Paul and I have a domain name, although I can't give it out yet, and have found the forum software we are going to use. We need some feedback from the community as to what they would like to see on the board. We will have the major distros, like Ubuntu, Gentoo, Debian, Arch, etc but we need others. We're going to have a Discussion Forum and a Community Chat Forum. Also what other kinds of forums would you like to see?

And we're gong to need a banner so hopefully you guys can help us out with that. Otherwise paul will do something!

This is still going to be a companion site to this board so I hope everyone will help in making it a success.

Thanks!

I don't know what forum software you are going to use, but I hope it will be supported by search engines and features. The search in mandrivausers doesn't always work properly, and a forum, as a knowledge base, must have strong and convenient search capabilities.

Good luck!

We're using SMF software. http://www.simplemachines.org/community/index.php

Gonna need to know the name of the site first

It's distrostop.org but nothing is set up yet.

Given it will be a companion site to this one, what would you think of a site about everything Linux except things not working, I mean not:
- This or that peripheral does't work; how do I configure it?
- Upgrade broke my system!
but rather:
- How do I obtain this or that effect in Gimp?
- What software exists for cloning a system?

Yves.

You can also add a new software review section, software news or something of a similar kind.

I intend to add a sticky under each distro, such as basic commands on how to install and upgrade software, etc., and a mirror list for Debian users.

I'm not sure what you mean Yves. Can you please explain?

ilia_kr, good ideas on forums.

I don't see the point. Distro specific forums provide far better support.

*shrug*

I mean I have the feeling that most questions here relate to installing/updating, configuring, or repairing a Linux system or its hardware support.

So I propose that the new site doesn't deal with those questions at all (although some stickies for common things are more than welcome), and relates instead to using the OS: use the GUI, the CLI, discover Linux applications, and so on…

Yves.

From the first post: What is "Ubunut"? Is that some giant, genetically-engineered German squirrel?

So, more like tutorials, how-tos and software reviews?

So you think Mandria provides better support than we do? Plus we're losing members because they're switching distros. It'd be nice to provide them an alternative so we keep our community intact.

Steve I fixed my spelling error.

I'm 100% positive that's not what he was saying. This forum is distro specific (aside from one section), so I'm pretty sure he wasn't commenting on this forums level of support.

That being said, I do think that having a forum that covers multiple distributions could become a bit...hard to manage. What distributions do you include? How do you handle posts that may answer a question for all distributions, but is posted for a specific distribution? There's a lot to be thought of. Maybe the reason linuxquestions.org is so problematic is because of these difficulties. Just something to think about

I was asking for suggestions for distros, Gentoo, Debian, Arch, Fedora, and more. Linuxquestions has over 350,000 users and it has a old, tired interface. I think we would handle situations as they come up. Plus we plan on including more than just distros. That's where we need suggestions as to what users would want.

Plus you guys need to realize that Mandriva has gone way down in popularity and as a result our stats on this board have taken a drastic decrease in numbers. Like I said a new board could be a way to keep the community together.

I didn't know we were trying to win some popularity contest? As far as Mandriva going down in popularity, with it's latest release I've heard friends of mine talking it up - people who used to talk bad about it.
Or possibly split it even more? Gotta be careful with that.

I know you like to play devil's advocate tyme but do you always have to be so negative? How about offering suggestions about how to make the board successful? And besides, you started your own forum and got members from this board to go to yours. You didn't seem to be concerned about splitting up the community then. And this would be a companion site. We'd work together.

If I had suggestions I would provide them. Since I don't, I'm bringing up possible issues so that possible solutions/workarounds/whatever can be thought of. I'm not trying to be negative, I'm just trying to be realistic and point out areas where I think you may run into problems.
You're right, when I tried to start ILC I didn't concern myself with splitting the community. But then I never created ILC with the intent of it being a companion to this site, nor did I care if people from this community came there. At the time I was extremely fed up with some things that were occurring here at MUsB. But I digress...

