Re: [rock-user] ROCK's visibility could be increased with little effort...-0s5z/[email protected]

Thanks for the discussion. I accept that
- it is good to have everything about ROCK in one place
- ROCK people prefer mailing lists over (web-based) forums
- ROCK is not (yet) meant to be used by ordinary people (end-users).

In fact, these are all good arguments, that I can't deny. However, I was 
only talking about the users list. I haven't checked if it would 
technically be possible to have a mailing list synchronized with an LQ 
forum, which would be a solution potentially satisfying everyone. A good 
example of what I am talking of is the PostgreSQL project: Every message 
  going to the mailing list is instantaneously forwarded to the 
newsgroup and vice versa, so that they are always in sync.

My idea, however, was that
- LQ is growing and growing, and lots of people come by, and if ROCK was 
listed there, a few people might just accidently or for curiosity click 
on the link and get hooked by ROCK (Guerilla marketing).
- Compared to other forum portals, LQ has gained remarkable reputation, 
and that's why it has become so big over the last five years; in terms 
of quality it would be a place where ROCK just would fit.
- I hate the request/response cycle of web-based applications like 
anyone else, but LQ is pretty fast (thanks to its puristic layout).
- There are already some other non-end-user distros present at LQ: Arch, 
Gentoo, Linux From Scratch and some more.

As I said, your arguments are convincing, to a degree. But they would 
essentially hold for several other distributions, the 
maintainers/communities of which decided to move to LQ nevertheless. Eg, 
Gentoo has moved there, which has certainly helped instead of hindered 
to increase its popularity.

In my opinion, ROCK would deserve higher visibility. But I tend to think 
that it is not going to happen unless it steps out of its very own 
"Elfenbein" tower.

Several people got interested in Gentoo, just because they saw it at LQ.

Finally, to answer your questions: LQ is sponsored by some companies, 
but the forums are moderated by responsibles of the respective 
distributions. Eg, the SuSE forum is moderated by Novell staff, the 
Debian forum by Debian people (whoever selected them). The main sponsor 
is Slackware Inc. And then, yes, there are ads. But they are placed 
user-friendly. I normally don't feel bothered by them. Running such a 
portal costs money, and ads and sponsoring and donations are the 
channels over which LQ is collecting that money. AFAIK, LQ is a 
not-for-profit organisation, but I haven't checked that --- it's a .org 
domain, at least. Jeremy, the LQ founder, will certainly answer you any 
questions of this type with great patience.

As I said, I can't deny, that all your arguments are very good. But on 
the other hand, it is a pity, that so few people know of ROCK's 
existence. It is a fact that if you say "source based" or "distribution 
build kit", most people will think "Gentoo". I believe this could be 
changed.

Best wishes

    Alex


Benjamin Schieder wrote:
>>What about moving the mailing list to LinuxQuestions.org?
> 
> AFAICT LinuxQuestions.org is only a webbased bulletin board, no?
> That is neither what mailing lists are for nor even practical. The concept
> of a http-only communication method is inherently flawed in that
> most people don't like to hit <reload page> every five minutes to check
> for answers (pull method).
> OTOH, a mailinglist or newsgroup (like gmane.org) brings the information
> to you (push method) and your MUA or newsreader can tell you about it
> comfortably.
> 
> Thanks for the idea, but I'm afraid it's incompatible with the people
> currently actively working on ROCK.
> 
> Greetings,
> 	Benjamin
> 
> 
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