Cf. LibreOfficeForum.org is Shutting Down (View topic) • Apache OpenOffice Community Forum
Hmm, it looks like none of people answering the question realize that: this site is a clone of thriving stackoverflow/stackexchange. I think for this self-moderated etc design to work well the site needs a large and active community.
I suppose that it wasn’t intended as a forum, because perhaps the people who started it didn’t or don’t like forums.
It’s a mess. It’s dysfunctional.
[Start rant]It relies on the visitors to moderate it, but they don’t. It relies on people who ask questions to accept helpful answers, and they don’t. They may take the trouble to post “thank you”. It relies on people to vote good questions and answers, and they don’t. Worst of all: if you want to be useful here as a stand-by moderator, you need lots of karma, that you only get by getting votes and accepted answers, so you have to wait forever to get there. They post questions or answers as wiki, so they don’t get any karma for it, so they can’t vote things up if they wanted to. They don’t read the rules, so they keep posting bug reports and enhancement requests. You can’t get a system to get e-mails when a topic that you are active in gets a reply or comment to work, so you have to sign in again and again to see if your question was answered. On top of all that you can’t message a moderator, or anybody else, for that matter. [end rant]
In short: it looks like the people who started this didn’t want it to survive or be any good.
@anon87010807: I have lots of karma (presently rank 11). This does not mean that I know anything about this site I would need to act as a moderator or as an administrator.
Just inspected the top 20 (by karma) users, some of them obviously retired or no longer contributing frequently. Exactly three of the 20 are labelled other than Registered User
@manj_k: Administrator Last seen 2014-12-01
@qubit1; Moderator Last seen 2015-10-31
@cloph:Administrator Last seen 46h agoIt’s lack of consistency. For example: no matter how much we all sympathize with problems presented in this question - it should be closed. From what I see, this site doesn’t get more then ten question per day. It’s manageable if coordination is good.
@Kruno perhaps the fact that this site only gets ten questions per day is related with how bad the whole board is: making things better could possibly increase not only traffic, but also user satisfaction.
@Kruno: Objection concerning the “request for close”.
I am well aware that whatever is posted under this topic disguised as a question will not improve things. I would, however, like to be able to point to a collection of comments by engaged and knowledgeable users demonstrating that my opinion not is just for querulosness.
I am actually concerned about the future of the OpenDocument concept and the related free software as a whole.
I know what you mean. This format is suitable for professionals not broad audience. You can’t expect that one who ask how to insert footnote, will upvote or mark question as answered. That’s on veteran users to upvote, mark question solved and so on. This is only place where regular users can ask for help. Mailing list is so out of the question in that regard.
We are not against this place, we are against the poor quality, which makes it very hard to step in to help out when the moderators apparently don’t have enough time to accept answers, close topics and the like. And we discuss that here because, where else can we do it? If we were against it, we would ignore it.
I know you can close questions and such - let’s take this weekend and clean last two months? Close what should be closed and accept what should have been accepted?
Now and then questioners are rather productive. In the chosen format it is very unhandy to audit the new questions. Often questions still unanswered scroll out of sight and may remain unnoticed by those who are capable of giving an answer.
I cannot understand this animosity concerning structure. We have not a forum here, but a digitalised version of “bits of paper everywhere”.
Did you compare the site I linked into my OQ? It is not short of this ask site with any respects, but clearly superior to it with many.
By the way: Despite the fact that the other site was labelled “Apache OpenOffice” once, it is ready to also take questions concerning LibO. The added text “User community support forum for Apache OpenOffice, LibreOffice and all the OpenOffice.org derivatives” there may easily be unnoticed being white in light blue.
I don’t have anything to object. This site has some rough edges and I wonder who do we need poke about that? Because if this site is (largely) unmaintained - we are barking at the wrong tree. On the other hand, I really like how things are done at stackexchange. Solid question results with solid answer which is very easy to google up.
Those who decided to organise this site the way it is, will well have known their intentions.
However I posted this question not just out of frustration, but hoping to get some relevant opinions from this “fake” discussion.
Did you actually visit the site I linked at the beginning? Or did you actually know the late libreofficeforum.org site? Good structure IMO. And forum.openoffice.org is ready to some degree to welcome users creating topics related to LibO.
This Ask format has so many shortcomings it is absurd that it has been implemented. No segregation of topics, so one has to weed through everything to find his interest. Can’t see the identity of the original poster or date of posting. Comments don’t promote the topic. Complicated voting system. Notifications do not work. Limitations on number and length of answers and comments. Add to that a sluggish server, and you have a real mess.
Many other aspects of the LO site aren’t much better, including the need for three different logins to access all aspects of the site, one of which at last check is not operational.
By way of contrast, the OOo forum is set up and operates beautifully, though it gets little traffic now. This Ask format was supposed to be an improvement?
Perhaps LO needs a sugar daddy to finance its way out of the woods. I hope its not bureaucratic inertia or administrative stubbornness that is holding it back.
Quoting floris v:
In short: it looks like the people who started this didn’t want it to survive or be any good.
In fact, if you browse the MLs beginnings (I think it was on the “discuss” ML, on 2011) you’ll notice how hostile many TDF/LibO people were to the idea of a proper forum: I’ll not provide links because the sole idea of rereading those threads still gives me stomachache, but between the creation of the TDF/LibO and the move of OOo to the Apache foundation, the Forum’s future was uncertain so some people (like, for example, me) attempted to “talk” to the LibO crew… the answers at the time were so absurd that it was quite obvious that some people on LibO really hates forums. Or at least the Community Forums, who knows!
At the time I’ve said that a discussion board is as good as the people using it, but seeing how bad this “ask” system is I must retract from that idea: at least some boards are so badly implemented that they can be a heavy load on people trying to answer, and ask.libreoffice is a clear example of that.
There used to be a LibreOffice forum. See http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LibreOfficeForum-org-shutting-down-volunteers-to-work-on-a-static-copy-td4185148.html. for more information.
The actual site was at http://en.libreofficeforum.org. … Peter
Yes. It’s a pity. That was actually a forum, and IMO, better than this site under every relevant aspect, included getting answers to simple questions.
TDF should better not have considered (too late) a bit of support for archiving a dead forum, but creating a real forum of their own in the beginning. Regarding this very point the OO community is miles ahead,
There is a simple answer to this:
Make innovation count: Discourse (https://meta.discourse.org/)
And put it at your best service!
Progress is about Darwinism and Darwinism is about survival. Embrace survival!