This new board has capabilities that IPB doesn't. For instance we can imbed videos which is one of the suggestions we had for a board. And we can try and diversify and add features that will make the board appealing. paul's already working on a hack for a new portal for this. I'd really like to see suggestions for forum topics. It doesn't just have to be linux distros. It can be anything.

I like the concept, but you will probably run into the same problems tyme did. He didn't have regular enough contributors, which you must have at the beginning to attract more people to contribute, which keeps the fuel burning to attract more contributors until it is self-supporting.

I attempted to contribute as much as I could to tyme's Geeklog, but I had some personal issues that needed my attention and he/we only had two or three other contributors that also were not that easily available (I miss LZ ).

I don't know if you remember what a hard time we had getting this board started Steve. There was so much controversy and people were angry and thought we were being disloyal to Tom. It was only after the old board went away that some people came over but some people left for other places. It's always difficult getting something off the ground. All we can do is do our best and hope for the best.

I think the point is you should try to do what you can before releasing the site to avoid some of those initial "bumps in the road". One thing is to be sure you have a dedicated base group of individuals who are willing to be involved from the start, to help build it up. That is, don't just expect people to follow where you lead, rather, make sure you have some that are definitely going to follow. I hope that sounds right/makes sense...and doesn't come off as being devils advocate-esque

What a speech! -applause-

As I see it, this is one more place for me to annoy you guys and girls. Don't worry, there's enough from me for everybody!

You can give away free staff to attract visitors, like free beers..

Now seriously: you can have a student portal. There is a lot of software available that students can use (i mean school and higher) but people just don't know about it. Example: free C/C++ compilers, K3dsurf, Kplot, octave, gnuplot and other. I'm still learning how to use all this stuff for my needs, and it would be great if i had someone to chat about this.

Who was angry?

Could one of the reasons for falling numbers be due to the fact that so many admins. and mods. openly advertise here that they don't even use Mandriva ???.

Yes I wonder.

Cheers. John.

We may not use Mandriva anymore but don't you think it says something about us that we still spend so much of our own time and energy supporting it and the users of this board? Do you think it's fun being an admin or a mod? Do you know that the mods have mine and pauls cell phone numbers so they can text us if somethings wrong so we're available 24 hours a day? Did you know that I paid for the renewal of technical support for this board out of my own pocket? If that's not showing support for Mandriva and the community I don't know what is. I'm not complaining because I love giving back to the open source community. But don't accuse me and others of something without looking at the whole picture.

What would you expect them to do? If they choose not to run Mandriva, should we take away their status? Or perhaps we should just tell them they can't mention what distro they're using, or ask questions about it? One of the things that I've always found true at this place is that, for those who choose to run other distributions (sometimes more "hardcore", for lack of a better word), the knowledge they gain only helps in solving problems here on the board.

(I suppose this is a question about my previous post)

Yes and no Tutorials, how-tos and software reviews would indeed be the kind of content I propose, but I prefer to retain the Question/Answers method, instead of contributions/articles.

For example:

or:


I'm sorry if my idea is not clear enough. I'll continue to explain if needed. Anyway, it's just one idea among others.
By the way, I like ilia_kr's suggestion too. Last summer, I setup a laptop with Linux for my son (6yr old, has reduced "agility/motor" skills), and I was very surprised to discover a wealth of great software for children!

Yves.

Mandriva is in 6th place on distrowatch.org. Whilst I know that their stats might not be the best, it's a good indication that it isn't all that bad for Mandriva.

<< sums up the tone of this thread!

Too much negativity, and not enough support. Call me condescending if you wish, bit I'm disappointed in the attitude some of you have adopted in this discussion.

Thanks Reiver

I understand what you're saying Yves but we'd have to get people to help with that and I'm not sure how that's going to work. And paul and I definitely like ilia_kr's suggestion.

And as a rule of thumb, the support on LinuxQuestions is pathetic. The users should be going to the respective distro forums instead anyway.

Tutorials/Documentation/FAQs -
These need two things - Writers and Updaters.
We don't have those. Our faq section here is in many places, out dated or incorrect.

