Moderator Question

DutchDaemon

DutchDaemon

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In the last few days, more and more threads have been opened asking help with non-FreeBSD-specific applications, i.e. ports/third-party software. Examples are Mozilla, Apache and KDE; there are sure to be more.

Looking at the inital lay-out of the forums, only threads relating to the ports system itself and to porting applications to FreeBSD were foreseen, not threads dealing with installing and/or configuring and/or troubleshooting these applications.

In other words: these forums appear to be designed to handle FreeBSD-specific topics only.

I was wondering how the moderators think about these 'external topics' creeping in, usually not fitting the sub-forum they were placed in. If left unchecked and/or unchanneled, they are bound to infest every sub-forum over time.
 
considering that there is already a sub-forum called Ports Installation and Maintenance which all of these should go to.
 
Not quite sure about that, looking at the subtitle: "Installing and maintaining the FreeBSD Ports Collection." I don't think application-specific support is part of the .. er .. package. It's about the ports collection, the ports tree, portsnap, stuff like that.
 
Hm, there's another one:
Web & Network Services Discussion related to network/web services such as apache, bind, sendmail, etc.

This is getting confusing.
 
DutchDaemon said:
Hm, there's another one:
Web & Network Services Discussion related to network/web services such as apache, bind, sendmail, etc.

This is getting confusing.
Click to expand...

It's only confusing if you treat these forums as a narrow discussion area for FreeBSD-specific topics only.

If you consider them to be a discussion area for the greater FreeBSD community, it's not confusing at all.
 
Well, I guess. It still strikes me as strange to see, for example, someone asking about how to add virtual hosts to Apache on a FreeBSD forum, that's all. It's a bit difficult to define a scope that way. And yes, I more or less see these forums as OS-specific, not dealing with applications that can run on just about any OS out there.
 
DutchDaemon said:
And yes, I more or less see these forums as OS-specific, not dealing with applications that can run on just about any OS out there.
Click to expand...

You do make some excellent points. However, there are many applications that run on just about any OS out there. So we shouldn't talk about issues/difficulties that relate to Fire Fox on FreeBSD because FF runs on a variety of platforms? It is a slippery slope if we de-limit what we can and can not discuss here, imho.
Granted, if something is completely off-topic then I support the moderators dealing with wayward posts.
I am very happy that this forum is allowing a variety of discussions to take place.
I'm not trying to insult you, DutchDaemon. Just my 2 cents worth.
 
I do agree here. We can always moderate anything we want if that goes by far beyond the scope of this forum...

Well put reply.
 
hitest said:
So we shouldn't talk about issues/difficulties that relate to Fire Fox on FreeBSD because FF runs on a variety of platforms?
Click to expand...

No no, this is a terrible oversimplification, and if you read the previous posts you will see that I'm not trying to narrow things down that far.

You see, the combination 'Firefox on FreeBSD' is entirely legitimate, because it supposes a problem in the combination; in other words: the subject matter is at least partially FreeBSD.

What I'm specifically alluding to is (not entirely hypothetical) subjects like:

- How to add extensions to Firefox?
- How do I add virtual hosts to Apache?
- How do I add a new zone to BIND?
- How do I add fonts to KDE?
- How do I add a table to MySQL
- Etc. etc.

None of these subjects have any connection to the underlying OS, they are entirely "application-internal" or "OS-independent", so they are not even partially FreeBSD-related.

That is the kind of subject I'm talking about, and I think they should be monitored, but that's just me ..
 
That is true as well. If you think that some thread goes really off-topic, you are of course free to let the user know that this is not really the right place to ask his question and point him to the relevant support channels (web sites, mailing lists, etc)...

Then, we may consider closing such threads...
 
Thanks, danger. Just trying to get things cleared up.
 
DutchDaemon said:
Thanks, danger. Just trying to get things cleared up.
Click to expand...

Very well-said, DutchDaemon. I understand the point you are making. Thanks for the clarification. I agree.
 
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