Please create a -current forum

I hope the focus can be on what can be done, if limited exceptions can be made, and where it's reasonable.

Trying to lump in to include everything may cause more problems and noise than be helpful. Anything about CURRENT shouldn't be about testing the whole system, users asking about how to use ports, install their first system or making Gnome run on it, IMO, it should be limited to development, hardware testing, documentation and confirmations of specific hardware aspects of features, something along these lines. Maybe installing one port on CURRENT may make sense, but not a whole desktop with intermingling ports.

It would be nice, but if not, that's ok too.
 
msplsh said:
just say
Click to expand...

Please create a CURRENT sub-forum.

That's as close as I can get to saying what I think, for the benefit of anyone who has not noticed the title,

Please create a -current forum | Page 8 | The FreeBSD Forums

sidetone said:
… Maybe installing one port on CURRENT may make sense, but not a whole desktop with intermingling ports. …
Click to expand...

I'm cackling with laughter here, in a nice way, at a nonsensical situation (not at you) because I probably have six or more desktop environments plus 2,518 packages (15 of which are from my poudriere repo), 544 prime origins including kde5. Nonsensical? Stable. Feels very stable, I mean, I never have cause for complaint that's specific to FreeBSD-CURRENT. But, wait: what if, what if … disaster? ;-)

What we have at present is:

bakul said:
… a newbie friendly forum.
Click to expand...

– simultaneously:

sidetone said:
… we don't want to see people asking how to install … or asking basic questions …
Click to expand...

– like, not so much for newbies (newcomers should go elsewhere, away from the freebsd.org domain, for interactive learning about FreeBSD).

2013:

… The forums lack the knowledge and resources to answer in-depth questions about new developments and their ramifications. …
Click to expand...

2022: positive, constructive discussion of what might be a new bug, and its ramifications – phrases such as "… If it is really true that …, then (a) … and it will require deep knowledge of … internals to fix, and (b) you have found a bug, although we do not know where the bug is (at least, not yet)."; "… could be a bug that could do more harm next time. …"; "… really like to hear devs opinion on the situation."; "… Deeper question is, as I'm curious myself, how can …"; and so on:
  • rational
  • no complaint (that I can see) about depths, direction, or any other aspect of the discussion; there's freedom to discuss, people do so politely, without being scolded about the choice of venue.
 
If you're going to quote, please use the whole quote correctly. It changed the meaning a bit. That was specifically about CURRENT.
sidetone said:
I think most can agree on: we don't want to see people asking how to install CURRENT or asking basic questions about it.
Click to expand...
There's also an expectation for them to read the manual. Also, everyone knows they can get help for STABLE or supported versions: I doubt anyone is arguing against this.

CURRENT is for more advanced usage, and for participation for those who can help with troubleshooting. My argument is that some of this should be allowed by exceptions on the forums in adjacent to the mailing lists, bugzilla or elsewhere.

In my other quote, I was speaking of troubleshooting 1 or closely related specific problems in CURRENT at a time, and limiting the topic to that in a thread/subject matter. In my opinion, limited to specifically hardware and probably a baseset feature. Not troubleshooting how everything including Gnome and the kitchen sink at once not all working together for CURRENT. This was quoted correctly. It left out a lot of the meaning, and I may have needed to further clarify this.
sidetone said:
Trying to lump in to include everything may cause more problems and noise than be helpful. Anything about CURRENT shouldn't be about testing the whole system, users asking about how to use ports, install their first system or making Gnome run on it, IMO, it should be limited to development, hardware testing, documentation and confirmations of specific hardware aspects of features, something along these lines. Maybe installing one port on CURRENT may make sense, but not a whole desktop with intermingling ports.
Click to expand...
 
No offence intended. I don't think it good to suppress discussion of CURRENT, in the ways that it's currently suppressed, and (to me) your sentence makes more sense with abbreviation (ellipses) in place of a somewhat artificial constraint.

I do hope for things to change; for there to be a less irrational approach to discussions of CURRENT. I believe that the sanest way will be a sub-forum for CURRENT, because aversion to change is likely to cause outrage, sooner or later, if CURRENT is discussed in the established area for development. The hope is less for me,† more for the benefit of future users and potential users of FreeBSD.


† When I want answers to non-CURRENT things that should be easily answerable in FreeBSD Forums: honestly, I very often go elsewhere first. This avoidance of FreeBSD Forums is unrelated to CURRENT. It's avoidance of the culture.
 
msplsh said:
… intentional, constant churn of stability …
Click to expand...

If the meaning was (intentionally or subconsciously) unstable by design, I disagree.

FreeBSD-CURRENT is not broken by design, not unstable by design, not prone to disaster.

It's simply the focus of development, the main branch, and if the official forums for FreeBSD can not take a rational approach to this: it is, frankly, a shame (and for clarity, the shame is not upon the administrators or moderators, who I respect for their rational approaches).

Churn

If churn is a concern, then should the constant churn that's natural to the ports collection become a stick with which to beat everyone in the sub-forum below?

forums.freebsd.org

Ports and Packages

forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org
 
I'm for discussing CURRENT. However, there needs to be clear limitations. To use current, there's more expectation to know the basics, than there are for other versions of FreeBSD. They should know the basics before using CURRENT, and be able to get right into troubleshooting for that problem, not for setting up the OS.

