602573 - Please create a mailing list for Thunderbird users

Status: RESOLVED WONTFIX

(Thunderbird :: General, defect)

Description

[JD]

User-Agent:       Mozilla/5.0 (X11; U; Linux i686; en-US; rv:1.9.2.7) Gecko/20100723 Fedora/3.6.7-1.fc13 Firefox/3.6.7
Build Identifier: thunderbird-3.1.4-1.fc13.i686

I find it very very difficult to get answers to thunderbird questions or problems. The current online help methods provided on the mozilla/thunderbird site are woefully inadequate.
And while you're at it, also create a browsable archive of the mailing list
so people can search it for other user's questions and answers.


Reproducible: Always

Comment 1

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

It would be helpful to understand what venues you've already tried for what specific questions and problems.  Can you elaborate?

Note that support.mozillamessaging.com is where we generally encourage people to go first, and it has a link to the GetSatisfaction community that we use.

Comment 2

[JD]

Look, everytime we run into a problem, it becomes a major expedition to find the answer for it using your existing faq.
We have no idea what terms would trigger finding the correct answers in the faq.
We do not want to go on a wild goose chase to find an answer to a problem that
might very well be in the faq but not stated in the user's way of expressing the problem. So, most of the time user do not get any real hits (i.e real answers) to the problems they face.
A user mailing list would be better able to let the users read a user's problem and be able to zero in on it with less than a handful of exchanges.

Comment 3

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

I'm not claiming that your concern is invalid; I'm trying to understand it in more detail.

The reason I'm asking for more details is because we have a fallback mechanism already, and it's linked to from that page: a GetSatisfaction web community.  If directly people there is not the right solution for whatever problems you're running into, I'd like to understand more about why.

It's also possible that we could be doing a significantly better job of making the existence of the GetSat forum clearer to people and leading them there.  Have you been aware of it's existence?

Comment 4

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Er, I meant "directing" when I said "directly".

Comment 5

[JD]

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Thunderbird/Support/GetSatisfaction/README

Yes I read it. And what a horribly conceived notion of how to get help.
Your opinon of this GetSatisfaction is horribly unsatifactory.

Open it up! We need a mailing list like so many other things "linux"!

Comment 6

[Jim Porter (:squib)]

Is there something wrong with mozilla.support.thunderbird?

Comment 7

[Dan Mosedale (:dmosedale, :dmose)]

Indeed, that's also available as a mailing list, as described at http://www.mozilla.org/about/forums/>.

We're nonetheless mostly focusing on GetSatisfaction as a place for users to help each others.  JD, if you wish for someone at Mozilla to create a new mailing list, you're going to have to provide an extremely compelling rationale for why the existing fora (and, in particular, GetSat) are insufficient.  It is our current belief that GS is the most appropriate way forward here.

Of course, you're entirely welcome to create your own mailing list for Thunderbird discussion using (for example) Google Groups or some similar mechanism.

Comment 8

[Wayne Mery (:wsmwk)]

There are also venues for people who use nightly builds. 

No response to comment 7. So resolution = WONTFIX.