A kind request

[danieldk]

Can we please stop opening anti-US and anti-Microsoft topics? It is getting boring, and probably scares away a lot of potential community members.

While most people know my opinion on current politics, I can imagine that people who have family serving in Iraq or Afganistan are not really interested in reading how bad the US is every day. This is a GNU/Linux forum.

With kind regards,
Daniel

[deanlinkous]

Well, I think you may have a point with the anti-US thing but anti-microsoft? as you said this is a GNU/Linux forum. :D

[danieldk]

GNU/Linux is good enough to stand on its own feet, no need to bash other systems. Besides that it's not really respectful towards other people or systems.

[deanlinkous]

not sure I understand so I will simply zip it :|

[Lavene]

I agree that such topics do not belong in a forum dedicated to FOSS, Linux etc. But when the 'off topic' section is the most popular part of such a forum it's time to ask why that happens. And for this site the answer is easy to find: This site has nothing to offer what so ever. There is no sense of community, no sign of any effort to create anything special and not much interesting content. What happened to the big plans? What is the goal of the site? What is done to get people notice the place? What is done to make people actually want to participate?

Why should people spend time here instead of on LinuxQuestions or their distro's own forum?

Yes, I know a 'community' takes a community effort and that the users have to contribute etc etc but there has to be an idea initially. As it is now I see no reason to point people in this direction because I have nothing to tell them.

Personally I kinda drifted over from the Libranet forum in order to stay in touch with the people there but most of the 'old crowd' has also disappeared.

But back on topic; posting a question here is pointless because hardly anyone will see it. Looking for news? Well, nothing here... it's been on slashdot for hours or days before someone posts it here. That leaves the off topic stuff which I'd like to post somewhere but it's not suitable on any other forums I hang out, which IS on topic. so I dump it here. No one else is posting anything anyway...

My point is: You have to offer something in order to attract people. A forum with less than 50 active members (I wonder who those 48 people is... I notice less that 10) is no fun!

And since you're bound to ask: "Well Tina, why don't YOU start contributing?" I'll answer right away: I am contributing where I actually get something in return (read: active forums etc) and where I can be reasonable sure about what is actually going on. Where I know the idea, see some effort and feel participation is rewarding. And most of these places took some serious work to get rolling.

I'm pretty sure though that if there was some *visible* stuff going on things would start happening. What about the news section once mentioned? The articles? Stuff that makes it intersting to come here. Stuff that's on topic and suitable to spawn some discussions or debate.

I'm done making my self unpopular now... just wanted to air some thoughts about *why* the off topic discussions occur.

Tina

PS And it wouldn't hurt using free software to run the site either :smiley2:
PPS: I've just built a site using the PostNuke CMS and it has a fantastic, totally seamless integration of phpBB.

[danieldk]

I'm done making my self unpopular now... just wanted to air some thoughts about *why* the off topic discussions occur.


Not at all, these are very good points. I originally planned to invest time in providing content. I ended up with three paid jobs not too long ago, so I didn't have much time.

[deanlinkous]

Well, if three are too many you can always give me one of them. :D