Add sticky post to forums explaining RULES. Please please please please!!!!
Hi all,
recently I've been reading *odd* threads on this forum, from
discussions about religion and free software to rants about a given
wifi card not being supported by Trisquel (i.e. free software).
I really think it's time to add a sticky post that clearly explains
what the rules are, what advice to seek here, what to discuss and how
help will be provided (e.g. no help in installing non-free stuff).
It might also be worth creating sub-forums to discuss e.g.
ethics-related topics or technical issue.
My two cents.
--
Stefano
+ 1 thumbs up. I will see if I can get attention to this.
Heck we could even adapt the Debian Community Guidelines for our community. It is GPLv2+.
Bump.
Sticky post... please!
--
Stefano
Fortune of the day: "You feel a whole lot more like you do now than you did
when you used to."
> discussions about religion and free software to rants about a given
> wifi card not being supported by Trisquel (i.e. free software).
>
> I really think it's time to add a sticky post that clearly explains
> what the rules are, what advice to seek here, what to discuss and how
> help will be provided (e.g. no help in installing non-free stuff).
"User help and discussion" in my opinion is mostly the things directly
related to using Trisquel, maybe include suggestions for free
software-friendly hardware and services. This needs more clarification.
> ethics-related topics or technical issue.
It might be worth making such non-technical forums distro-independent,
since there is no ethical difference between the goals of e.g. Trisquel
and Parabola. Although this would be probably only a branding
difference, there are Parabola users writing here.
Better than this, we should have a wiki entry about community guidelines (I'd rather have something much shorter than the debian ones) and link to them from the forum headers. That way we can have it translated and updated if needed.
I have started a rough draft.
At the moment I am just going to use the gNewSense community guidelines as a base. This is easy because they have the exact same documentation license we use so we can just copy it. Then we can modify it as we go.
> (I'd rather have something much shorter than the debian ones) and link to
> them from the forum headers. That way we can have it translated and updated
> if needed.
Cool!
I am sorry I can't help with anything at the moment (maybe some proof
reading), but I would like to stress that it would be great if the
guidelines were the *first thing* that a user sees upon opening the
forum page or registering to the forum/mailing list.
Thank you all,
--
Stefano
I am gonna expand on it for sure. Maybe add some sort of code of conduct (e.g. no personal attacks). I just wanted to get something up there real quick but I won't have a chance to work on it until later this week because I am right in the middle of my work week and tonight and tomorrow I also have some classes to go to.
> (e.g. no personal attacks). I just wanted to get something up there real
> quick but I won't have a chance to work on it until later this week because
> I am right in the middle of my work week and tonight and tomorrow I also
> have some classes to go to.
Sure,
thank you very much for your commitment anyway.
I wonder if you could at least stick this post (or create a new one)
on top of the user forum... I hope this gets translated too (actually,
I may do that tomorrow night...)
--
Stefano
Sorry to bump this thread, but I really feel that a sticky post on top
of each forum is necessary.
I am kind of sick of seeing how sometimes the forum is abused.
Thanks,
--
Stefano
I think this would be a good improvement. Also, I would like to see the user help on the front page, other stuff might just as well be a click further away.
Last I was reading a post and the comments pull in religions (which upset people, including myself) and complete flame-wars, which don't help users much.
In contradiction to helping users and promoting Trisquel, they do the exact opposite, such as one of the latest posts about RMS. It's a discussion that shouldn't take place in the forums of trisquel.
If you need any help monitoring forums, I would like to give a hand.
I think ethical discussions are welcome in a subforum, and they should be there, but they shouldn't be done without respect to other people's views.
For those of you posting in here I would advise you contact quidam via email or IRC because he doesn't actively monitor the forums. I have clearly expressed my concerns but if more of the community stands up and says "we want this" it might mean more.
I won't lie, I am getting annoyed at some of these community issues which should be handled and I don't think it will get solved unless others express the same view.
P.S. I did add a "code of conduct" to the community guidelines page. Namely, a language policy, a non-discrimination policy, and a "no personal attacks" policy. Feel free to comment.
Don't take t3g too seriously and he won't bother you. He is like a character representing the simple-minded conformist consumer. You might find him entertaining. The thoughts of Rick Hodgin are at least interesting to read.
Moderators can be much more annoying. When power is given to a person, even a seemingly good one, he can get intoxicated with it and start acting like dictator.
