[Ilugc] Creating a facebook group for ilugc
- From: sankarshan.mukhopadhyay@xxxxxxxxx (Sankarshan Mukhopadhyay)
- Date: Mon, 16 Sep 2013 12:51:06 +0530
On Sun, Sep 15, 2013 at 11:32 PM, Shrinivasan T <tshrinivasan at gmail.com>
wrote:
1. Many ILUGC members have fear on posting to mailing list. They have told
many times to me in person. They may have to learn many guidelines. They
feel that facebook has no guidelines.
I see a few issues interlinked.
New participants in Free and Open Source Software are in a way getting
drawn into specialized niches. As an explanation, there are enough
programming language specific groups/sub-groups where a new
participant finds interesting issues to dive into or, ask.
Facebook/G+ are gradually making a move to be the "one single page"
for any user. By which I mean that irrespective of the hardware
platform being used (desktop, mobile), the social networks tend to be
the firehose of information (and, sometimes of discussion)
Requiring to learn guidelines to undertake an activity should not be
the cause for fear. A lot of activities that one does eg, driving a
car, operating a machinery, buying/selling goods/products, creating
software applications/services need the operator to be aware of
guidelines and instructions. At some point I fear that "the mailing
list guidelines are too rigid" is a very easy throwaway excuse. Having
being around long enough to have seen (and, be the recipient of)
various mailing list guidelines hammers, I can safely say that the
user group lists are far more welcome and tolerant. In fact, they go
out of their way to help an individual learn how to clearly articulate
their issues. It is indeed the case that English may not be the
language we are most proficient in, however, it is the language that
is most used when communicating on various platforms. To be able to
acquire skills to communicate virtually is not something that is a
cheap skill of no obvious use.
Having said all of the above, I would request that you consider
different platforms like Askbot for example, instead of having the
content locked into a FB/G+ group. There will be some content
generated and, having forums where a structured Q&A is possible
ensures that the new participants can also feel encouraged to become
regular contributors.
--
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<
https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>
Other related posts: