Brave new world

Question

the atmosphäre in this forums is not that good as it was some years ago ...
... it takes more time to read the forums and stay informed
... because there are more "you're stupid! <-> no you are!" discussions around
the consequence i'm taking:
untill now i read the forums and tried to help anyone i see with a problem i know (or may guess) a solution. tihs also others did and our community was one of the most friendly around. people spoke around that archers are friendly, fast and competent.
for the next few weeks i will go on distance and use the forum only for my own purposes (e.g. searching for informations) ... then, i will check if the atmosphäre changed to better and if not, i will continue untill unknown ignoring this forums.
what this means for you:
- if you have an interesting PKGBUILD that i might have seen in the forums but didn't because i'm not any more reading the forums, feel free to contact me per email ... especially if these pkgs have to do something about multimedia or science i'm interested in them
- if you have information/kriticism/feedback for any of my pkgs, contact me per email (discussions about amarok or other pkgs that i may miss in the forums ++)
- if you need help about linux and archlinux, you run into a problem or what ever, i hope that there are still enough contributors in this forums to answer your questions. if not (as if the atmosphäre is bad, people will stop spending time in it) then you should think about starting to make the atmospäre better by stopping destructive and unproductive discussions in the roots by explaining the poster (pm or reply to post) that this is not the place for flame or hoax or destructive messages (oppinions are not destructive, as long as they are not against people - they may be against actions people did but they should not be against people per se)
this subject is discussed in other threads ...
... what i see as a bad solution is adding more mods: the reason: if you have more mods you are not doing prevention but trying to keep the illness under control. this strategy never worked and never will ... it is almost a natural law ... e.g. in the usa, everybody has a gun and there are a lot of police and i-don-t-know-what per number of citisens but the problem is not solved (instead the jails are full) ... also it is wrong that citisen do self-justice. the key (european way, canadian way, ...) is prevention by acting as a healthy community (i heared that in canada people do not walk around with guns and are in general more friendly to others). what i mean is difficult to explain: ... but on examples it may be possible:
- if you see a destructive post ("arch is bad" - "arch devs are  ..." ...) where you think that this may end in a bad way, post your observance in this post asking the person who started it what the intention was. in off-topic, you may have "fun" as intention but if it is mischievousness and not fun for all people involved, then it is no fun. use common sense do decide! then, if this person is reasonable, the community then can turn such discussions into productive discussions. if not, pm a mod for help (but not before). --- maybe this is the wrong way, but having 100 mods does not help, that i will guarantee you!
good luck turning this forum back to productivity!
Damir
[email protected]
PS
i continued to write on the "survival guide to (arch)linux" and as soon as some chapters are usable, i will put it online.
because i don't want any discussion around this thread to start, i will lock it - do NOT unlock or delete it, please! thank you!

Answer 1

I'm going to just put my 2 cents here..fork it to a new thread if need be.
Essentially, I agree with dp, and observed the same over a much longer course of time. Since December,  I have been bogged down with various work, and was not able to read these forums as often as I usually do, and also not able to do the usual things I do relating to Arch. When I returned to the scene in earnest a few weeks ago, I found something entirly different from what I had left behind. What I found was pretty much what dp describes, and for a while, it really disappointed me, and it still does for that matter.
What I am finding is that there are many threads still here that have been answered in a wiki or docs or google, so in part, it is the poster's fault for not looking in all the obvious places first. Also in part, it is the responder's fault for responding in ways that are not appropriate for maintaining the friendly, efficient, environment we have here. Yet another factor contributing to the problem is, yes, the moderators. I feel that hastily locking flame threads is perhaps not the right option, instead let the fire run out of fuel thouroughly, PM the parties involved letting them know that they are out of bounds, and when the fire dies down, quietly delete the thread so it doesn't leave pollution in our forums. Of course, this needs to be limited to reasonable cases, obviously 8 or 9 pages worth of flame is overkill in any situation and should be brought under control, but I think the smaller fires should be allowed to extinguish themselves as I described.
We need to find a *new* (I don't like any existing solutions that I've seen) and innovative way to balance these various factors and deal with the new (and old) members of our community.
One suggestion that I saw and, with some thought, agree with, would be making it so that there is one portion of the forums where everyone with <X posts may post, they cannot post anywhere else. X would ideally be a medium sized number, I'm thinking 50-75. Or maybe even tier it like 0-20 in one section 20-50, then 50-150 and 150+ would have access to all. I think this approach has a number of advantages as far as controlling the evolution of the forum community in that it provides a slower transition from newcomer to "old-timer" and so as new people come, they get to slowly adjust into the existing arch culture rather than getting thrown right into it, and disturbing the appearantly delicate balance that exists within it. Basically, the idea works a bit like lane lines in a pool do against ripples on the water. Tossing a stone into one lane will disturb the water such that the lane line may bob, and so the other lane is slightly effected, but the largest ripples won't reach any other lanes but the one you tossed the rock into. And the further lanes will get even less, maybe no effects.
Just my thoughts on isolating or containing the turbulent waters that have recently been seen on these forums.