Unofficial GnuCash Forum

[Geert Janssens]

On Friday 23 January 2015 04:26:13 YeOldHinnerk wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> well, I've used both and have to admit, I much prefer the forum. Why?
> 
> - When I need help, I go to a well fitting forum and ask. I will
> receive notifications when someone answers, anyone who googles this
> issue finds my question - and if everyone is ignoring my problem I'll
> notice even that, as I can see, how often the issue was even looked
> at.
> 
> - I get all the posts from the mailing list and they are immediately
> moved to their folder. Most of it is, from my very personal point of
> view, just noise. I don't like receiving mails about issues I don't
> care about. I understand that this is different for developers.
> Again, in a forum, I just casually ignore other threads.
> 
> - Forums groups topics properly. This would make good sense for
> Gnucash as well. Have one subforum for GUI, one for buisness, one for
> budgets,... also trouble with the latest version would be in one
> place and also if they are fixed.
> 
> I also agree to the distincition of place where users are and types of
> help. I think really, that many people are unable to get help, since
> the don't even know what a mailing list is. And it doesn't help, that
> one considers mailing list superior, if you have a much more limited
> outreach.
> 
> Unfortuneatly I don't have much hope for a forum, the resistence from
> the people who are most competent with Gnucash is just too high.

I'm not really against a forum as such. And I can understand your point 
of view. My preference for mailing list or forum is largely biased by my 
level of involvement/commitment I have towards a certain community. So I 
can understand some people would prefer a forum for gnucash as well.

Clearly as a developer I'm very much involved in gnucash ;) In this 
context I prefer the mailing list for gnucash. And as you point out most 
of the people that actively offer support tend to prefer to communicate 
via a mailing list.

The thing is that the active support community for gnucash is relatively 
small. You can see the same names over and over when answering 
questions. Sidenote: thanks to all of you who do so ! You make our 
community worth its name.

Given the small group of people giving support my worry is that setting 
up a forum independent of the mailing list (be it under the gnucash 
umbrella or by an external volunteer) will result in either of two 
things:
- the forum won't attract enough experienced people able to answer the 
questions asked there. For me personally time constraints will not allow 
me to monitor both a mailing list and a forum. So I would rarely visit 
the forum if it existed.

- the support community gets fragmented with each fraction getting less 
support.

That's why I would very much like to see a solution that integrates both 
and mailman 3 with hyperkitty was a first suggestion. I can't tell if 
it's a good solution yet though.

In all I am open for a fair experiment.

Geert