It's a noble idea. But there's better ways of doing it. Wiki's are superior to forum based documents in so many ways. Most distros have their respective wiki and that's where the documentation should be. Putting them elsewhere just fragments them and makes them harder for people to find.


Features won't bring people in. Nobody is going to join because we have awesome video embedding abilities (it's a feature of dubious use anyway). Take a look at the Arch forums... bigger community than here, yet the simplest cleanest forum software.

The features here? I hardly use them. The core functions of a forum are to make threads and respond to threads. As long as a forum can adequately do that, anything else is cruft.


Nothing wrong with criticism. If the idea can't handle the simple criticism that's being offered, it's going to have a hard time ever getting off the ground. I have every hope that it works, but I don't see much chance that it will - and I tend to be optimistic.

Constructive criticism or advice is one thing. But these kind of negative statements don't help at all. How about saying I'd be happy to answer Arch questions? If everyone took the attitude you're taking nobody would ever start anything. If paul had taken that attitude 7 years ago this board wouldn't exist. Maybe we will fail but don't condemn us before we even get started. A little support sure does go a long way.

I didn't suggest you do anything, all I am saying is think about it as a possible contributing factor. The fact that many of you come here to help despite not using Mandriva is certainly extremely admirable, but i think it is a bit naive to imagine that newcomers will appreciate that point. A lot of newcomers would believe that if a lot of the experienced members of MUB are not themselves using Mandriva then it can't really be any good so they drop it and go Ubuntu or wharever.

I appreciate the point of offered help posts by non Mandriva users, but then I have been coming here for quite some time as you well know. Despite my Mandriva problems from time to time, I still stay true and only come to MUB for help.

MUB is still the best help forum there is, as it is, full stop.

Cheers. John.

But this is something I see on the other boards I visit John. On the Gentoo forums mods and admins use other distros and are open about it. The same thing with the Debian forums. It doesn't affect the way I think. I just figure they've moved onto something else. Some people just get tired of using the same distro and want a change. For me I just wanted something more advanced since I'm a cli sort of person. That's why I like Gentoo. It's all cli. That doesn't mean you can't use cli in Mandriva but I just like the more advanced approach in Gentoo because I find it challenging. I still think Mandriva is a great distro and I keep an up to date version installed at all times. I always like to check out the latest versions so I can see what has changed.

Thanks for the compliments about our board.

I don't mean to condemn you, but so far you've failed to respond to any criticism in this thread with anything but "don't be so negative!", and have yet to define a sound purpose or concept for this new forum.

I'm not saying these ideas won't work, but they need more development and some way of dealing with the various issues surrounding. It's easy to say "I'll deal with Arch issues" -- but one person won't be able to solve them all, and I won't always be around. As a result, you get a linuxquestions.org clone. (Personally, I'd just reply to them all with: http://bbs.archlinux.org where they'd get a quicker and better response, and I do that here now)

This board is great. Even if mandriva is going down the drain, there will exist a mandriva community for a long while.

In case you missed it I've repeatedly asked for suggestions as to what users would like to see in the site. I am looking for feedback. I have gotten some that is useful.

As far as a wiki I can set one up. I have a month off from school and my degree is in professional writing so it would be an enjoyable process for me. Plus hopefully others will contribute or at least offer suggestions about topics in a wiki.

JonEberger mentioned OpenSolaris and FreeBSD. Those can definitely be included. arctic mentioned other technology like Digital Photography, Hi-Fi Equipment, Mp3 players and cell phones. If those are topics that people would find interesting we could have a section devoted to those areas.

right you lot:

everybody hush while the big dog talks ....

When we forked off from (what ever the hell the forum was called) we had maybe 10 supporters, and look at where we have thus far?

Whether or not any of you guys want to join in is irrelevant.
It's a project that Mysti wants to do.
It's a project that I am MORE than willing to support.

Mysti's sole purpose for this thread was to gather ideas from a linux using community, about how they think they could improve "General linux support websites"

If this project fails, you cynics can happily rock back in your chairs, and bring the "I told you so's"

But at this point ... Mysti is certainly not interested in hearing anything other than :
ideas from a linux using community, about how they think they could improve "General linux support websites"


.
.
.

woof !

