# Massive Problems with FreeBSD ... (forums?)



## getopt (Nov 1, 2020)

A basic question was raised and an answer was given:



ralphbsz said:


> gschadow said:
> 
> 
> > is this forum not the place to find real serious people? Are the serious people still preferring the email lists?
> ...



I'd like to focus on that in a more general way, while not derailing the original post like it happens here frequently.

The question is a legitimate and important one. and the answer is straight forward serious, IMO.

So how are our FreeBSD Forum get used by its members? And for what purpose?

What was the "original" purpose of the FreeBSD Forums, and does that still fits for all?

What has changed since then and what impacts now?

There was the 2020 FreeBSD Community Survey which was also pitched here and it dealt also with the community's communication (channels).

Where are the Community Survey 2020 results? Did I miss them?

The results should also give some light on who is using the FreeBSD Forums for what purpose.

Not having seen any Community Survey results I just can't resist to  speculate that the FreeBSD Forums got in the struggle of the common Internet socialising scene. While some social needs might get satisfied better elsewhere in the Internet, our forums got hit and not few of the "high professionals" turned away, left or are lurking read only at best for some entertainment.

And please hold on for a while before posting here.
 Give your brain a chance over emotions.  Thank you.


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## a6h (Nov 1, 2020)

I can't find any result! I completely forgot about the survey. All I remember I had to reduce my ublock-origin sensitivity to be able to fill up the form, and it was a multiple-page survey. Other than that nothing! Yes, I did STFW. result: NOP. I love to know should we participance in such surveys in the future? Thanks.


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## xtouqh (Nov 1, 2020)

I think it was always that way, all serious technical discussions take place on the mailing lists, while forums are better suited for end-user discussions and help (more so now that questions@ list is taken over by some odious persons fighting endless flamewars between themselves).


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## mark_j (Nov 1, 2020)

My 2 cents.
These forums are and have always been the first point of contact for users, administrators and even developers. Once the discussion heads towards the operating system's internal operations and such more technical discussions, you need to head off to the mailing lists or even IRC.

Would it be better to have it all dealt with in one forum, rather than irc, email, twitter, forums etc? Yes probably but would that be more productive? Probably not.

It's likely up to moderators here to funnel people to the right communication channel.

PS I would like to see some mailing lists as read-only threads on the forums; I'm on NetBSD mailing lists and can't deal with FreeBSD's as well so often miss stuff.

PPS. Fixing the broken forum software would be nice, too.

Just my two cents worth.


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## mark_j (Nov 1, 2020)

Oh, I have to add has there ever been any results or discussions about these 'community surveys'? They seem to hit the bit bucket as far as end users are concerned.


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## a6h (Nov 1, 2020)

mark_j said:


> They seem to hit the bit bucket as far as end users are concerned.


This idiom (hit the bit bucket) went over my head. Could you explain this. Thanks.


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## mark_j (Nov 1, 2020)

vigole said:


> This idiom (hit the bit bucket) went over my head. Could you explain this. Thanks.


First, I'm not referring to that horrible version control system available on the internet.
Second, see here: https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=bitbucket


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## gschadow (Nov 1, 2020)

My hunch is that the real knowledgeable FreeBSD hackers are still on email lists and usenet newsgroups. There was a time when I too resisted forums. Today I hate email. I'd go for usenet news if it still existed. I was glad that I could bring the stuff up on the bugzilla and there, as usual, I derived my own solution. Nothing helps more than knowing you are among serious people whose time is valuable, this automatically makes me want to do a good job describing my problem, and as I do, I figure out  the solution 75% of the time.


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## mark_j (Nov 1, 2020)

gschadow said:


> My hunch is that the real knowledgeable FreeBSD hackers are still on email lists and usenet newsgroups. There was a time when I too resisted forums. Today I hate email. I'd go for usenet news if it still existed. I was glad that I could bring the stuff up on the bugzilla and there, as usual, I derived my own solution. Nothing helps more than knowing you are among serious people whose time is valuable, this automatically makes me want to do a good job describing my problem, and as I do, I figure out  the solution 75% of the time.


And yet by implication people on this forum are neither serious nor time is valuable to them. Dear oh dear.


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## a6h (Nov 1, 2020)

BTW what about survey? any thoughts? That part bothers me the most. Although I'm just a non-serious user. Take that into account.


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## a6h (Nov 1, 2020)

Anyway I think this link is relevant to the topic: Thread 2019-freebsd-community-survey.70553


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## ralphbsz (Nov 1, 2020)

getopt said:


> So how are our FreeBSD Forum get used by its members? And for what purpose?


People talk to each other. In an of itself, this is already goodness.  Is it optimal? I have no idea. I'm sure it could be improved, but I fear that some attempts at improving would break it and make it worse.

