Re: [gNewSense-users] Web Forum: Do it or Remove it

[Brian Greer]

Ali Gunduz wrote:
> Yes, it's me and the topic is the gNewSense web forum, again :-)
> Though, I'm not rallying for an Enhanced Mega Ultra Forum 3000 this
> time, but I'd like to draw your attention for a more basic issue.

I share your frustrations, and would like to see a web forum come to 
fruition, but I have to ask myself some hypothetical questions since 
a web-forum would become hugely visible and cached by search engines.

1) How would the forum handle the political education to newcomers? 
 Would we just point questions to existing stickies, wiki's, or the 
FSF pages directly to ensure correctness?  Or would there be a 
subforum to deal with this information that would be largely 
redundant?  Would there be the need for moderators skilled in 
diplomacy to handle the inevitable errors with tact to put our best 
foot forward?  *I* certainly don't have enough knowledge to answer 
all the questions correctly.

2) What code-of-conduct would we follow?  Would following Ubuntu's 
COC be sufficient, or something else?  I think it would be tempting 
for some to think that just anyone posting in the forum is a 
qualified FSF spokesman.

3) How would we handle posts that link to non-free repositories, or 
other ways that dilute the purpose of gNewSense?  I could see that 
issue becoming a pandora's box.

Ideally I'd like to let the developers concentrate on developing and 
improving gNewSense without having to worry about these kinds of 
issues - so if it were to happen, I think a LOT of infrastructure 
would have to be in place first.

You gave me a lot to think about hypothetically, that's for sure. :)