NicQ wrote:Hooray wrote:These things are really better discussed on the FlightGear developer's mailing list, most of the people using these forums are users and contributors in the sense that they contribute to the base package by creating aircraft, scenery etc, not the FlightGear core.
This is simply not true. It's just your opinion, and I think it might be nice if you started clearly stating so instead of making yourself sound like you're some sort of authority figure
Well, thanks for doing an excellent job misinterpreting what I said, this wasn't about me saying something "officially" - I only pointed out that software development related discussions are indeed
officially meant to be discussed where most of the developers hang out, and that
is the FlightGear developer's mailing list, this isn't about being a core developer or not - it's only about being able to read and understand one simple paragraph on these forums (provided by curt as the core developing project coordinator) :
Of course you can try to bring up here whatever topics you're interested in, but if you are interested in FlightGear
development related topics, the most appropriate place is certainly not this forum, but the mailing lists - at least for the time being. And this is something worth taking into account if you're interested in quality feedback from people directly involved in the project.
And no this is not my personal opinion, in fact I personally don't even think that this policy is necessarily a good one due to FlightGear development being possibly more tangible to newcomers if development related discussions also were to take place primarily on these forums.
In fact, just looking at some of my more recent postings, it should become obvious that these would normally also fall into this category of "development related" topics, so I somewhat ignore this policy myself to some extent.
I do however understand that mailing lists have some strong advantages, too - and I respect that those people involved in FlightGear development obviously prefer to use mailing lists.
Personally I am convinced however, that the most promising strategy would be a FlightGear newsgroup, which would be easily accessible via both means: forum-like web frontends, but also by newsreaders with all the advantages of E-Mail.
But given the nature of this topic, it is pretty obvious that this discussion isn't ideally handled by these
user forums.
It's really about chosing the appropriate place for your threads: depending on the nature of one's question, one may be better off using these forums, the user's mailing list, developer's mailing list or even the wiki or IRC.
The signal to noise ratio (quality) and response times are varying for all of these options, depending on the nature of your topic.
Bottom line: if you want technical, reliable feedback about FlightGear development from those people who are actually involved in developing the FlightGear core, you are certainly well advised to first consult the developer's mailing list.
Of course we could even start discussing cooking recipes here, and probably a handful of users would be able to also contribute to these discussions - but still, going directly to a
cooking community might result in a better signal/noise ratio, i.e. higher quality feedback by people in the know.
If you are still having problems understanding what I'm really trying to say, you might want to check out:
http://www.catb.org/~esr/faqs/smart-que ... html#forum - interestingly, picking the appropriate forum for questions is one of the
very first guidelines in this FAQ.