[tdf-discuss] Re: Forums... again

See, I learned about this "forum" (it isn't really a forum, it's something
concocted out of mailing lists to sort of resemble a real forum) by accident
one month ago, from a 
http://blog.documentfoundation.org/2011/03/17/flattr-us/ blog comment by
Florian Effenberger . My suggestion to advertise the existence of this
Nabble widely has gone unheeded. Honi soit qui mal y pense.

A week ago I 
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/I-am-downloading-LibreOffice-to-try-it-out-td2790818i20.html#a2802923
suggested  that talks be opened about collaboration with the 
http://user.services.openoffice.org/en/forum/ premier volunteer OpenOffice
forum . There was only one unfavorable response, otherwise silence.

So, how are the hundreds of thousands of LibreOffice users going to get
assistance for their urgent questions? Please don't tell me "mailing lists",
that's a laugh. The numbers tell the story: 2629 topics in "Dev", 802 topics
in "Users".

I have been posting comments here for a month, engaging in some discussions,
because I want to learn about open source in general, open-source office
software, efforts to combat anti-competitive practices, and who the people
deeply involved are and how they act.

My impressions are decidedly mixed. It doesn't appear to be about the users
first and foremost. The few users who manage to find their way here aren't
always served well. I've seen answers that are "out in left field", i.e.,
unconnected to the question, or no answers at all. 
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/Writer-Problem-with-modern-typefaces-having-more-than-the-standard-styles-td2794737.html
This person  is still waiting for an answer to a question asked nearly two
weeks ago, already containing a detailed description of the problem and
links to bug reports etc.

I keep hearing "freedom", but is it about the freedom of users from being
locked into a proprietary file format... or the freedom of unattached
software developers to get their patches committed? Do people here really
believe that a "community" of unpaid enthusiasts can take the place of a
major corporation, or several, putting dozens of experienced professional
developers to work Monday thru Friday, month after month? If so, it's a pipe
dream!

Coming back to the call for a forum, why not let the users decide how they
would prefer to ask for assistance? Put up a banner on all your websites
advertising a poll and give the options:

(1) Create new forum from scratch
(2) Join forces with http://www.oooforum.org/
(3) Join forces with http://user.services.openoffice.org/
(4) Mailing lists
(5) ...
(6) ...
(7) ...
(8) ...

Let the poll run for a month and then implement the top one or two
vote-getters.

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