On Sun, May 20, 2007 at 11:57:42AM +1000, Ben Finney wrote: > Joey is, I believe, referring to a healthy level of off-topic > discussions on *any* list, not to creating a specific area for > "off-topic" messages. For the messages to be "social lubricant", they > need to be *interspersed* with the on-topic discussions in a way that > doesn't detract from the discussions.
I already answered this on d-u, but I was misunderstood so I'll try again. 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. 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". Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)
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