[mythtv-users] Need for a real forum?

Ray Olszewski ray at comarre.com
Wed Dec 10 14:50:10 EST 2003


At 07:26 PM 12/10/2003 +0000, Adam Wood wrote:
>There is already at least one Forum @ http://epia.repvik.org it is
>slightly biased towards Gentoo and the EPIA boards (at the moment), but
>I know there is atleast one other BB out there more generally about
>Myth. I can't find the address right now though.

This response  -- specifically the "I can't find the address right now 
though" part -- illustrates the problem with forums. With e-mail lists, I 
get to use the same familiar interface (my e-mail reader) across about a 
dozen different lists I participate in. With forums, there is no standard, 
and I end up having to learn a different UI for each one I participate in. 
The practical consequence is that I almost never participate in forums, 
while I use e-mail lists regularly.

An important ingredient of any support system ... e-mail, forum, whatever 
... is its having a community of people who *answer* questions. The 
preferences of the people who *ask* questions are secondary to the 
preferences of the people who *answer* questions.

In my case, with e-mail lists, I usually start out asking, then move to 
answering (that is, if I become an active user of the software the list 
supports). If I only have forums to turn to, I still start out asking, but 
then I simply vanish once my questions are answered, never graduating into 
someone who answers questions.

I'm probably not unique in this respect. It probably contributes to why "no 
one uses the site" at "mythtv.no-ip.com", as Romel noted (thought "no one" 
appears to be a bit of an exaggeration). At least in my case, it has 
nothing to do with being a "hardcore command line user" ... just my not 
wanting to join the :User Interface of the Month Club".





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