@JorgeCastro From a "normal user" POV, AU now feels a lot as if it were the tech support site for Canonical -- And as far as I can tell, AU isn't being asked if it even wants that.
Putting it bluntly: AU recently gets stuff like the new design - and what we're "supposed to support" - forced onto it. Mind you, I'm not saying that that's bad, I'm saying that the AU community is, for the most part, not involved in it, beyond being "allowed" to give some input. The new design is definitely an improvement, I just flat-out don't like the nature of the process.
@Jin I'm aware. And, again, I'm not saying that it's bad. It's just - as Seth says - weird to the user who's "just" involved with AU, or any other subset that doesn't include the higher levels of the "hierarchy".
Speaking for myself, I actually appreciate when a company lends its design resources on SE sites about their product to keep the branding consistent. Canonical is the only company did that. I wish I could say the same about others (Wordpress, Drupal, Wolfram etc)
@Jin It's great, indeed. And I can appreciate that angle. The other angle is, however, that AU is a comunity initiative - and not a Canonical service. And every now and then, there's much less community to it.
@JorgeCastro I honestly don't know. I just wanted to voice that - to me at least - it sometimes feels a bit like we're presented as unpaid tech support. Given that even the ubuntu forums don't get this much coverage, that's all even more so.
To me, it often looks like this: New version is out, new feature comes up, Canonical declares "Hey, go ask on AU about that, if you need help!" and we sometimes haven't even decided if we actually can or want to help with it. (f.e. Ubuntu One being an offender in some regards)
there are plenty of Canonical people participating here.
I just never imagined someone would think that having people excited about the site and integrate it more into other parts of ubuntu would be a bad thing
And I appreciate that. It's great that there's so much involvement from Canonical. But on the flipside, it leaves some users out of the loop, or gets stuff pushed way over their heads. Heck, just think about how much the chat does for us in terms of getting involved.
@JorgeCastro It's not a "bad" thing, it's just that users like FEichinger and I who aren't Ubuntu members or whatever, sometimes feel lost when AU gets discussed, talked about and changed inside the greater Ubuntu community.
@JorgeCastro That's why I said I don't know what should be changed about it. It's a tough balance - and right now we're moving towards the other extreme, imo.
I'm deeply sorry for breaking this loose. As I said: The decisions that are reached are - for the most part - great. It's the lack of communication with the (AU) community that just feels weird. Sometimes - again: to me at least - it very much feels like it's out of our control and we're just supposed to roll with it.
I'm finding it hard to express the feeling, but here's what it kinda feels like:
For us who aren't connected to Canonical it feels weird because AU is becoming more and more "official" in the Ubuntu world, and we aren't in that world. It's kind of like AU is divided between being a SE site and being a part of Ubuntu.
@Seth I can understand where you're coming from. We've always ridden the "line" between Ubuntu site and Stack Exchange site. IMO, when I became a pro tempor moderator wayyy back ages ago, our goal was always to be ask.ubuntu.com. We wanted to be the canonical (heh, pun!) source for questions and answers. This global nav, the installer mention, being on the application-development juju and ubuntu-one sites have all been steps towards that goal
We just feel sorta left out. This was supposed to be a SE site. It's turned into a Ubuntu site.. and now I feel vulnerable (since I have no Ubuntu connections). Basically that's it..
@JorgeCastro And here comes one big problem: Why do users exclusive to AU need to become Ubuntu members to stay involved with the direction AU takes? That's essentially where this is headed.
@JorgeCastro I'm not sure I even know what an Ubuntu membership is. I don't even understand how Ubuntu works. I can't find good resources either. The Wiki's are a bit too localized.
@FEichinger I don't think anyone likes it when their questions get closed/edited. but that's what keeps SO's quality high. Also, most people(new) don't read the FAQ
another misconception is that the mods close questions.. which isn't true. most of the time it's the community that cast the close votes then the system takes over.
@Jin It's not so much about the nature of SE. There are people that are familiar with SE, but avoid SO like the plague. It's even worse with MSO.
It's really not about the closures, or the edits, or the other stuff that's just part of SE. It's the vile and trigger-happy part of the community that is just impossible to keep somewhat controlled.
There seems to be a bar above the "status bar" with Ubuntu/Community/Development/Ask... it wasn't there before and its wasting space as I would never want to click on any of those.
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I know I can grab the source code from the OpenSSL website - but...
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Is there a tool for t...
I have a ~/photos directory where I keep all my photos. I'd like it to be automatically sync'd to flickr (with their recent generous expansion...) -- all pictures in this directory automatically uploaded to Flickr (visible to me only and without any manipulation/resizing).
Is there a tool for t...
