With the migration to Ubuntu Discourse imminent, I thought I'd say a final "thank you" to all who helped me on here or worked with me to support someone else. This was an enjoyable and welcoming forum.
There was patient and kind support provided, particularly to people who had challenging personal circumstances (even those struggling for housing), those with different capabilities or capacity, or who were just a bit of a character for whatever reason. It was great to be a part of that effort as well as receive that support.
I'd also like to thank the moderators who made it all work. You were extremely pro-active with spam or off-topic content, listening to the members concerns, and ten times out of ten I think you made the 'right' calls. This sort of rare online space doesn't exist without that effort and, I'd say (earnestly), wisdom and fair judgment.
I'm sure I'll see you all around somewhere - but my focus is going to be elsewhere for a while.
This has always been a quietly intelligent forum, enjoyable to visit, even if I haven’t contribute much.
I have reactivated my old account over at the main Ubuntu forum, ready for the switch, but my name is in another language and I feel like a refugee over there.
Actually is surprises me how quickly this site has been abandoned and how quickly some have even moved on from Ubuntu Mate. I agree with you on this forum, it is the best one I have ever been involved in.
I must say that I’ve never seen a forum or community as good as this one.
All good things have an end.
And the guys who were keen to help didn’t get enough thanks… so, get a bundle of such thanks just now
Lets ‘meet’ on one of the proposed alternatives
That's great! I'm also in discourse.ubuntu.com ("Ubuntu Discourse" / "Ubuntu Community Hub") with the same name ("Ricardo Dias Marques"), same username ("ricmarques") and same avatar that I use here in the "Ubuntu MATE Community"). In my case, I'm in "Ubuntu Discourse" since October 2022:
This community was the first Discourse instance I ever used, so I had seen it evolve. When I got to understand the way it was designed (to not be another traditional forum software, focus on quality of discussion) then I grew to appreciate its values and tried to carry them forward. Like "criticize ideas, not people".
It is just a tool though. It can't 'fix' communities with RTFM, pointing fingers or elitist attitudes "you posted in the wrong category again! stop it!" which remind me of vBulletin and phpBB forums with whole ranking systems, whereas Discourse was all about trust levels.
Thank you, Luke, for all you've done. Everything you did for the Community has been, and will always be much appreciated ... especially taking care of the preservation of the past history as a still accessible archive!
I had good experiences with old forum systems like vBulletin and phpBB, those were, and still are, all about a specific order, categories, subcategories, and all that. Which is great. I started hanging around forums like those around the years 1999, 2000. Even became mod, supermod and then admin on an old vBulletin forum back then.
But Discourse is different. It’s not new; I remember participating in a couple Discourse forums 10 years ago or so. To me, Discourse is kind of like the old bulletin boards, where there were no categories and it was ll an endless stream of threads and all replies linked below each one of them. The difference as I see it (I might be wrong) is that on Discourse, categories and sections are set by tags, kind of.
Truth is, a community is defined by its members, both users and staff. This Ubuntu MATE community feels like an actual community whereas Ubuntu Discourse doesn’t. I think the old Ubuntu forums were more a big community than anything else.
Anyways, thank you to everyone, this has been a great ride, I was lurking this community a few years before becoming a member, we’ll see each other at the other Discourse.
Cheers!
EDIT: I was just checking the Flavors & Remixes category at Ubuntu Discourse, and I see that Lubuntu category seems to be the most active one, somehow they managed to make their little corner to be their own without interference from above. Same can be done with Ubuntu MATE category.
!
