It seems clear that the community, even at the beginner level has a specific language in use that I will need to get a handle on quickly to understand the questions and the answers. Examples include phrases like debian and partition which are repeated often enough that they are clearly key concepts. I poked around some but did not find anything like a glossary on the forum site. Anyone know of one?
The post on malicious commands made almost no sense to me and brought home the reality that a forum community is based on trust. It is like relying on the kindness of strangers. Caution and patience both seem like necessities for getting the most out of this type of forum.
I spent quite a bit of time looking over the organizational set-up for such a large forum. My previous experience with forums have all been on a much smaller scale and the needs of such an active and large community greatly alter the framework of administration. As the forum is volunteer run, not only do staff offer their expertise and time but they must have good negotiation and management skills. I am thinking specifically of thread steering as being something that requires tact and negotiation. All done online, no direct meetings or even telephone calls to personalize communications.
The forum is stated as being the largest Linux/GNU support forums and also that it was started by a single person only 2 years ago. That is pretty astonishing to me. Or is that a typical start-up for these types of forums? I get that a forum grows because it becomes the place everyone goes because that is where everyone is, but how does it get to that weight? Again the issues of trustworthiness and strong management must play a part.
Familiarity will make this tool more useful to me so for now I need to play and poke around to see how it works some more.
Thanks,
Bethany