I personally see the purpose to ask user-level questions and vent gripes. Of the form of "I tried to do X, but it didn't work". Or "How do I Y?". Or "Another OS has feature Z, why doesn't FreeBSD?". A few of these questions are really dumb, and the correct answer is something along the lines of "turn your brain on" or "read the fine manual". Another set of questions are dumb in a different way, of the form "Why is X like this, I don't like it, I am accustomed to it being the other way on Linux". That question is part of a spectrum of questions that reaches "FreeBSD sucks, because Linux is better." By the way, I'm deliberately using the politically incorrect term "dumb" to describe these questions. There are lots of questions from eager newbies, of the sort "I have zero programming experience, and I want to write a kernel device driver", to which sadly the answer is: no you won't.

Then there are sensible questions. Some are super easy to answer, some are hard to answer, and some we can't answer at the prevailing skill level here. That's on top of a significant fraction of user-related question simply not having good crisp answers. Sometimes that becomes clear in the discussion, sometimes the discussion meanders away. We're probably no more than 50% efficient in answering questions that would be answerable. If we had a staff of 3 (paid) experts, we could do better ... but that would cost half a million $ per year, and the FreeBSD project doesn't have that kind of money.



> What was the "original" purpose of the FreeBSD Forums, and does that still fits for all?


I don't know about the history. Is what we have now useful? Yes. Could it be better? Perhaps.



> Where are the Community Survey 2020 results? Did I miss them?


I have no idea. I'm not even sure I care. I like the OS, and I use it. If I had more time for personal projects, I would use it for more things, but I don't have time.


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## mark_j (Nov 1, 2020)

vigole said:


> Anyway I think this link is relevant to the topic: Thread 2019-freebsd-community-survey.70553


Thanks. I had a look, but still I can not find any concrete examples of the surveys leading to changes.
I might, when I have time, see if I can watch the bsdcan 2019 video. (Although given I'm on this forum, time is apparently cheap for me... )
My view is they're essentially a waste of time and a PR exercise. I reserve the right to be totally wrong, though.


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## kpedersen (Nov 2, 2020)

Surveys creep me out. Naturally a community can work out its direction based on its own needs. However surveys usually mean formal evidence is being collected for shareholders who have neither the time or care to discover the answers for themselves. This is never a good thing and hopefully not the case for FreeBSD.


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## richardtoohey2 (Nov 2, 2020)

I think the survey is meant to be an opportunity to say what you would like to see in FreeBSD: https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-core-team-10-in-review/

_Core.10, which concluded in July ‘20, made several process decisions ... They initiated annual community surveys to support data-driven decision making_

I imagine it would be quite difficult to work out which "direction" to take FreeBSD in if you went by the discussions on these forums / mailing lists / social media.  There are always plenty of ideas, but not so many people prepared to do anything (other than supply ideas) - I've found that to be a general principle in anything involving volunteers.


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## mark_j (Nov 2, 2020)

richardtoohey2 said:


> I think the survey is meant to be an opportunity to say what you would like to see in FreeBSD: https://freebsdfoundation.org/blog/freebsd-core-team-10-in-review/
> 
> _Core.10, which concluded in July ‘20, made several process decisions ... They initiated annual community surveys to support data-driven decision making_
> 
> I imagine it would be quite difficult to work out which "direction" to take FreeBSD in if you went by the discussions on these forums / mailing lists / social media.  There are always plenty of ideas, but not so many people prepared to do anything (other than supply ideas) - I've found that to be a general principle in anything involving volunteers.


I think the motives behind the survey are pretty well understood. I question the outcome (or lack thereof). Maybe there can be no outcome. It's more about getting the "vibe" of the community, perhaps?


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## richardtoohey2 (Nov 2, 2020)

I've not seen any published results, no.  The questions seemed more geared to what sorts of things I thought were important out of multiple choice lists (if I'm remembering the right survey, that is!)

So like you say, getting the "vibe" of the community without asking "what do you want" and getting swamped with a million ideas and different priorities and wants.


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## drhowarddrfine (Nov 2, 2020)

The problem is that online surveys have no way of verifying the authenticity of the person or machine that takes the survey. Then you can every nut and looney take it which might skew the results and, possibly, cause the survey to not be published and chucked into the trash can. 

Lots of articles get published about the results of Stack Overflow surveys of programmers but that, too, relies on the taker to be who they say they are rather. Proper surveys seek out people cause they have been authenticated (not the right word) so the results have meaning.


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## gschadow (Nov 2, 2020)

mark_j said:


> And yet by implication people on this forum are neither serious nor time is valuable to them. Dear oh dear.


Hey, sorry if you feel that that was my implication. It isn't. In fact, you see in all my (few threads) here that I have always put effort in to come up with solutions. It's just, once you move to really reporting a bug, there's a little more pressure to be even more specific.


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## mark_j (Nov 3, 2020)

vigole said:


> I can't find any result! I completely forgot about the survey. All I remember I had to reduce my ublock-origin sensitivity to be able to fill up the form, and it was a multiple-page survey. Other than that nothing! Yes, I did STFW. result: NOP. I love to know should we participance in such surveys in the future? Thanks.


If it was supposed to be addressed at BSDCAN 2019 then I can't find any mention of it.
It seems these surveys are purely PR and about getting the feel of the community, not actually about making any changes hence no need to publish results and address issues raised.


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