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Wireshark-users: Re: [Wireshark-users] What about a Wireshark forum?

From: "Chris Swinney" <swin@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Fri, 6 Oct 2006 10:34:20 +0100
There is obviously a case for and against both mail lists and forums.

Over the years, I have personally used many forms of electronic
communication from text based to web based, CLI to GUI. I personally
prefer a web based GUI were a collection of related queries and
discussion can be searched instantly with answers retrieved without the
need to re-post, or subject areas can be browsed at leisure. 

I also believe that new users will find a web based forum more
accessible and I do not think that the more technically able should NOT
differentiate themselves in a kind of "I can do this, you can't - Nah Na
Na Nah Nah" attitude.

However, for some the mailing list is preferable as they clearly know
how to extract the relevant information quickly and efficiently. For
others it is essential as they may not have access to browser based
computers. 

The WiKi has been mentioned and although this is an excellent resource
of information, I do not believe this is the place to start posting
endless queries. It should remain a place were facts and tips can be
obtained about the product.

Cleary some kind of link between a mailing list and forum would need to
be established so that users could post to either using their preferred
method and responses would be open to all. 

So any idea?

 
Thanks,
 
Chris

-----Original Message-----
From: Joerg Mayer [mailto:jmayer@xxxxxxxxx] 
Sent: 05 October 2006 16:15
To: Community support list for Wireshark
Subject: Re: [Wireshark-users] What about a Wireshark forum?

On Tue, Oct 03, 2006 at 08:47:46AM -0600, Jeff Sadowski wrote:
> I really see no difference to email  I click on a link just as if I
read my
> email.

Well, there is the central point why you don't understand the mail
users: Some of us DON'T click. No mouse interaction required at all to
read mail. Also, with my mailreader I can configure how I want my mails
to be sorted (by date, by thread, ...). With a forum the forum software
decides how things will look at the users machine, and using just a text
interface, forums are sort of inconvenient to read.

> >"No, they are not. Get a good mail client. I handle a couple of
hundred
> >mails a day. How I handle that much mail? Well my client supports
> >sorting, scoring and threading so it's no big problem. If I'm not
> >interested in a discussion I just press one key and it's marked as
> >read. If I don't want to read about a specific topic I just hit a
couple
> >of keys and I'll never read it a again. I've never seen this features
in
> >a web based forum."
> 
> 
> That would be a good idea for a forum individual prefferences on what
to
> ignore. Also maybe some sort of grouping of topics like a similar
topic
> frame hmm.
> 
> gmail supports quite a bit of options and I could also use it through
any
> mail client I desire I really don't care infact I recently switched
from
> yahoo to gmail and I like gmails defacto web interface a lot so far.

I don't read mails via a web interface if I can avoid it - its a *major*
inconvenience.

> >You can do that before sending a mail message, too.  Or do you mean
you
> >can *retroactively* edit one of your postings?
> 
> retroactive like in fedoraforum.org you can edit your own postings at
> anytime unless it is locked by a moderator.
> fix words so that it is less irritating for other readers. I make a
lot of
> grammatic mistakes and reading what i write can be difficult I can't
always
> catch it before I type the send button.

Well, how about checking *before* sending a mail? How about using a
spell checker or something similar? Btw, spending time on a typo is a
wast of time. If something is of "permanent" interest, please write a
wiki entry for it. Wiki has a web interface so if you like to use web
interfaces, just go to wiki.wireshark.org and find a good place where to
permanently store that interesting piece of information. Not only that,
but if your wiki entry is interesting, others may enhance it - and
that's something you can't do with interesting forum posts.

 Ciao
     Joerg
-- 
Joerg Mayer                                           <jmayer@xxxxxxxxx>
We are stuck with technology when what we really want is just stuff that
works. Some say that should read Microsoft instead of technology.