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Guest ashledombos

oh well that was fun for a week .. looks like they don't want our help, or our 20,000 users .. they would prefer doing it them selves

 

Mmm, sure there is some misunderstanding.

We thought you would be a little pleased to help us in creating our new forum.

Sure we will show your forum as a good place for getting support from community.

 

But why prevent mageia founders to have their forum for communicate with people.

 

We are finding way to gather all works of communities, and please, don't start to see mandrivausers.org as mageia.org competitors, or the contrary.

 

I don't know, for the moment, where the problem have started, since i am on the project since 1 day or a little more, and i already see some disapointments that are not about creating a new distro, but about... well I don't know, I certainly missed something...

 

So, asking again, do you want to be an admin of the official forum ?

 

If you prefer to be in a separate realm, no problem, there are ways we can find to cooperate together.

 

:edit try to reformulate some sentence in a better way, sorry i am not native english speaker :P

Edited by ashledombos
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I guess there have been a lot of misunderstandings due to the difficulty to communicate with language barriers, opposite timezones, the noise on IRC and the ML, and the fact that the core team is probably a bit overwelmed and overworked by the first week of Mageia activity.

 

I do believe it would have been a good choice to transform mandrivausers.org into the official english-language forum of Mageia, since mandrivausers.org has already so many Mandriva users registered (and we want to entice them to become Mageia users, don't we?) and so many posts and threads with useful information that would benefit Mageia, too.

 

Even if this forum (mandrivausers/mageiausers.org) would need to be migrated (users + post history) from IPB to a FOSS forum software, it could still be a very good starting point.

 

A busy forum requires quite a powerful server + storage space + bandwidth, it would make more sense for Mageia to take advantage of this free opportunity rather than spending donation money on it (which could be used for more important things like the build servers).

 

My suggestion would be for all of the people involved (Paul, Raphael and Anne) to agree on a date/time when to have a chat ideally using skype or at least a private IRC channel without other distractions at the same time, to work it out.

I think a good solution can still be found when putting aside misunderstandings.

 

Anyway, that's just my suggestion, it's obviously up to you what you all will do.

Edited by tux99
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Guest ashledombos

So if they do not want our help, do we still give it? Or would we be better served to stick with Mandriva and offer to help the elder child: PCLOS?

 

Just curious, who said "mageia team doesn't want mandriva users" help ?

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  • 2 weeks later...

I don't think it's unusual for the Mageia devs to want their own forum hosted on their website. In fact, that's pretty much the norm for any distro that I can think of. You have to remember that what happened with this forum and mandrake/mandriva was an aberration.

 

The old timers will remember how it all came about. Basically, back in the day, mandrake setup a quasi-official forum moderated and run by a mandrake employee, Tom something or another(if anyone remembers his last name please post it as it is driving me nuts). At this time(2001-2002), mandrake was easily the number one desktop distro around and ubuntu wasn't even a gleam in Mark Shuttleworth's eye. Tom was a very good guy and well liked by the community. Sometime later, mandrake shifted its business model and decided that it wanted to try making money selling service to desktop users through the official mandrake website. Unfortunately, the service mandrake offered was inferior to what you could get at Tom's forum for free. The inevitable finally occurred and Tom was terminated by mandrake and pretty much just disappeared; it was all very mysterious at the time. As a result, Tom's forum was in limbo for awhile and some of the forum members got together and started this forum. Ever since, Mandrake/mandriva has been, to a greater or lesser extent, somewhat ambivalent at best and downright hostile at worst, when it came to this forum.

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The old timers will remember how it all came about. Basically, back in the day, mandrake setup a quasi-official forum moderated and run by a mandrake employee, Tom something or another(if anyone remembers his last name please post it as it is driving me nuts). At this time(2001-2002), mandrake was easily the number one desktop distro around and ubuntu wasn't even a gleam in Mark Shuttleworth's eye. Tom was a very good guy and well liked by the community. Sometime later, mandrake shifted its business model and decided that it wanted to try making money selling service to desktop users through the official mandrake website. Unfortunately, the service mandrake offered was inferior to what you could get at Tom's forum for free. The inevitable finally occurred and Tom was terminated by mandrake and pretty much just disappeared; it was all very mysterious at the time. As a result, Tom's forum was in limbo for awhile and some of the forum members got together and started this forum. Ever since, Mandrake/mandriva has been, to a greater or lesser extent, somewhat ambivalent at best and downright hostile at worst, when it came to this forum.

 

As somebody personally involved in the mandrakeuser.org/mandrakeusers.org story I may correct a little bit here:

Tom Berger maintained the english Mandrakelinux FAQ, I did the German translation, we worked together. We met several times in Berlin and we also participated in the great Mandrakesoft appearance at German Linuxtag 2000 where we succeeded in 2 ways:

Another German, Kurt Pfeifle asked if he could display a new printer management on our stand - that was the first time CUPS was shown in public and Mandrakelinux was the first distro to implement CUPS in the next release. Another German, Stefan, and I used the social event to talk Till Kamppeter into working for Mandrakesoft. Within 2 weeks Till moved to his new office in Paris. But this is only a nice side story :)

 

When Tom and I met for the first time in Berlin he was looking for a job and I suggested he could ask Mandrakesoft (with a little help from my side). As contractor of Mandrakesoft (and with their money) he created a website with all the FAQ items, improving it to a legendary collection, where many users sent documents, howtos and even simple solutions to. As a side effect there was a forum as well.

After a while the Mandrake Club was created to gather money (donations), a part of this was a forum for those clubbies. It was in no way a competition to the forum on Tom's website mandrakeuser.org.