No one here is interested in seeing it fail, nor are we interested in saying "I told you so". That's what seems to be missed. Our (I think iph and I are the main "cynics", I guess) points are intended to help. You can reject them and go on your marry way...or you can consider them seriously and likely improve the chances of this thing getting off the ground. Choice is yours (or, mysti's, I suppose).

I don't particularly care, it seems my input isn't needed, or at the very least isn't wanted.

tyme, it's not my intention and I'm sure it wasn't paul's to make you think your contributions weren't valuable. I realize you tried something similar with your own board and are trying to lend some insight and I appreciate that. As far as iphitus goes, he's just basically saying it's a bad idea and that it's going to fail and there's no way it can be interpreted any other way. That just isn't helpful. That said we're going to do this project one way or the other and if it works that's great. If it doesn't at least we tried.

this has strayed off topic eh?

So lets get back to the suggestions.

Do people have things they would like see?
Do people have things they would like removed?

I would like to see tyme in a dress.

No, for real...I know there's an HCL, but it would be nice if we had a user-contributable list of specific hardware and whether or not it works with Linux and what they had to do to get it to work with whatever distro.

No.

I like that idea. Wikipedia-style hardware list, "this has a linux driver", how to get it to work, general info on what distro's include the drivers/etc.

I third the hardware thing. It's good to get feedback. It would be good for all to contribute to it, since we all don't have each others hardware. But it can give a rough idea, since a lot of hardware has similar setups - laptops with ipw wireless cards - that work in some but not in others - but should be able to work across all - in theory.

I'd support the hardware list and contribute to it.

I don't think you should diversify too much. If you have all topics Linux, Photography, Windows ( ) or any other topic it's likely to take up a lot of time to mod should there be an obscene amount of users. Topics won't get seen because of so many posts being posted, that they'll look like they disappear into oblivion! You'll post, and by the time you refresh, it's on page 2 or page 3.

I think it needs to be focussed on a topic in particular and not try to be an all-in-one forum for anything you can think of. Of course, you can always ignore my opinion if you like. I'm not being negative, just realistic.

Regarding the hardware list... google "linux hardware compatibility list". They've got significant problems with remaining up to date as well. I still see people say that hardware is unsupported when there's a native driver. Additionally, most questions about hardware support are current pieces of hardware, and these tend to take a while to make it onto HCLs.


I said those suggestions as stated probably wouldn't go great. I didn't say that it couldnt be interpreted another way or implemented differently.

Just like marketing a product... we need to find some way to be different from existing attempts. Simply making yet another multi distro forum alike LQ won't guarantee success. People only see the successes, and assume if you emulate that, success will come. It's not so. There's heaps of forums that never make it off the ground.

I don't mean to be a cold shower, but something has to be done differently to gain a reasonable membership - embedding flash video won't be enough.

The hardware compatability list is definitely a good idea Steve. That and some of the one's from ilia_kr would definitely work. But aside from that if you think I shouldn't diversify too much I need other topics that would help create a unique board. Sorry if I'm making your brains hurt.

Very selfish suggestion :
I'd love to see a place where I can get help about audio and video processing in Linux:
- the concepts / the meaning of all those filters in mencoder…
- answers to miscellanous questions I have about the audio track processing…

Yves.

I think that would fit Yves.

My two cents (actually with the economy...my 5 cents):
There may be a loss of members to other distros, but they will come back (hopefully). I have been off into other distros and have come back to Mandriva repeatedly because IT works!! Wireless with Netgear is flawless and painless. Updates work and only my stupid mistakes break anything. I guess the biggest issue with Linux is the vast array of choices that are available.

New board input:
I have read the input from others and I kinda agree that a board that is geared toward useage of applications, availability and that sort of thing would be more useful.

Better support? I come here first!

In closing, I would be interested in any board that provides useful info.

Best of Luck,\
Randy3011