thread. But not many people take that effort. In any case when you want to know e.g. where a certain feature of Kadressbook went in a new version, you are better off in the KDE forums (even developers participate)
And in most cases people just post in General, asking for help, not telling what DE they have. How would you get those people posting in a Gnome subforum of a DE forum? >:)
> And in most cases people just post in General, asking for help, not
> telling what DE they have. How would you get those people posting in a
> Gnome subforum of a DE forum? >:)
Many are posting questions in the howto submissions
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Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
