A 'new' Forum suggestion

Maybe this is 'old news' but I would be very interested in a seperate forum dedicated to linux servers like apache, postfix, exim, proftp, and the list goes on and on...

Linux - Software is the best place for these types of posts.

Originally posted by scuzzman Linux - Software is the best place for these types of posts.

I concur as well. If we broke down and had a forum for everything, it would get really messy and confusing, causing multiple posts, posts in the wrong forum, etc.

Personally, I think that anything that is so general -- "Samba" for instance -- that you are not allowed to search on it deserves its own sub forum. How else am I supposed to find/surf all Samba related threads? (Substitute your pet for "Samba").

I know I could find all the posts w/ a Linux Google of the LQ site:
http://www.google.com/linux?q=site%3...ons.org/+samba
but that currently produces "35,500 English pages", a bit much to wade through one by one.

Even
http://www.google.com/linux?q=site%3...ost+%231%29%22
produces "26,600 English pages". If that really means there are 26,600 Samba threads, isn't that enough to warrant a Samba sub forum in Networking?

WiFi has such a sub forum, yet:
http://www.google.com/linux?&q=site%...22&btnG=Search
produces only "6,220 English pages"!

(Note: My current Google preferences are English only, and that shows up in my results regardless of how I construct the URL's for you.)

Except, what's wrong with Samba?

Don't know anything about it? Post in Linux-General or -Newbie
It's a problem on the Windows end? Post in Networking or in General
Your server isn't doing it right? Post in Networking
Samba is playing up? Post in Networking or Software.

It's not as cut and dried as instituting a new forum. And how many forums would you like to be created? Who would administer them? How do we know it's a Samba problem and not a networking or user problem?

How then, is the decision made to create a new forum or in this case, sub forum?

Why was a WiFi sub forum created? What criteria were applied to it? (Not that I have anything against WiFi.)

As to administration, what besides willing moderators do you need?

It isn't, for me, a question of where to post -- I don't start threads (yet). I am here to learn by observing and better yet learn to teach better by trying to answer questions. As it stands now I can't subscribe to "Samba".

I agree to the problem while I do not necessarily see a clever solution.

Another problem along these lines is that in my opinion too many questions are asked in the distribution-specific forums. I suspect there are a lot of duplicate problems out there where a Slackware user, a Debian user and a SuSE user all have the same mySQL problems and post it in their distribution forum even though the problem is generic for mysql.

As we already have sub-forums for Security and Wireless, maybe a sub-forum for "Services" could be appropriate together with tough mods moving apache, mysql, ldap-etc related questions out of distro-specific forums to a wider audience under Linux?

Clearly not done over night, but at least worth a thought

-Y1

The distribution forums are intended to be sub-communities in their own right. So, if a Fedora user feels that their question would be better answered by their own community, it is right that they post in the Fedora forum.

We don't make sub-forums lightly, the Google search post near the top will be fairly skewed because it could be that there are a handful of threads with lots and lots of answers - this means that each time a post arises with a relevant set of words, it gets counted.

I think the distribution forums are needed, and not used enough.
How many times do I click on a Zero Reply thread, only to find
out the guy is using Mandrivia or SuSE or Fedora, and he has a
problem and I can't help him because they do things in an unusual
way, and my limited knowledge is specific to Slackware...

I even try to encourage them to post in their distro forums. I can't
tell how many times I've tried to help a Mandrake user when the
answer was already in his forum, and the way we do it in Slack is
not going to work for him. Besides, opjose has taken the Mandrake
forum by storm. He can answer all their questions. He should be
moderating it.

Originally posted by archtoad6 Personally, I think that anything that is so general -- "Samba" for instance -- that you are not allowed to search on it deserves its own sub forum. How else am I supposed to find/surf all Samba related threads? (Substitute your pet for "Samba").

The problem with Samba is that it's too common, and
searching the full-text of all posts (despite indexing,
Jeremy correct me if I'm wrong) pretty much locks up
the search-engine machine. One could have tried
searching the thread-titles only, but I'm afraid too many
of our users would be to lazy to read suggestions, or
follow them because they'd think they know better.




Cheers,
Tink

Originally posted by Chinaman Besides, opjose has taken the Mandrake forum by storm. He can answer all their questions. He should be moderating it.

But then he'd spend so much time moderating the forum, that he'd have less time to answer questions.

Moderating is a different skill to answering. It is, however, excellent that a knowledgeable person is answering threads in the forum.

Moderating is very much a different skill from answering questions. To be a moderator, you don't necessarily have to know anything about linux. No offense to any of the fine mods here at LQ.

And the problem with some of these server programs is that when you use them from command line, an error message is full of unreadable techno-garbage. And I hate answering questions about that kind of stuff. Lol!

As far as why was a "Wireless Networking" forum created - it was because Wireless Networking is a broad topic that is extremely important and typically troublesome in Linux. It differs enough from traditional networking and the demand was in our opinion sufficient. The "wifi" google search is probably not indicative, since most posts in the forum don't seem to actually contain the word "wifi". Having a sub-forum for every application isn't something that I can see scaling properly. That being said, after the forum upgrade I would like to explore the possibility of having *some* kind of sub-forums in Linux - Software. As always, feedback is welcome on this topic.

--jeremy

It's a question of having an effective method of dealing with the overlap.

Every distro is a fully-fledged OS in its own right, but, because they are all centered around the Linux kernel and therefore have certain unavoidable similarities, it can be difficult, especially for the newbie, to understand the differences well enough to decide if a question is generic enough for "Linux-General" or "Newbie", or if more specialized advice should be sought in the appropriate forum. This uncertainty, coupled with the reluctance some newbies seem to have for venturing away from "-General" or "Newbie" and into the distro-specific forums, leads people to post distro-specific questions in distro-neutral forums.

In my overweening pride, I will venture the opinion that LQ's organizational structure is ideal.

Perhaps those members who come across the aforementioned misposted distro-specific questions should inform the OP that their question would be better answered in another forum, and therefore the OP should ask the mods to move their question to the appropriate place? Or is that too much to ask?

Originally posted by Charred ... to understand the differences well enough to decide if a question is generic enough for "Linux-General" or "Newbie", or if more specialized advice should be sought in the appropriate forum. This uncertainty, coupled with the reluctance some newbies seem to have for venturing away from "-General" or "Newbie" and into the distro-specific forums, leads people to post distro-specific questions in distro-neutral forums.

LQ is also kind of self-regulating in this sense, too. Often
people will report a post and ask for it to be moved to the
appropriate forum.


Cheers,
Tink