• (Not) Changing the mailing list culture (Was: Re: How to ask a question

    From Andy Smith@21:1/5 to Greg on Mon Jul 28 17:40:01 2025
    Hi,

    On Mon, Jul 28, 2025 at 02:39:21PM -0000, Greg wrote:
    Every question is non-answered by an intimate clan of aging men with
    toxic attitudes and enormous anal-retention, who believe everyone
    should be using mutt or gnus like them and don't know or give a shit
    about anything else.

    It's really time for a change here.

    I don't think that it's going to be possible to change the culture of established technical mailing lists, nor does it seem likely that
    starting a new technical mailing list would achieve what you want.

    As you know we have had lengthy threads about this before, even this
    month, so I hope I don't need to reiterate why I think this.

    I would encourage you to try some other venues for support. I don't say
    that to be dismissive. I say it because it seems like the only practical
    choice (and it's the choice that I think ~everyone is going to converge
    on). It really depends on what you're looking for.

    I haven't personally looked at https://forums.debian.net/ for a while
    but it seems active.

    For question-answer I'd probably go for Unix & Linux StackExchange:

    https://unix.stackexchange.com/

    but there will be no discourse there, just attempts at answers to
    specific questions.

    If its semi-real-time chat you want, I lack recent experience (my days
    were IRC days). It feels like there are few good solutions for that.

    Matrix is the open source decentralised champion we pin all our hopes
    on, and there are very active Debian Matrix rooms, but I cannot get
    along with that system. I've tried many times.

    The Debian IRC channels on OFTC are active. Though non-official, I'm
    sure there's active Debian channels on Libera IRC.

    Despite it being closed source, I get along with Telegram, and there's
    some good groups on there. The closed source aspect and the fact that
    there is some abhorrent content on the rest of Telegram makes it hard to recommend.

    Discord is probably the most popular chat platform in existence. It has
    a staggering number of users and lots of technical groups. There's
    almost certain to be plenty of choice of Debian content there. I
    absolutely detest its interface, the fact that they don't allow third
    party clients, the whole thing is far too busy with distractions and I
    can't cope with it. Younger people seem to love it. There's even some
    FOSS projects that use it as their main support venue. Baffling to me.

    Is there something between all of those that you are looking for?

    Thanks,
    Andy

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