[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Andrei Popescu) writes: > IMHO forcing people to take off-topic discussions out of the forum > (read Debian community) is not good. Debian is based on volunteers > and for some contributors (yes, answering questions is also a way of > contributing, so you - the DDs - don't have to do this here) the > community might be the thing that keeps them here rather then some > other project or FOSS in general.
This ignores the repellent effect of allowing those rampant off-topic threads to continue. There are an unknown number of possible contributors that stay away precisely because of the noise level. > As a side note I must say that I have been a member of a volunteer > organization for 11 years and I have seen a bit of the dynamic > involved in such a group. The best "contributors" were mostly the > same persons participating in "off-topic" activities, but still > organized within the "community". In my experience, allowing noise anywhere near the level demonstrated by Joey's initial post in this thread is far more harmful than losing the few high-volume "contributors". The gain comes from people who don't feel overwhelmed by the noise and see the direct benefit of on-topic contributions. -- \ "If you ever teach a yodeling class, probably the hardest thing | `\ is to keep the students from just trying to yodel right off. | _o__) You see, we build to that." -- Jack Handey | Ben Finney -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
