Maybe a user wiki would work. I like the idea of being able to post how-tos for things that possibly work a little differently than in other distros to benefit other users but also as a reference for the next time I need it. It has also been helpful to see other folks comments including their approach to the problem which might be less likely to happen in a wiki. But whatever way things go I will continue to use Openmandriva.
Would still use it (x2 laptops) but itād erode the sense of āloyaltyā to the distro, so maybe not longer term. Having a community and a place to talk about it thatās not politically policed hard in one direction (unlike other distros) is part of the appeal. It makes it more approachable and āaliveā feeling, plus easier to get answers for some basic things. That and github is not particularly user friendly.
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Not sure to understand this specific question: āonlyā ?
Assuming I catched the mean correctly, only Italian is because the user/s donāt speak/understand English very well or at all, and I think itās comfortable to have the option to discuss in your own native language (a forum very much appreciated feature).
Aside, looks like the Italian users are very responsive when called (testing and the likes) or asking for help, and they care more of the technical substance than the OffTopic/Chit&Chat.
So, even if we probably are a minority here it seems that the most useful discussions are at the Italian lang forum 
This tells me not all users are living in the North American time zones.
Prexactly [cit. @WilsonPhillips 
]
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No offence, you should preface many of your statements by āIn my opinionā.
Which may be different from otherās 
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I meant what I said, exactly how I said it. I cannot control how people will react to that even if I put flowery language in front of it.
The search function is barely useful, even when it is used.
The social media type components skew what is a relevant amount of participation for a given topic when you review the metrics, (which are also very badly implemented).
The boilerplate tutorial and ToS content is just a watered down version of their socio-political activism campaign.
Their software is terrible.
I voted yes, but I am biased and have caveats. 
Here are my two cents:
I donāt see live chatrooms as an absolute essential for community but I do for development discussions where those discussions can and often do move at a faster pace, also having Matrix/Telegram bridges there to facilitate discussions by providing that platform choice for users who prefer Telegram over Matrix, we package clients for both of those platforms therefore our users have the option of either or both.
I see our forums essential for user support and package requests and also for the community interaction. It is a place where long-format discussions/threads are far more useful (and some may say essential) than matrix discussions where topics simply get lost in the noise/crosstalk.
Public forums are also a searchable archive that can be and frequently do get referenced by users searching for issues or reporting/seeking help with similar issues, I think that is an important resource to maintain.
The reasoning behind stating forums as a place to submit package requests is that it gives users a choice and that some users who donāt have an account on or simply donāt want to use GitHub have a place away from there to submit packaging requests, also again important that we provide that choice.
A wiki could fill a lot of the voids with frequently asked things (man pages and internal config file documentation do cover most things, people just need to use those resources), but those wiki pages would need to be maintained to ensure it is up to date as well.
With the above stated I think focussing on our existing mediums (matrix + forums + wiki) is the better plan in order to reduce spreading ourselves too thin without adding any additional places.
We already have those services running but I think the big issue is having enough knowledgable hands that are able to produce and maintain content for the wiki in order to expand the topics it covers.
Personally I find having to check a bunch of additional mediums every day is a colossal PITA that I do not want to have to deal with, it is a nonsensical situation to put ourselves into.
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Ok.
Quite the contrary: the forum software is wonderful and perfect.
Thatās all folks!
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Thank you for pointing out that I need to clarify. I was looking at this with only two languages on the forum, English and Italian. What happened to French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, and so on? Zero interest in OM? I have no problem with Italians having their own. I just find it a bit surprising that the rest of Europe isnāt as well represented.
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There are already subcategories for French, Spanish, and Portuguese. We just never see any posts there, English and Italian are by far the most prominent languages here.
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If it was, we would be using the chat and wiki functions here, also. We donāt.
Maybe whoever spent time and effort to set up this terrible thing thinks differently.
Itās just your opinion, and even if you express it terribly, itās still your opinion!
It seemed strange to me that we didnāt get to the socio-political side. It was still missing from this postā¦..
Go through the tutorial.
Someone already made this remark. You donāt need to cosign on it. It is not a better or more correct statement just because more people agree.
Your opinions of my opinions donāt phase me in the slightest. It is a benefit of maturity.
As far as I know any so called socio-political āsideā would be expressed here. This is from that:
OpenMandriva Values
The founding values of OpenMandriva are development, equality, co-operation, openness, freedom, group achievement, independence, and solidarity.
These values reflect what we believe in and are the main identity of our community. They represent open development of software, equality between all the community members - from simple users to programmers to patrons - cooperation and solidarity between all. We all as a community will achieve our objectives and help to build products that are good for all.
As stated in the About page OM is devoted to free software. OM is not and IMO should not be or become an organization advocating for things beyond free software and the freedom to pursue that goal. What is it the younger folks say? Something like āWe should stay in our laneā.
