low traffic lately?

users
#1

as for me, I don't even know what AskLO is -
           and probably don't want to know if it's similar to Facebook,
Google, et.al.
       because I too don't want all the additional spam ...
           or the minute-by-minute diaries of the inane.

       I too have been using these computers since the days of the BBs :wink:
           and see no reason why e-mail should be considered out-of-date.

       BTW - it irks me when someone requests a reply only through facebook
or twittering ... ... ...
          (I happen to enjoy watching, & listening, to the birds, yet they
stay in the yard)

#2

+1

I have been working with general purpose computers since the mid 70s and made a pretty good career out of it until I retired 10 years ago. I don't do facebook because it violates my computer security rules and I strongly disagree with facebook's data-mining business model.

In my view, the reason email, BBs, and forums like this one seem to be out of favor is that general purpose computers are becoming dinosaurs in favor of mainstream ipads and smart phones. Last year I upgraded my 10-year-old desktop computer and discovered new components are becoming difficult to find. This may be the last time I can upgrade it, since I suspect in 10 years, the desktop computer will not be available. That gives me a warm fuzzy, but then in 10 years I may not care.

The way I see it, if someone only allows responses from me via facebook and/or twitter, then they don't get a response, which effectively self-limits their help.

Girvin Herr

#3

+1

Pete

#4

I looked at ASKLO, but the requirement to sign up for Twitter I found off
putting.
Why cannot I just join ASK?

Tink.

#5

It's http://ask.libreoffice.org
I just figured that out, myself
(searched duckduckgo for "AskLO LibreOffice".)

It looks like a simple Q/A forum.

Doesn't look like FB or G+ or anything that stupid.
It IS disturbing that there seems to be no means of
participating without using (and signing in with) some 3rd party
service, and almost all those listed are corporate fascist networks, like Google, Facebook, Yahoo!, AOL, Twitter, etc.
they do offer sign-in with wordpress or livejournal, which are both
blogging communities built on FLOSS.
That's about as good as it gets. Oh, or an OpenID.
But, if you don't have an account with any of these other services,
seems you're left out.

./tony

#6

+1

I have been working with general purpose computers since the mid 70s and
made a pretty good career out of it until I retired 10 years ago. I
don't do facebook because it violates my computer security rules and I
strongly disagree with facebook's data-mining business model.

In my view, the reason email, BBs, and forums like this one seem to be
out of favor is that general purpose computers are becoming dinosaurs in
favor of mainstream ipads and smart phones. Last year I upgraded my
10-year-old desktop computer and discovered new components are becoming
difficult to find. This may be the last time I can upgrade it, since I
suspect in 10 years, the desktop computer will not be available. That
gives me a warm fuzzy, but then in 10 years I may not care.

I keep hearing this, and it is quite true that many people, your average
consumer whatever, are using their smartphones and tablets more to access internet stuff.
But, there's a whole lot of things I do with a computer that are simply
not practically or ergonomically appropriate for a tablet or phone.
I'm certainly not going to hack on a phone, or work on a tablet.
I am a professional translator, hobby web/software developer.
I type thousands of words/day for my work, and need a real keyboard,
not some 5inch touchpad on a phone.

I mean, are people going to write their thesis on a tablet?
Write a novel on a phone?
And that's just writing stuff...what about all the complex
mathematical stuff done in the sciences...
I don't think astronomers are going to be crunching Hubble data on an iPhone.

The way I see it, if someone only allows responses from me via facebook
and/or twitter, then they don't get a response, which effectively
self-limits their help.

With this, I wholeheartedly agree.
I do not use FB, G+, Twitter, Tumblr, Instagram, SnapChat, WhatsApp, or any other corporate fascist owned "social network" (corporate feedlot).

I DO use forums, friendica, redmatrix, libertree, pumpio, statusnet,
and other free/open source, decentralized, federated networking platforms, however.

No borrowed "cloud" storage, either. I will host and control my own data, thank you.
These corporate fascists want to own all your data, not only to have full access to it, but also so you are dependent upon them.
We're all smart enough to see the evils in vendor lock-in, monopolies,
and corporate manipulation, or we wouldn't be using LibreOffice;
we'd be using MSOrifice.
So why would we be on Facebook?
We need fewer corporate fascist monopolies, more freedom and self-determination.

but this is all largely OT...sorry

Tony

#7

Hi :slight_smile:
I was reading somewhere (or perhaps in a film) that Facebook considers
itself to have reached "market saturation" once 55% of the people in a
country/university/other-sample are using it. Continued investment in
marketing brings diminishing returns so they cut their advertising
budget there (just enough to keep it "ticking over") and increase
their advertising budget elsewhere.

Anyway, this thread wasn't meant to be about bashing social media.
Obviously quite a LOT of us on this list feel much the same way
otherwise we would probably have moved over by now. A lot of people
DO like social media so i think it's good that TDF has given them a
way of getting help using that sort of method. Like most things i'd
be surprised if it was perfectly set-up first time but hopefully there
is some way of reporting problems or suggesting new features and maybe
people might see some of those get resolved.

James Lang went back to the original question and like many people in
another thread suggested the drop in traffic might be something to do
with "Reply" taking messages off-list. Sadly bottom-posting meant his
message got hidden under the signatures so people probably thought it
was just an accidental empty email
"Is this a result of having to "reply all" to get the answer
automatically sent to the list?