Also, while I believe that CURRENT needs to be included, the topics shouldn't be about CURRENT themselves. As whichever feature or bug of a program moves on to a later STABLE.

CURRENT is considered developers area, and while the guidelines states that use the mailing lists because developers hang out there. There's also a forum section here for DEVELOPERS. What I'd like to see is that section split off for hardware development (which includes trying, testing, confirming, documenting). I'm no developer, but I've been useful to try things out, try hardware and document how things work.

As for features, I'm interested in the features, and sometimes there's multiple features in ports that give a similar description or are meant for the same fuction, and sometimes one of those will move between CURRENT and ports. It's about the feature itself, not CURRENT. While this can be included in CURRENT, it should be allowed, and not cut off because it's in CURRENT, but it shouldn't be mainly about CURRENT.

Say Gnome doesn't work in CURRENT, then go straight to troubleshooting that and finding and confirming specific bugs for it, to use in either the mailing lists, development section of forums etc.
 
It's probably fair to say that I'm 'with' you on much of that, thanks, although IMHO a CURRENT sub-forum would more likely satisfy the wishes of people who really, really don't want CURRENT-related discussions here.

grahamperrin said:
… interactive learning about FreeBSD …
Click to expand...

sidetone said:
… an expectation for them to read the manual. …
Click to expand...

True, but handbooks and the like are not interactive, and I'm not the only person to observe that the FreeBSD Handbook can be daunting.
 
Maybe limit the CURRENT forum to members with a post count of 500+?
Or kind of "CURRENT driver's licence"? You'd have to answer a nice quiz in order to get one. :D
 
eternal_noob said:
Maybe limit the CURRENT forum to members with a post count of 500+?
Or kind of "CURRENT driver's licence"? You'd have to answer a nice quiz in order to get one. :D
Click to expand...
What about the people with developer's tags, and they're obviously well knowledgable and have under 10 posts, despite their name being heard of within FreeBSD or programming.

edit:
I was also going to say, a developer's tag would also automatically make them eligible, as well as other tags:
Developer
 
In the absence of what's pleaded for: maybe the closest thing will be Discord, which is official (and nearly uppermost). I'm not a fan of the Discord UX; things of value will be lost/forgotten; it's not available to the public; and so on, but it's welcoming.

Discord, plus lesser-known spaces where (through public visibility) things can be found with Google and so on.

Click to enter the lobby:

1644198319976.png
 
Good places, all of them, if fragmentation away from FreeBSD Forums is deigned to be best for FreeBSD.

More simply: good places, all of them.
 
shkhln said:
By the way, grahamperrin, you post so much useless stuff lately, I'm starting to miss questions relevant to my interests. I simply don't see them at https://forums.freebsd.org/whats-new/. Quit it.
Click to expand...
Although that's not really the purpose of the ignore function, it should be able to fix it. I'm testing that now *). Yes, looking at "what's new" lately feels like looking into a heavily spammed INBOX. :what:

*) edit: works partially. I'm able to find content in "whats new" again, that's great! But there's a glitch: If the newest post in a thread is made by an ignored account, the thread vanishes completely from the list (and clicking "show more", it's shown but WITH the ignored post considered for sorting and highlighting of unread posts).
 
drhowarddrfine said:
No. No self-respecting developer would use reddit. And they don't now.
Click to expand...
I think it takes some paying attention to notice whether or not that is actually the case.

The overall impression that I get from reading this thread is this:

It may be not such a bad idea to go outside of your comfort zone (i.e. FreeBSD user forums) if you want to try the bleeding edge. Yeah, we gotta learn to function in other places, potentially take our lumps, if we want to go beyond -STABLE or -RELEASE. Such suggestions can be (mis) interpreted as hostility, or they can be interpreted as a friendly reminder that yeah, that's what it takes to keep your head above the water, and be able to swim out there, come back, and share experiences. :)
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Zirias The only problem with ignore is you can't call out the BS when it appears and then some threads continue far too long as a distraction to others who don't know better.
Click to expand...
And that you'll also run into this Xenforo bug:
forums.freebsd.org

Thread disappears from "what's new" if an ignored member replies to it.

It reappears if I click on "view more".
forums.freebsd.org forums.freebsd.org

It's annoying that people you don't care about can make threads you do care about disappear from "What's new".
 
drhowarddrfine said:
No self-respecting developer would use reddit.
Click to expand...
You don't like Reddit. That's fine, of course.

I know what you meant, as what I interpret as, when people get opinionated to use downvotes about it there. It doesn't always happen, but it's happened. They'll say why they feel that way, and it will often be for some slightly off reason. That can get annoying when it happens.

You like informational places like StackOverflow.
 
sidetone I couldn't care less about downvotes. The problem is when someone disagrees with you and you have to fight through all the derogatory comments. And then there's the 10 "answers" you have to wade through to find that one that's factual and can actually answer the question--if you ever get that far at all.

I'll never forget the day I was having a strange argument with one guy. I got frustrated and told him he was acting like a 12-year old. He got mad at me and said, "I'll have you know I turn 16 next week!" and that was the end of reddit for me.

Actually, not true. As I weaned myself off, I started asking some people in the threads how old they were. I was shocked when the majority, at that time, were under 18 and never had a job.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top