[Qgis-user] Why isn't there a support forum for QGIS?

Sun Oct 6 19:16:12 PDT 2013

I find most people who get frustrated with SE don't read the FAQ and
just jump in assuming it is like a normal forum. Doing so leaves most
people confused when their question is closed or comments are left
asking them to clean up the question.  It may seem strange at first
but you learn to like it.  The model helps to keep the site clean and
just get the answers that you are looking for.  IMO there is nothing
worse then going to a forum to see 20 pages of "yeah I"m having the
same issue", "Ohh I found the same thing. Send me the codez!".  This
annoys me to no end more then a mod calling out a bad post of mine on
SE. I have been on Stackoverflow and GIS.SE since the start and I
still get called out on things, and edits made to my posts, from years
ago.

It may seem harsh at times when someone comments and asks you to
clarify or clean up the question but we all just want to help and
having the person express what they want better is the easiest way.

Because QGIS is not just a simple standalone desktop application but
also covers a wide range of software and use cases it makes sense to
me to have a place were OGR users/devs, PostGIS users/devs, QGIS
users/devs, even ESRI users/devs etc all hang out together helping
each other.

You are also not forced to use GIS.SE that is why we have the mailing
lists, a lot of us that are on GIS.SE are on here too and will help on
both.  To me mailing lists are for discussions and fleshing out ideas,
or more in depth support, and GIS.SE is for Q&A type support. To me
this covers most, if not all the bases.

I noticed that most of your questions on GIS.SE are related to loading
.las files.  I also see you didn't get a lot of answers, or not the
ones you are looking for, this may simply mean that it's not possible
to do what you need yet.  You should't take that to mean that people
are being mean or ignoring you.  You might get the same thing on the
mailing list because most of us are pretty busy, and we might just not
know.   Your activity also doesn't really show any nasty comments by
your or anyone else so I wouldn't panic just yet. If someone is nasty
to you they can be reported and one of the mods will check it out,
trust me they have used the ban hammer once or twice before for
someone who was being nasty.

- Nathan

> On 6 Oct 2013, at 11:03 am, Alex Mandel <tech_dev at wildintellect.com> wrote:
>
>> On 10/05/2013 04:07 PM, Kelly Bellis wrote:
>> Thank you for the reply Alex.
>>
>> I gather from your reply that you were on the Steering Committee, or at least in
>> agreement with their decision. As a new QGIS user and beta tester for many
>> different softwares over the past 20 years coming from many diverse communities
>> I can attest that the coldly clinical approach taken at gis.stackexchange has
>> done more to alienate me from using QGIS than the program crashing unexpectedly
>> or any of the other obstacles that I encountered in the past three days of
>> tests. I've just uninstalled QGIS and am going back to Global Mapper v15 a
>> little wiser for the effort.
>
> I'm actually not on the committee. But I am a system adminstrator and
> long time participant in the mailing lists and IRC chat room. I followed
> the long threads on this very list, discussing if the old forum should
> be closed. The people who requested that it be closed were the most
> prominent members who answered questions on the forum.
>
>> As for the amount of work to prevent spammers, I'm very familiar having built
>> and maintained numerous BBS / forums / websites over the years; however, that
>> amount of work seems to pale in comparison to the tremendous policing efforts at
>> gis.stackexchange to monitor, edit or censor each question I raised and under no
>> stretch of the imagination would I ever refer to it as a forum. A forum is where
>> open discussion is engendered, not suppressed.
>
> I personally almost never went to or found answers on the old forum. I
> understand that the StackExchange mentality of Question and Answers, no
> discussions is a little harsh, but the voting system makes the solutions
> show up much better in search engines and to end users. The intersting
> part about policing on stackexchange is that I don't think it's
> necessarily the core QGIS people who do most of it, so in some sense
> it's significantly less work on our part.
>
>> Please don't misunderstand, gis.stackexchange has some excellent core concepts
>> in addressing very technical issues in a no-nonsense, no-chit-chat approach -
>> just leave the gestapo out of it.
> This is the design of stackexchange.
>
>> Kind regards and best wishes,
>>
>> Kelly
>
> The whole thing is kinda tricky, for some reason Forum users don't like
> to use mailing lists and mailing list user don't like to use Forums. So
> in the past we simply had tons of threads with zero discussion or
> answers. I think StackExchange was a middle ground. If many in the
> community feel it still isn't working then maybe something needs to change.
>
> I'll once again point out if you use Nabble, it's almost exactly like a
> forum, except it happens to be this very mailing list.
> http://osgeo-org.1560.x6.nabble.com/Quantum-GIS-User-f4125267.html
>
> Now if you said this mailing list was unfriendly to conversations about
> QGIS, I hope we've proven that isn't the case.
>
> Thanks,
> Alex
>
>>
>>
>>> On 10/5/2013 4:01 PM, Alex Mandel wrote:
>>>> On 10/05/2013 11:24 AM, Kelly Bellis wrote:
>>>> Hi,
>>>>
>>>> http://gis.stackexchange.com/  is certainly a nice place to try and find
>>>> answers... unless you ask a question like: Why isn't there a support
>>>> forum for QGIS?
>>>>
>>>> Feel free to contact me directly if you don't want to broadcast to the
>>>> entire list.
>>>>
>>>> V. Kelly Bellis, PLS 2099 - 17 Union Street - Ellsworth, ME 04605
>>>> kellybellis at gwi.net  <mailto:kellybellis at gwi.net>  - 207.667.6912 -
>>>> Horizon Surveying Co.
>>>
>>> It was officially decided by the Project Steering Committee (PSC) of
>>> QGIS some time ago to discontinue the QGIS specific forum that existed
>>> in favor of using stackexchange and QGIS tagged questions. There are
>>> several reasons:
>>>
>>> 1. We already have 2 mailing lists Users & Developers, turns out the
>>> overlap between these lists and the Forum was quite small (very few
>>> developers ever visited the forum). Both of these lists can be used just
>>> like a forum via Nabble.
>>> 2. We don't have to maintain a website just for a forum (its a lot of
>>> work to prevent spammers).
>>> 3. StackExchange is easier for new users coming from other communities
>>> who already have an account of some kind that lets them on. It's also
>>> more public and discoverable, so it could lead to more people hearing
>>> about QGIS. It's also easier for developers who also use other
>>> StackExchange sites for other reasons to wander by occasionally and it
>>> allows cross pollination with other OSGeo projects, e.g. GDAL or Postgis
>>> questions that often start as QGIS questions.
>>>
>>> So to answer QGIS does have a support Forum, it is
>>> http://gis.stackexchange.com/questions/tagged/qgis
>>> and this mailing list.
>>>
>>> Thanks,
>>> Alex
>
> _______________________________________________
> Qgis-user mailing list
> Qgis-user at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-user