Of course what this topic is about is not technical merit or technical delivery. It about the emotional attachment people have to how they wish to locarte and organise their data. I can think of several cases amongst the community where people have expressed preferences for Email over IRC, Web Forum over Email, IRC over Web Forum and Web Forum over Instant Messenging. We a group of very smart individuals who are good at finding ways to get information from one place to another to be acted upon. So its not suprising that we all have a "preferred" mechanism by which we like to share and cogregate.
Whats interesting is how we treat inclusion, permission and responsiblity. There is nothing stopping anyone from creating a web forum and then promoting it as part of the community. Just like there is nothing stopping anyone from writting a new application and promoting it. it is the people and their commitment to a platform that defines the success or death of a particular medium for sharing information. How simple it is to become included and be involved is one factor that determines this . Once within this community an ability to contribute to new ideas and to promote certain agendas or concepts by being given permission from the group to speak and be responded to will ensure that the community can create growth and generate new avenues of communication and activity. Finally who ensures that this community is maintained, monitored and provisioned to enable the above will be responsible for shaping and directing that community. If anyone wants an online forum, or IRC or even Chat list then they can take responsibility for creating the environment, enabling people to join and allowing them to access it. Technically nothing is stopping anyone from achieving this. Whether it becomes a thriving community or barren postland will be down to the people who can become involved. In general thuogh I believe people tend towards people and in the case of the Ubuntu-UK team we ( as a larger part of the mail list ) seem to prefer mail llists and wikis. Let me conclude by offering this thought. Open Source software development is as much about Peer approval as it is scratching some itch. No developer of a OSS project ever stopped to ask the community if they wanted it, or if they should be doing it, they went ahead and created it , released it and then waited for others to come to it. Why should we treat any other aspect of our community any differently ? Thanks for reading. -- ubuntu-uk@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-uk https://wiki.kubuntu.org/UKTeam/