Moderators "can" be annoying but at the same time they can also be very useful. Especially if the forums have rules established. I know a forum that is very well moderated. For example they have a for sale section where users can trade and sell items. I feel safer trading there then on sites like ebay. They have several safeguards in place such as needing an isp, edu, mil, or gov email address (no yahoo, google, ect.) and you need 100 legit posts before you can trade and if you screw someone you are banned.
With moderators it can go both ways. They can be beneficial or degrade a community. I guess that would be why you could also have administrators (e.g. quidam) and hopefully a "dictator" mod would be taken care of swiftly.
Far from simple minded bro... far from it.
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Well, I'm new to Trisquel (only installed it a few hours ago) and love it - BUT BUT BUT - very disappointed with the forum (NOT the members) For instance , as has been said no rules - strange,
No individual threads, no search facility, no system for showing a thread has been solved , I could go on and on ,it is a shame ,but what do we do about it ?
.
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Well I've tried to submit a style of forum ( www.trisquel-users.com ) but for all the people who complain nobody has yet commented on it
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Site seems to be down at the moment.
Did you figure out how to duplicate the forum to email functionality? I suspect that is the number one thing to worry about.
The other might be spam.
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@ Chris,
The email functionality is easily sorted, as far as spam is concerned - not a problem, using Drupal gives a very secure site.
There are quite a few options , for instance at the moment My site is set up as follows:-
it requires an email address to register (got around easily by spammers) BUT the site then automatically sends an email to that address for confirmation (which of course 'bounces' or is non-deliverable.
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By easily sorted do you mean that it is a solved problem? How do I try it out? I am referring to accessing the forums via a mailing list. This is a separate issue from the spam problem.
I'm not so sure the problem is solved for the spam. Simply requiring an email confirmation will probably not deter spammers.
I am a member!
@ Chris,
First of all I have been notified that you have applied for an account, You should have received an email requesting you confirm your email address ect , please state if this is the case , if not I will check the settings.
Mailing list, as I understand it this is how it works :-
I click on the Mailing lists link, this takes Me to http://listas.trisquel.info/mailman/listinfo/ , then I click on Trisquel-users, this takes me to http://listas.trisquel.info/mailman/listinfo/trisquel-users. I then sign up and I'm linked to THIS forum, so if My forum was officially adopted (which seems highly unlikely given the developers interest in the forum) the developer would simply change the link to point to My forum.
The easiest solution ( if this site is a Drupal site) would be for the developer to allow somebody to change this forum to an 'an advanced ' Drupal forum.
My forum/hosting package is payed for until late next year and I'm willing to pay for it for another 3years if it helps.
On Sat, 3 Nov 2012 13:38:56 +0100 (CET)
you wrote:
> First of all I have been notified that you have applied for an account, You
> should have received an email requesting you confirm your email address
> ect , please state if this is the case , if not I will check the settings.
> Mailing list, as I understand it this is how it works :-
> I click on the Mailing lists link, this takes Me to
> http://listas.trisquel.info/mailman/listinfo/ , then I click on
> Trisquel-users, this takes me to
> http://listas.trisquel.info/mailman/listinfo/trisquel-users. I then sign up
> and I'm linked to THIS forum, so if My forum was officially adopted (which
> seems highly unlikely given the developers interest in the forum) the
> developer would simply change the link to point to My forum.
> The easiest solution ( if this site is a Drupal site) would be for the
> developer to allow somebody to change this forum to an 'an advanced ' Drupal
> forum.
> My forum/hosting package is payed for until late next year and I'm willing
> to pay for it for another 3years if it helps.
thumbs up for your forum. I'd love to have it linked to the official trisquel
website.
You can try to contact Ruben (via PM or IRC) and see if this is OK with him.
However, he might be very busy right now on the next Trisquel release and I
doubt he will respond any time soon.
Also some sort of poll would probably help (as it's already been suggested).
--
Stefano
Fortune of the day: "Are you ever going to do the dishes? Or will you change
your major to biology?"
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Contacted Ruben more than a week ago, no reply as yet.
As far as I can see is for people to register on My site and do the poll !
Not surprised at all... let's wait and hope. Maybe you can "poke" him in a week
or so. ;-)
I see... personally, I'd rather not register to yet another site though.
Best,
--
Stefano
Fortune of the day: "Executive ability is prominent in your make-up."
I am a member!
I'd probably try and reach him on IRC although I wouldn't bother him until there is more of a concrete site with a list of features that have been implemented.
Include a nice little of info on a spec sheet so far with the version of Drupal used, modules needed, how you got to the point you did, the mailing list feature (how to to 'sign up'/subscribe/etc). Mention the solution to Spam. See if you can fix the problem of email addresses being revealed for the mailing list feature. They are suppose to be kept private.
