Strange to say, I only recently bumped into the LibreOffice users’ forum. I guess I went wherever a web-search took me when I was looking for help back in Feb 2012 (when I signed up here).
I have found one brief Q&A on the relationship between AskLibO and the forum. I take it they are just different forms of support/community. Is there any kind of official, quasi-official, or stated pragmatic relationship between them?
Just curious!
Indeed another one. And the normal LibO loggin does not work. New registration is needed. I will stay here. Just too many.
@Kunjomachen – As far as I know, “The forum module on the website is meant for
user-registration/user-profile management”, see here, and here.
LibreOfficeForum.org has been launched by “Sam/sb73542” as an independent LibreOffice user forum. [1][2]
There’s no “official, quasi-official, or stated pragmatic relationship between them” (AskLibO/TDF, LibreOfficeForum.org).
There have been several discussions about “forums” on the LibreOffice mailing lists, in 2011 [3][4], and in 2012 [5][6][7]. This wiki page [8] is meant to collect all information regarding the planning of launching a forum.
1 Sam’s posts in Document Foundation Mail Archive
2 sb73542’s posts in Document Foundation Mail Archive
3 How will the forum be organized?
4 On forums for LibreOffice
5 Forums?
6 LibreOffice Forums Categories Proposal
7 LibreOffice Forums Planning update
8 Forum-planning
That seems to cover it! Thanks, @manj_k. From what I can gather, this is the most active “official” LO support community. The independent user forum has got a fair bit of traction in the meanwhile, from the look of it. Diversity of options is good, fragmentation is bad (which reminds of of this post I saw today.)
@dajare, I am a moderator over on the other forum. I feel each has its dis/advantages. The Q&A format is good for specific technical issues, but it is not as well suited to more complex / difficult issues IMO. I am concerned about how the Q&A format will age, in terms of the relevance of prior answers, although to be fair this is an issue for any forum.
@oweng - I suppose the other thing difficult (not impossible) in the Q&A format is discussion. Obviously it can happen (in comments, as we are now), but by design such “commentary” is very much secondary – and somewhat hidden – in the Q&A format, while it is central to a forum. Space for both, I reckon, although proliferation of sites seems counter-productive at the moment. Does TDF have a view on the ‘other forum’?
@dajare, I think @qubit1 made a point about the secondary nature of comments at one point, but I can’t find it at present. There is also the difficulty with the treatment of questions. Over at Stack Overflow (and other Stack Exchange sites) they are fairly demanding of what is on topic and the types of questions to avoid. I think for LO we need to be a bit more open, which ironically makes it more difficult.
