We just want to help users…really, let us be
Ok, that’s it. If you’ve been listening to our Lococast.net episodes you’ll know that I thought the whole stackexchange for Ubuntu Q&A was a bad idea. Too many places for users to go and find help/answers seems like it’d be a large negative. In the end the community decided to go ahead with it and here we are.
Except, the Ubuntu community can’t seem todo anything without drawing out the complains from swaths of the neighboring communities. So we end up with with a series of events that look like this:
- Community wants exchange
- People think it’s strange and wonder why when there’s a more general *nix proposal out there
- Community speaks out that hey…we think our community has it’s own value
- People rant about community wanting to do its own thing
This is just crap. I mean, if a community wants to do it’s own thing, and they have the means to supply both the helpers and the helpies needed for the thing to work, why does anyone need to get up in arms about it. You think a joint one would prove more useful…then do it…prove it. If the joint stackexchange will provide more value to users, then the users will find that out and use it.
I’m already worried about issues with the volume of questions for just the Ubuntu community. You think some how making it a larger swath of people would make it better? We’ll see. But quit the whining.
Due to all of this I feel like I need to stand up for my community. While I’m not on board with this stackexchange being a long term solution, I feel like I need to step up and support it. So I’ve signed up and will be monitoring a number of tags in the stackexchange that are up my alley. In particular I’ll be keeping an eye on: python, vim, terminal, command line, and zsh. I might add some others as I get into it more.
Just a heads up for users, you can create a custom RSS feed of only specific tags by playing with the url. For instance, below is my url I used for just my tags. Notice each tag is separated via +or+.
http://ubuntu.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/python+or+vim+or+terminal+or+command-line+or+zsh
Doing this will provide you with a page you can bookmark, but that page will also have an RSS feed on it for those tags. Definitely helpful since I’m going to try to keep things sensible by limited my involvement to my specialties.
So get over there and find your support niche today. Together the Ubuntu community is quite awesome, and I wish the rest of the world would quit trying to force things upon us we never asked for.
Filed under: Ubuntu | 3 Comments
I have to listen to the podcast yet (been reinstalling everything) but, originally, I thought “hey, another place for users to go with questions, what a great idea”. Now, not so much. The StackExchange is a good idea in theory, but it’s one more place for people who are offering help to go. I’m already on the forums, and in IRC… now we have to monitor this too?
I’m still signed up and I’ll see what happens with it. I still think people who need help should search the forums. I’ve gotten most of my answers from the search functionality. Also, and I hate to say it, Google works well too. There are lots of tips n tricks blogs out there that have information that is specific to your issue.
*shrug* I guess it’s just one more place for people to ask questions and give ideas; I thought the forums and Ubuntu Brainstorm were for that?
Amy
Yea, I’ve been conveying that to some people at Canonical and it seems they’re understanding and working on it. Hopefully as things mature the number of options will narrow down a bit. There’s still a lot of work to do to make things work smoothly for new users, but I’ll withhold final judgement for a bit yet.
The haters coming out of the woodwork just annoy me to no end though.
I’m actually listening to the podcast right now, and I understand where you’re coming from.
I hope the number of options narrow down. I think the forums have to start restricting things; there’s a lot of chatter that’s useless in the Community Cafe, and I haven’t figured out how to filter those out of the “new posts” filter. Maybe having a moderator that approves new memberships? Would cut down on the spam.
I just want to offer help and get help; not chat about Microsoft junk or social crap… take it to #ubuntu-offtopic or a forum you’ve created.
I’ll try to hold off on judgement, but I’m hoping things can be consolidated soon to make it easier for the people providing help to newbies and others who need it.
And, haters are always gonna hate, no matter what.
Amy