Linux.com Groups

vtel57

Now that the newness of Linux.com is beginning to wear off, I think it would be a good idea to begin discussion on the topic of merging the duplicate Community Groups and also deleting the zero-activity groups (after group owner notification).

With less new people coming to the site and fewer of the initial batch visiting regularly, now is the time for us to condense and concentrate the information sources around here. It's quite overwhelming as it is.

To retain members and gain new members will require us all to FOCUS on the QUALITY of the content here. The more useful this site is to the GNU/Linux community, the better the chance that it will become a major hub of information exchange for that community.

What are you thoughts on this?

samjh

Yep. Also, the distro-specific forums could be condensed as well. At the moment there is very little activity and a lot of fragmentation. OpenSUSE and SUSE Enterprise can be merged, as should Fedora and Red Hat. I also find it odd that there are forums for Slackware, MEPIS, and Mandriva, but none for Arch, PCLinuxOS, or Gentoo. Perhaps the distro-specific forums should be all integrated into one "Distribution Discussion" forum until the most active distributions can be identified and branched off into its forum (so far only Ubuntu and the Fedora/RH forums seem really active).

The Software section has some duplications. For instance, the Productivity forum doesn't really have a role. Productivity software can be either command-line or desktop. It might be better to rearrange the Software section into Administration, Office, Entertainment, and Other. The Installation forum is unnecessary: if it's a distro installation issue, it can be discussed in a distro-specific forum; if it's software packaging issue, it can be discussed in one of the other software forums.

Same with Hardware. Multimedia, Printers and Scanners, Networking, and Storage forums should serve until activity picks up.

Just IMHO.

vtel57

The links in your sig are not set up properly. They're not working.

TheAncientGoat

Maybe they should implement sub groups to keep people happy? Like KDE could have the KDE 4 and KDE 3 groups encompassed and all the kernel groups can be housed in one supergroup etc.

Also, more group apps would be useful, such as photos, calenders and wiki's

mfillpot

I agree about combining the groups and forums, additionally I really like the idea about sub groups.

In my opinion the thing that is hurting the groups most is the fact that you cannot subscribe to discussions.

At this point I would kill for access to the DB to properly analyze the groups, group creators and activity levels to see how (based upon past activities) the site can be reorganized to consolidate and simplify the options to reduce the redundancies and bring the greatest value to the users.

lakshmipathi

yes,too many groups here..i think they need to be properly managed. Inactive groups can deleted after informing the group owner.

abrenar

thats a good idea, and my suggestion is dont erase it at all give a public warning that when there group is not actively running withing a few days it will deleted, the forum questions and answer can also be delete, the non-sense questions and answers. it can free up some space for this site.

woboyle

I really want to see the messages from the old Linux.com forums posted. There was a LOT of useful information posted there that should be retained for search purposes.

vonbiber

I also have a couple of suggestions

1. how about displaying some (all?) of the groups (such as
the distros) in a comma separated clickable links so you
won't have to go thru 3 or pages or more before you
find the one you're looking for

2. in general simplify the interface as much as possible
a. the less clicks the better
b. the essential info should be more prominent
c. there should be a link to send a message to a
moderator when the user can't figure out something
and wants to ask a question about the site
....
the first time I wanted to join a group I couldn't find a
link to click. I ended up sending a message to some guys
I didn't know whether they were simple members or
administrators

atreyu

yeah, merge and purge, baby.

i would also just stop the drive-by addition of new groups altogether. maybe have a nominating system instead, would be good: if enuf people express interest in the group, THEN it will be created.