I have been led to believe that "reply all" should be used sparingly
and that its indiscriminate use is rude.

Jim"

It might help if people could write to the postmaster of this mailing
list explaining why they think it's a bad idea for this list to
operate the way it does. Apparently on other lists people wrote in to
grumble that it wasn't set-up this way previously. Grumbling to the
mailing-list itself wont get anywhere because none of us can influence
policy.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

#8

Anthony Baldwin has written on 1/26/2014 12:01 AM:

I keep hearing this, and it is quite true that many people, your average
consumer whatever, are using their smartphones and tablets more to
access internet stuff.

But, there's a whole lot of things I do with a computer that are simply
not practically or ergonomically appropriate for a tablet or phone.
I'm certainly not going to hack on a phone, or work on a tablet.
I am a professional translator, hobby web/software developer.
I type thousands of words/day for my work, and need a real keyboard,
not some 5inch touchpad on a phone.

Are you not aware that, by using an OTG cable, you can attach a
full-size USB keyboard to a phone or tablet?

I mean, are people going to write their thesis on a tablet?

Could be.

And that's just writing stuff...what about all the complex
mathematical stuff done in the sciences...
I don't think astronomers are going to be crunching Hubble data on an
iPhone.

The iPhone is not the be-all and end-all of "personal" computing
devices. Will we always need supercomputers? Sure.

I DO use forums, friendica, redmatrix, libertree, pumpio, statusnet,
and other free/open source, decentralized, federated networking
platforms, however.

No borrowed "cloud" storage, either. I will host and control my own
data, thank you.

Will you take it with you you go? (Younger) People want access to their
data they are.

#9

I think it's telling that seemingly the vast majority of questions there
go unanswered.
People that know what they're doing with this software are the ones
that prefer a mailing list, apparently.
Questions get answered here.

Tony

#10

I have a server in my home office, and anything I may need remote access to, I can store there, or, of course, I can access my main desktop, as well, over ssh (yes, even from my android phone).
Of course, not everybody has a server running in their house.

Tony

#11

Hi :slight_smile:

Snip

James Lang went back to the original question and like many people in
another thread suggested the drop in traffic might be something to do
with "Reply" taking messages off-list. Sadly bottom-posting meant his
message got hidden under the signatures so people probably thought it
was just an accidental empty email
"Is this a result of having to "reply all" to get the answer
automatically sent to the list?

I have been led to believe that "reply all" should be used sparingly
and that its indiscriminate use is rude.

Jim"

I thought when the list was changed a few years ago to make it easier for the devs, IIRC, "reply all" was the only way to reply to the list. If "reply all" is not used, the reply goes only to the poster, not the list. Has it changed again? I am still using "reply all", unless I want a private reply.

It might help if people could write to the postmaster of this mailing
list explaining why they think it's a bad idea for this list to
operate the way it does. Apparently on other lists people wrote in to
grumble that it wasn't set-up this way previously. Grumbling to the
mailing-list itself wont get anywhere because none of us can influence
policy.
Regards from
Tom :slight_smile:

Here we go again. We (I) tried this in the past and was hit with the results of a survey that the majority liked the way it is. Remember, Tom? Has something changed? It is interesting that this list is still the only list I know of that works this way.
Girvin Herr

Snip

#12

Hello Girvin,

If "reply all" is not used, the reply goes only to the poster, not the

"Reply All" /should/ send to the list *and* anybody else listed in the
To and From headers. "Reply Sender" and "Reply List" do what they say.
Unfortunately, at least one MUA (guess which one) uses "Reply All" to
mean "Reply List". This simply confuses matters.

#13

Brad wrote:

Unfortunately, at least one MUA (guess which one) uses "Reply All" to
mean "Reply List". This simply confuses matters.

I'm assuming you're meaning MS. Actually, with my MS Windows Live Mail interface, "Reply All" means just that; it replies to everyone in the original message, whether individual or list (which is why Brad will get two copies of this message). There's nothing confusing about that. The "problem," if that is the right way to put it, is that it has no "Reply List" option (at least none that I can see.)

The frustration is that, if I want to reply only to the list, I have to hit "Reply All" and then delete all the addresses that aren't the list. Now, is that the fault of MS Live Mail, or the way the list was set up? As has been repeatedly reported by others, this is the *only* list (at least that I use) that behaves this way. I'm more inclined to blame the list than MS's email software.

I'm not a huge fan of MS, but I'm also not going to blame them for problems they didn't create.

Virgil

#14

Virgil, I don't think it's just the list. The mail client must have something to do with it, as well; I use Thunderbird and have a "Reply List" option on this list, while on some others I do and some I don't.

Dave

#15

I've just switched to Thunderbird from Apple Mail, and the Reply List button is very handy indeed.

There is a minority of lists that exhibit the same behaviour as this one with replies. The fact that it is a minority makes it all the more likely that I will send replies to the wrong address - the OP.

P.S. Apple has had ongoing problems with Mail in Mavericks, and I suspect they have decided to phone home about everyone you add to the address list of an email. Using Contacts groups became painfully slow.

#16

FWIW, I've done some searching of my email since my earlier post. It seems that I get the "Reply All" button for lists that are Yahoo! groups, and "Reply List" for lists that use real list servers.

Dave

#17

And if you use Thunderbird and read the list through gmane you will see a followup button that replies only to the list. The reply button replies to the sender.

Regards, Jim