Re: The Gramps Discourse forum needs members.

Having spent many decades both using and developing Open Source software,
I'm familiar with both points of view.

I well understand the desire for more community engagement. Without it, we
sometimes don't know if anybody is paying attention. Also, it's frustrating
when the only feedback we get is negative. I also understand that it
requires time and effort to be "present" on multiple user channels.

On the other hand, I too have felt the frustration of being forced to use
an "official" channel (Slack in this case), which I don't particularly
like, in order to engage with a community. It just puts another obstacle in
the way of those who want to engage.

It seems to me that mature software projects ought to offer multiple
channels and respond to all of them. Some of us like mailing lists,
possibly a generational thing. :-) Of course, they have limitations, but
you can probably trust your users to discover them and decide to use the
forum when they have an actual need.

BTW, I'm a lurker here myself. Lurking is a long-standing practice and
shouldn't be discouraged as it's how people often decide whether to use the
software. In my case, I'm lurking while I wait to have time to really try
Gramps. I've already installed it twice but not used it. :-( At some point,
I'll no doubt post questions either here or on DIscourse and I hope you'll
you answer them where I am, not send me where you want me to be.

Charlie





On Mon, May 5, 2025 at 9:03 AM Per Starbäck <[email protected]> wrote:

> Emyoulation wrote:
>
> > One of the measures of a software application is the number of registered
> > users in its official forum.
> >
> >
> Is it? And what do you use that measure for? Lots of users who just want to
> use some software without feeling any need to ask questions or engage with
> other people is really a big success. And also I think it can be a mistake
> for free software to think in such terms to begin with. Yes, it's nice if
> users who would be happy with the software find it, but still there's a
> danger in adopting the viewpoint of someone trying to sell a commodity. I
> see it more as a success for example if Gramps is mentioned more often when
> people ask in Genealogy groups about recommendations for software. And as
> for getting announcements of new versions as quickly as possible: Most
> users are not even interested in those announcements.
>
>
> > Right now, the number is far too low for https://gramps.discourse.orgAnd
> > the activity in this mailing list has fallen to almost nothing.
> >
> >
> As for myself I remember that once when I thought of writing some
> non-critical question to the list I didn't do so, because the last couple
> of messages to the list then had all immediately gotten (certainly
> well-meaning) comments saying "you should ask on discord instead". Since I
> have no intentions of joining that I abstained instead (and I don't
> remember now what I was going to write -- that was some time ago).
>
> /signed "satisfied user of Gramps"
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