Propose it as a demonstration of what can be done. Don't force it. Ask him if he thinks this might be something Trisquel could adopt and what features a new site would need/be desirable.
Can you figure out how to 'port' the wiki? Moving to a new site is a BIG job.
I got an email although it contained no confirmation link.
--
chris,
Thank you for registering at Trisquel-Users.Com. Your application for an account is currently pending approval. Once it has been approved, you will receive another e-mail containing information about how to log in, set your password, and other details.
-- Trisquel-Users.Com team
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@ Chris , all noted, will look into the registration settings.
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Another thing is the server seems really slow. Where is this being hosted? I'm wondering if there is something wrong.
I'm trying to help although being unable to test it complicates matters!
I did manage to change my password although it seems to be taking minutes to load a page.
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@ Chris ,
Much appreciate your input.
Hosting is GoDaddy Europe , I experienced a bit of slowness yesterday but OK today but do not usually experience problems and have been with them for more than five years.
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I've had to deal with them before due to things beyond my control. Despite knowing better and advising a person close to me to go elsewhere... they didn't. GoDaddy has a really bad reputation. There are a lot of hosting companies though which are also horrendous. I generally try to avoid companies that lie and cut a lot of corners. In some cases I've accepted it provided the level of service was properly advertised.
I had a $10 USD / month VPS in the early days of VPS for instance and the service was clearly advertised in such a way that there was no service or up-time guarantee. A guy ran it as a side project for fun. The service was horrible and would go down for days on end although it was clear what you were getting for your money so I stuck with it until I could bear it no longer (and had real needs for something more). It happened every six months or so too. Very frustrating. I switched in 2006 to Linode and have been happy ever since. However the price of service doubled. With it the up-time has been near perfect.
There are good reasons to use such a cheap service. I'd have no issue running a Tor node on one for instance. In fact it was probably the main benefit to that node at the time. And email.
I think that I've already asked you this question, but I can't find it anywhere so I will just ask again.
Are you using a VPS on Linode ? And if yes, is it running Trisquel ?
I am asking this because I am running a Raspberry Pi (that co-worker gave me to configure for the organization) running Arch Arm that I configured as a server (I won't give the link because it has no home page so you won't see anything, but it is hosted in my home with my internet connection and it works under a dns from afraid.org that ends on linuxd.org).
And I was wondering what would be like to have a server running Trisquel (I love Arch Linux and the fact that everything is very organize like the apache side being on /srv/http, /srv/ftp and for git /srv/git and not on /var/www and /var/cache/git like it is on Debian Distributions, but I think that it is very hard to configure, and sometimes I don't have neither the time, or the patience to do so. And this even knowing that I configured this RPi Arm Server with ssh, http, ftp, git, php, forum (drupal and phpbb), and other stuff that I mostly don't remember in less than 2 days).
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We are using Linodes with Debian stable. It's been upgraded since 2006 and maybe even earlier. I might look at switching to Trisquel although I'm not yet confident that would be a good idea. Debian makes a really solid base. I don't have confidence in Canonical as a company. The track record of the people working for the company isn't great. I see the same mistakes being made again and again with commercial distributions that target the desktop and I'd prefer not to put my eggs in that basket. Debian has a track record that I believe will withstand collapse.
When commercial companies fold there is ultimately collateral damage. Even though I think basing a desktop distribution off Ubuntu is a smart move now I have more faith in Trisquel and Debian being around long term than Canonical. With a desktop distribution like Trisquel the worst case scenario is you have to switch bases (revert to using Debian) and then have your users reinstall instead of going through a smooth upgrade process. Not having a smooth upgrade is undesirable although not the end of the world. With the server I'm more concerned about having the stability AND smooth upgrade process. I don't know how much time Canonical has left although I'd rather not get stuck should it go under in 3-5 years. Mark Shuttlesworth has stated he will not indefinitely fund Ubuntu from his own pocket. There have been no public releases of Canonical financial records either. If the company does not succeed Mark Shuttlesworth will get out. He gave a 5 year time table a few years back. I believe that was in 2009. Like all other commercial distribution failures Canonical has done a lot of flip flopping.
Reality tends to differ from what those owning/running companies claim just before they go under. If they get out without filing for bankruptcy that's what we call a success in the desktop GNU/Linux business. If Canonical claims “success” my next question is who is buying it? If I have stock in that company I'm going to sell. This does not mean I think the commercial desktop GNU/Linux distribution business can't succeed. I'm just not confident Mark or Canonicals going to get us there. He could yet prove me wrong though.
