Re: A Forum for Guix Users

[Simon Tournier]

Hi,

On Thu, 13 Jul 2023 at 19:22, Sarthak Shah <shahsarthakw@gmail.com> wrote:

> I think we should seriously consider having a user forum similar to
> Debian's User Forum or Nixos' Discourse.

Well, I shared my opinion in the other thread:

        A Forum for Guix Users
        from Distopico <distopico@riseup.net>
        Tue, 18 Jul 2023 06:45:16 -0500
        https://yhetil.org/guix/87bkg9wigq.fsf@riseup.net

with my message 86a5unz4ap.fsf@gmail.com. 


And to be explicit: do not count on me for interacting with Discourse.
For two reasons:

 1. Because I have never find the way to deal with it with intermittent
 internet connection.  How do you deal with such forum in batch-mode?

 More than often, I process (read and/or answer) the volume of Guix
 messages off-line.  As I am doing right now. :-) For example, before
 going to somewhere without internet connection (meeting or else) and
 because I know that I will have some slots of free time (boring meeting
 or else), well I just fetch the last messages, and then I process the
 messages.  Once back to some internet connection, I send all my
 replies.

 Without that batch-mode feature, I would not just read most of the
 messages and probably I would never answer.  For example, today I am
 not following Haskell or OCaml or Python because Discourse forces me
 the way of interaction.  Well, because I find that way so boring: open
 my web-browser, click, no filter, etc., I am scrolling only the
 Discourse of OCaml once per month or so.  Maybe I have missed the
 offline procedure because I have not checked Discourse features since
 last months (years?).

 2. Because I find insane to have such resource-hungry client/server
 configuration for only exchanging small pieces of text.

 Instead of calling to require more for doing the same (or sometimes
 even less) but using more resource, I am calling to the opposite: doing
 more with less.  I strongly think we must collectively reflect on how
 to do using less.  We have to drastically decrease the global CO2
 footprint and every gram counts.

Obviously, we have to be welcoming.  For sure we have to think and
re-think and think again and again about the best ways to be welcoming
and helpful.  However, I disagree that Discourse or similar will bring
something on the table.  Well, I will not bet that people currently
helping in mailing lists would continue to provide answers using
Discourse and I will not bet that instead new experienced users would
answer to question on Discourse.

There is a trade-off between newcomer’s expectations about the way to
get help and experienced users who provide such help.  I fear that
switching to Discourse could indeed meet newcomer’s expectations but
loosing those experienced users.

Cheers,
simon