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Then we need to apply that to the forum so there is consistency. The forum is using the default that comes with Discourse.
We donāt need any āsafe space and welcoming,ā language. It doesnāt mean what it is supposed to. If we treat people with dignity and respect based on their character then none of that even needs to be said.
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Then you need to talk to @raphael and @rugyada about that.
Forgive my ignorance but I donāt know what that is or where it is.
Going back to the original post, I think this is the way. Let me elaborate.
I am the Principal Tech Writer for a somewhat large-ish software company. We are highly aware that we now write not only for humans to consume, but also for AIs to consume. Regardless of what you believe about AIās usefulness, itās here, and itās here to stay. There needs to be a large, defined corpus of human-written material that humans can read and that AIs can be trained on. AIs can only regurgitate what theyāve been trained on, so writers will continue to be needed to produce new material.
Iāve been here almost a year, and one of my frustrations has been the lack of documentation. As far as I have been able to determine, the Resources category of this forum serves as the main repository of OpenMandriva documentation, and while the articles are useful (and Iāve contributed to it), itās a jumbled mess. Itās not easy for human beings to find stuff in there without browsing the whole list, and thereās nothing that calls it out as documentation for an AI to be trained on it.
The other option is the wiki, which doesnāt seem to be a real wiki, as thereās no obvious way to contribute articles for it. But at least itās a documentation repository. If it had more material, it would help OM get traction when somebody (as inevitably will happen) asks an AI to help them with their systems. Right now, the best information is in the forum, and thatās just not as authoritative as a defined documentation site.
We have to recognize that as a volunteer organization with limited resources, we just canāt do everything. Iād love to volunteer to be OMās ādocumentation guy,ā but I canāt right now. Iām in a season of life with a job, kids, and other activities that donāt allow me to spend significant time writing OM documentation. I suspect many other people who volunteer some time are in the same situation.
To go back to the original question, the forum and chat rooms are currently the only resort people have (besides AI) to get information and help. So for right now, they are invaluable. They are basically crowd-sourced, live help. People here spend an inordinate amount of time helping people with the same problems over and over again (Iām looking at you, NVidia).
Wouldnāt it be better to collect all that great info and put it into a wiki or a documentation site? Then when somebody asks a question in the forum, you can point to that documentation for troubleshooting and help. If you learn something new, you can add it to the article. Then you can spend less and less time helping one person on one issue, and collect it all to help everybody. And the less time youāre spending helping individual users, the more time you have to actually build OpenMandriva.
So to answer your original question, no, I wouldnāt continue using OMLx if there were no forum or chat rooms, because it would be impossible to use OM without them. Stuff wouldnāt work, and Iād have no guidance on fixing it, other than maybe other distrosā documentation (Arch Wiki). Iād move on. And thatās a barrier to entry. Some people just donāt want to register for a forum and ask a question.
I think a good, crowd-sourced documentation site would be an enormous benefit to OpenMandriva.
I appreciate you putting forth a possible solution.
Regardless of whether an AI or a crowd sources information, it has to be accurate. We wonāt get there without the people with knowledge delegating and training, and people showing up for that.
Right now, more OMLx systems have been broken by AI than fixed as reported between chat and the forum. Like it or not, the mainstream AI does not like us, and is somewhat libelous. There is no fix for that.
The long term solution is probably to use a single place with high availability to host the documentation. That way, AI peers can do what they do. The current way we are doing it produced the complaints you cited.
Exactly. Somebody or a group of trusted individuals could have access to a documentation site to both write docs and approve contributed docs before theyāre published. They could organize the info as it comes in, tag it, and make sure itās all ready for both search engines and AI to crawl. I might be willing to help with that.
Rather than have AIs try statistically to āfill in the gapsā in OM info by substituting info from Fedora and openSUSE, we could make AI our partner in triaging all those support requests and free up more time for devs to, uh, dev.
This section is entirely suggestive. People speaking a different language or from a different background might have a completely different idea of the items listed here:
https://forum.openmandriva.org/faq#be-civil
Itās a moving target. Itās almost a 1:1 copy of this:
There are some people here that think my responses are āhate speechā because I donāt take the time to make the person feel good about themselves, or I donāt agree with them, or I am blunt and abrupt. There are a lot of people in this world that also respond that way. Many donāt speak English.
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Specific languages categories were created upon usersā requests, at that time (a lot of time ago). Currently it seems everyone there is disappeared, which is a pity.
In fact I have a vague memory of a discussion with some Council members about the option to close them and just leave the still actively attended Italian subforum alive.
No Community ā no party! 
And the same also applies to the forum in general as a distributionās forum is the expression of its Community, whatever one may think.
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