I think he made a number of critical mistakes. Targeting a crowded market (phones) with Unity and abandoning the traditional desktop and then partnering with Dell. He should have focused on the Ubuntu Software Center and continued the successes of 10.04 on the desktop. While hardware isn't where the money is at I think entrance companies are undervaluing the market. Not that long ago Michael S. Dell (founder) bought back significant amount of stock in the company as the stock value dropped. I don't believe the guys move was stupid.
Interestingly, the Wikimedia Foundation uses Ubuntu to power their servers, including Wikipedia.org.
Read:
http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9116787/
Agreed on your points on Canonical. I think their deal with Amazon is only the first step for Canonical trying to make as much out of Ubuntu as possible. Unfortunately those moves are bad for users (privacy issues). I'm not sure whether they will get away with it yet though.
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I'm sure there are companies using Ubuntu on the server. It is probably working out quite well too. What I'm not so sure of is is there success of Canonical in duplicating Redhat's business model. My personal distribution preferences are one thing. Convincing higher ups to switch from Redhat or diversify to multiple distributions is another. Redhat's done a good job and if Ubuntu is to succeed on the server it'll probably need to attract a different generation of administrators and startups. That could take a while and given Mark's own words on funding contradict his companies stated commitment should he fail to produce quickly enough I'd be careful in committing to Ubuntu. I think Redhat as a company is a better bet than Canonical on the server even if I'd choose Debian (or a derived distribution like Ubuntu) for reasons of preference.
What I'm doubtful of is Canonical's profitability right now and the commitment long term to the desktop, the server, or the phone/device segment. Between the lack of commitment long term (in his willingness to keep the funding go) to the flip flopping of the companies focus. He needs to focus on something and do it right. They have gone from a focus on the desktop to supporting it on the server and now to the phone. In the process they have abandoned the traditional desktop. The company can't make up its mind on what to focus on. They have laid no clear business model on the table and if I was a large company interested in partnering with them I'd be weary.
As ThinkPenguin is a small business with a diverse set of supported distributions I'm not too concerned about any one going bye-bye including Canonical. However if I were Dell or another major player in the market with slim margins I'd be questioning what Canonical has to bring to the table. A popular distribution? Maybe. But given the history of GNU/Linux there is a new popular distribution every other week.
If I were Dell and wanted to move away from Microsoft (which there is zero chance of) then I'd be very careful. As the CEO of a hardware company I'm more concerned about being able to support an operating system such as GNU/Linux on a massive scale. I don't think that is possible with Ubuntu today even though it's got the integration and essential down pat as well as the user/developer base to move forward. Long term I think we are going to need to look at more free software friendly hardware in order to gain mass adoption and see a distribution back porting critical packages to support newer hardware/and web components.
Are we going a bit OFF TOPIC here?
--
Stefano
I visited your forum and I like it. Good job, theblackpig.
It has some features I miss in the current trisquel forum, such as the ability to quote a previous post. Furthermore, the sequence in which posts are displayed is more logical than in this forum, where the last post could be in the first page and the penultimate in the third one. This is a consequence of the lack of quotation feature.
Things to polish in your forum:
- quotation doesn't work properly: [quote=user] ... [/quote] is shown literally
- I don't see the need of the 'Subject' field when replying a post
- I would add a 'Report abuse' button, in order to report spammers, trolls...
Congratulations for your work improving Trisquel community. I hope your forum will be adopted.
We mostly need 3 thins in my opinion:
1 - Sticky important notes (like the rules)
2 - Sub-categories of the forum (I know that we are not a big community but we need to split ideas and topics between different pages and sub-forums.
3 - Have a fixed admin only for the forum (or someone that could also do some work on the packages themselves, like a trusted user from arch linux that have to prove his value and goes to vote from other users) OR a vote page, if it reaches (as an example) 30 down votes the post will be hidden until further approval by Ruben or any other administration.
Some interesting suggestions :) but I respectfully disagree with your 3rd suggestion (just my opinion). The forum should be here as a tool for communication, but shouldn't be over-complicated.
Also keep in mind that some people use the forum from their email client which might make those tools hard to use.
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This should probably be voted on. Maybe someone can create a poll? Or we could just tally the votes within the forum here. I don't really care which way it goes personally. For the size of this community the forums are probably better simplified. Or maybe two sections. One for spam/trolls and one for everybody else? :)
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@ aliasbody
See My site www.trisquel-users.com
