Yes, these are good points: the technicality required for dev work may
actually deter newcomers, and therefore perhaps a higher-level online forum
for beginners to ask questions could lower the barrier to entry. I am
revising my vote in favour of the forum :)

Etienne

On Tue, Jul 18, 2023 at 4:56 PM Distopico <distopico@riseup.net> wrote:

>
> I have been using and participating in other GNU distributions such as
> Trisquel and Parabola, but mostly as beholder/viewer.
>
> After more than 10 year the forum of Trisquel still active, not like 8
> years ago before social media, but is active, and more important is used
> mostly for new user, and non-technical user, also the Trisquel forum is
> well indexed and when you try to find something related with Trisquel
> the forums is the solutions for those issues usuall.y
>
> Trisquel also have mailing list but used mostly for dev/contributor and
> the Irc for also for dev/contributors or more advanced users.
>
> Parabola as well have a forum/Irc/mailing, but in this case the forum is
> not quite active, maybe because the focus of parabola is more advanced
> users, also as Parabola user as well I also check Archlinux
> documentation to try to fix my issues or Archlinux forums because are
> more complete.
>
> So I don't think a forum crate fragmentation, and the Forum is an entry
> place for beginners and unlike Parabola that has the documentation of
> Arch, Guix need to have your own solutions and your own documentation
> and a forum is a good place to build that.
>
> So said that:
> - Forum: A good place for beginner an non-technical user (I guess all
> Guix user require some technical knowledge), also a good place for
> create history and user documentation/solutions.
>
> - Irc: For quick question, developer and contributor discussions and
>   more advanced users (bridge to Matrix would be good).
>
> - Mailing List: For contributors, developers, and more long-terms
>   questions, as well more advanced users.
>
> on the other hand I think that the mailing lists create a more conducive
> environment for debate than the forum itself, but again, for new user a
> Forum is a better place or to find quick solutions which on Irc are hard
> to find.
>
>