 

Then Tom simply disappeared. I did not receive a reply to my last mail, he did not answer many phone calls, I even received a call from Mandrakesoft asking about Tom. Mandrakesoft did NOT fire Tom, they stopped sending money when his last cheque came back to Mandrakesoft undeliverable. I even went to Berlin to his house but he had moved without leaving any information. Up to today I do not know what became of him, neither do other people I am still in contact with. So, Tom was not fired or rebuffed or whatever by Mandrakesoft. Well, at least not that I (or any of my old time aquaintances) know about.

 

Now for the website: As Tom registered the website mandrakeuser.org on his name, nobody could jump in and continue the work until some users of that old forum created a new one (mandrakeusers.org) and transferred the valuable documents to their new site. These documents still exist here. Later Mandrakesoft used them as a basis to build their Knowledge Base for the Mandrake Club (I remember my discussions with Gaël Duval about the open status of the documents and the closed status of the club).

 

When the club opened up to non-paying users, first opening access to the forum for everybody, this situation happened: there were 2 free english language forums. The main difference was that one was the official user support forum, maintained and ruled by the company, the other one was a free and independent community project (like MandrivaUser.de, which was also founded without strings to the company and without beeing the official German support forum).

 

This is still the situation as it is. In other words, the "competition" is not really there, there are many people posting in both forums. As an outsider I never saw a real competition, more 2 alternatives for the users which could be used side by side. A competition may only have existed in some minds, as we saw in the discussions when a merge of both was proposed by somebody in the MUGs group.

 

Now with Mageia we do have a different situation. Of course Mageia wants to have an official forum under the lead and maintained by Mageia.org. This could well be this forum here,

- welcoming the international crowd which before preferred to go to forum.mandriva.com and any new people

- adding to the admin/moderator group other experienced people who are volunteering for admins and moderators in the mageia wiki

- applying rules for the forum which will be discussed in public and then set by the Community Council and/or Mageia board.

- handing over the domain name of the website to mageia.org to avoid any disturbances based on individual opinions and fate (see the first website's story above).

 

Paul, I talked with Anne and there really seems to be a misunderstanding between you both, as someone with some experience in this area I'd rather see this misunderstanding be cleared up. I would not like any situation which is bound to split a community at its very start. I'm ready to talk any time.

 

Well, long post and for those who are exhausted I promise to keep the next one extra short!

 

wobo

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Sorry, I must correct soem things here

Now with Mageia we do have a different situation. Of course Mageia wants to have an official forum under the lead and maintained by Mageia.org. This could well be this forum here,

- welcoming the international crowd which before preferred to go to forum.mandriva.com and any new people

- adding to the admin/moderator group other experienced people who are volunteering for admins and moderators in the mageia wiki

- applying rules for the forum which will be discussed in public and then set by the Community Council and/or Mageia board.

- handing over the domain name of the website to mageia.org to avoid any disturbances based on individual opinions and fate (see the first website's story above).

It seems that the forum decisions were made, I can only guess the reasons, also taking my own thoughts in count:

The second and third (maybe also the fourth) points of the quoted part of my previous posting may have been the main reasons plus the plan to widen the Mageia forum to other language parts as well where other people already have their set of rules, way to communicate with each other, etc.

Maybe that one of the positive points of this forum was also one of the reasons that Mageia decided different: this forum here is a grown forum with a past, its own rules and administration/moderation, its own style how members behave, etc. - something all long existing forums have (like MandrivaUser.de) and which is accepted by the users who communicate here. Now imagine adding new admin, moderators and rules which may very well be different to what you all are used to but are the rules of the new people coming in. Would this work easily without any misunderstandings or even "This is not my forum anymore"?

 

To avoid this a fresh start may be a better solution than to try to change something which has been working good in the previous situation.

 

At mandrivaUser.de we also have a history and a way to do things and opinions about what is ok and what is not. That is accepted by the users and many users are staying because of this. So we decided to open a new forum for German Mageia users while keeping the forum for users of Mandriva Linux in place. Mageia users can easily benefit from all the 300K postings and the wiki, so the gathered knowledge will not be lost and the remaining German users of Mandriva will not be left out in the rain.

 

One thing I can say for sure: the ex-employees will not stick to Mandriva ways of thinking, as has been written in this thread, rather the opposite they are trying to avoid the mistakes they all see in Mandriva, they would not have started a fork otherwise. And I would not be part of this, then :)

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One thing I can say for sure: the ex-employees will not stick to Mandriva ways of thinking, as has been written in this thread, rather the opposite they are trying to avoid the mistakes they all see in Mandriva, they would not have started a fork otherwise. And I would not be part of this, then :)

Very refreshing and encouraging to know.  :thumbs:
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  • 2 weeks later...
Guest DShelbyD

What happened to the Mageia Forum that for a short while was www.mageiaforums.org? It seems to have been established after they turned down the offer to host it here, but now all I see is a folder and text in Polish. I guess I missed something! :unsure:

 

[Edit to place the www prior to .mageiaforums.org, as it now seems to make a difference.]

Edited by DShelbyD
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Guest DShelbyD

Works just fine.:D

 

Hmmm. Interesting ... but a bit confounding. I've checked and checked the URL I'm using, but all I see is the catalog page:

 

mageiaforums.png

 

[Edit] In my earlier post I omitted the www in the link, since that's now required for getting to the site in the image above. Now - just today - no, really - I find that without the www, the link brings me to this board, not the forum that someone with ties to Mageia set up, and to whose catalog I am led when the link includes www. At any rate, I'm hopelessly confused now as to what I saw weeks ago that I interpreted to be a separate Mageia forum. Just humor me....

Edited by DShelbyD
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