Linuxcnc.org forum

This has been running for 2 weeks? I had no idea-must have missed the first announcement...
One suggestion is to put a easily seen link on the opening page of the web site.
it's too hard to find the first time IMHO and I was looking for it.

There are folks who just want to have a working CNC system. They aren't Linux programmers, they shouldn't need to be. I've subscribed to the mailing list since 2003, spending countless hours going through the numerous digests filling up my inbox to sift out what I can use. I find forums to be very helpful, the Ubuntu forums are a great example. I started with Ubuntu right when Dapper was released (I think) and the forums provided all the help I needed to get comfortable with Ubuntu.
The EMC community should find this forum to be helpful, especially as more posts capture some of the common issues new users run into. Much easier to search this forum than go through the digest archives!

-Doug

jimlas53 wrote:

There are folks who just want to have a working CNC system.

especially as more posts capture some of the common issues new users run into. Much easier to search this forum

I stumbled on EMC2 3 weeks ago, and i also just want to use and adjust the system. I have a little experience with linux, and as you say, forums provide a lot of info. My first thing to do when i run into any kind of problem/bug is to search google and the diverse fora. For example, thanks to fora i got my wacom tablet working under linux. In the future i'll have a working CNC system

Bas

So far, the people who are in favor of a forum are mostly commenting about how forums are good places to get their questions answered, without having to read a bunch of unrelated stuff.

That is true - a forum is very convenient for people who are ASKING questions. If you have a question, you ask it, and then come back later and look in that thread (and that thread only) for answers. You don't have to filter thruough unrelated messages, etc.

BUT - look at it from the other side - suppose you are one of the people who ANSWERS questions.... In order to answer questions, you need to read all of the threads. That is the only way to see what the questions are, and find the ones you know how to answer. Email is SO much easier for that.

Every email client makes it obvious which messages you've already read and which ones you haven't. Doing the same thing on a forum is much harder. One of the EMC2 developers (not me) has been experimenting with exactly that for several days now, and still hasn't found a decent way to do it. The closest approach has involved an RSS feed from the forum, and third-party software to convert that into emails. Simply put, YUCK.

Another advantage of email for answering questions - most email clients can notice when a new mail arrives. My computer beeped while I was typing this - I looked at my email, and there was a question about the parallel port driver. I knew the answer, so I replied, then came back here and continued typing. Total time from question to answer, maybe 5 minutes. If that same question was asked on a forum, I wouldn't see it unless I decided to sit down and spend 15 minutes (or an hour, or whatever it takes) to go through all the new posts.

So - a forum is easy for the people who want to ask questions, but hard for the ones who answer questions. If it is too hard, the answer people might not hang around in the forum much, and there won't be very many answers.

Regards,

John Kasunich

True, you have a point from the answering side.
How do you gather related questions in the archives or mail? Say i want to use EMC, but sometimes i have a question. The first thing i look for is if someone already got an answer for that same question. So i don't bother the answerers with the same question for the 10'th time.
I'm not used with mailinglists, i tried to search thru the archives, but couldn't find the answer.

Regards,
Bas