Re: [orca-list] scope of this list

[Michael Whapples <mwhapples aim com>]

Hello,
I guess much of what I have to say has probably already been said, 
however I will give my view so as to help in show what the weighting of 
views might be.

While the idea of keeping list to there topics and try and do that 
tightly might sound desirable, I think it isn't helpful and may actually 
be negative.

Firstly it isn't always clear as to what is on and off topic for a list. 
OK, some criteria has been laid out, however even that has grey areas. 
Where might such a question as "The distribution I use (distribution X) 
has served me well, I find that now there integration of gnome 
accessibility has become poorer and so distribution X is poor to use. 
What distributions might people suggest me to try and use which will 
give me a good experience of using gnome with orca? Please keep in mind 
that I have come from distribution X and I like how that distribution 
works for system administration (IE. its package manager, etc)." Well it 
might belong on the orca-list as I want to know about the experience of 
using Orca, but I feel under what has been said may be it should be on 
the blinux list as I am really asking about the accessibility of 
distributions. Another approach might say, well you really should be 
going to the lists/forums of distribution X and trying to get them to 
fix the accessibility issues. Also may be other distribution X users 
might be able to point you towards other distributions which have 
similar tools for system administration. I guess yet another approach 
might be to say, have in mind some distributions you are interested in 
(IE. for this case those which are similar to distribution X) and then 
go round those distribution lists asking how well accessibility works on 
those distributions.

So for a very simple looking question we have potentially four 
approaches of where to go. This leads to my second point, with so many 
options for where might be appropriate to ask, should on topic rules be 
too strict then this may lead to someone being too concerned for being 
told "clear off this is not the list for that" that they may just decide 
to not ask the question at all. Should people feel unable to ask 
questions they need to know the answer to, either they will be very 
unproductive or they may decide to give up on Linux and Orca as they 
cannot get what they need to do done.

Even more technical questions which may seem more Orca specific may 
actually not turn out to really be an Orca issue. An example is that on 
my archlinux system libreoffice seems to be inaccessible with Orca. This 
might be an LibreOffice issue, it might be an Orca issue, it might be 
something to do with at-spi or it may even be an ArchLinux specific 
issue. Other than the second case, I guess under what you say report the 
issue here could be off topic.

I feel Orca is too connected with other parts of the system to be 
properly separated from them at times, therefore there are times when 
you will have to live with some overlap.

Finally, although I am saying we should be accepting of the scope being 
broader than Orca and just Orca, we should all try and use some common 
sense when posting. May be asking questions like: Is this something of 
interest to Orca users (eg. there was a post about voiceman, while not 
about Orca it was something which I might have been interested in, so I 
would still consider relevant), might Orca users/developers be the best 
people to assist with this or are there better people to ask.

OK, I did say finally on the last paragraph, but this just occurred to 
me, may be the best response those of us in the know can do if there is 
a clearly off topic posting is to try and educate the person on where to 
go. Politely point out that this is the Orca list, people here use Orca 
but probably will use a variety of distributions and so will not be an 
expert in that specific matter and suggest that they may find experts in 
the matter on another list (name the list).

Michael Whapples
On -10/01/37 20:59, Jon wrote:
> Dear all,
>
> A general note,
> I feel that the orca list has been diluted recently to include a lot of topics
> that belong on several other lists. I don't know if you feel the same.
>
> I know that it would be good to have one point of contact, but this
> means that we all have to see unrelated posts and that we get less
> productive.
>
>
> Please remember:
> * the orca list, is for discussing orca related problems, and how a
> particular problem should be solved if we have alternatives.
> * general linux discussions and accessibility of each distro may be
> discussed on the blinux list
> * vinux related questions should be on the vinux mailing list
> * ubuntu/unity problems may be best discusssed on the ubuntu
> accessibility mailing list.
>
> Do people feel the same/any other views?
>
> Thank you