[clug] The harsh realities of CLUG

[Alex Satrapa]

On 18/05/2010, at 21:31 , Paul Wayper wrote:

> I asked them what
> their opinions of the CLUG were, and (paraphrasing and coming through the
> imperfect filter of my memory) they basically said that their experience of
> the CLUG was of an intimidating bunch of know-it-alls with a whole motherboard
> of chips on their shoulder and an intolerance to anyone who broke the
> unwritten and arbitrary rules of the list.

Witness the shit storms in the last year - one I particularly remember about gender balance in open source projects. That started to get quite heated, and many people who have lurked on the list for years spoke up to say they weren't interested in reading us anymore.

> Now, I like email lists as a way to have conversations and keep a group
> together.  I like pressing one button in Thunderbird and getting all the
> conversations, rather than having to click around on web forums.

I, too, prefer mailing lists to any other format of conversation.

Some people prefer forums because they're more web-like. My opinion of forums is that they're reinventing Usenet by getting all the mistakes done first and then getting into the useful stuff.

> But I think we can probably open our horizons a little to add some other forms
> of modern internet social interaction.

More presence isn't going to help, when the presence we project is irritating :)

Alex