discuss: Thread: TLDP forums?

We have completed the first task of creating the Wiki. But now we have to
accomplish even harder tasks. In order to do that work better and to
strengthen our social connections,  we need  a place where we all could
discuss some questions and share opinions and thoughts.
What do you think about forum?  Since we have a machine now it is not so
hard to install it. I think we should use every resource we have. So, we
have a server and I suspect that server is not under high load so, it is
better to use it.

-- 
Svetoslav Chukov

On Tuesday 04 November 2008 07:02 am, Svetoslav Chukov wrote:
> What do you think about forum?  

Just my $.02--I much prefer an email list--I'll (nominally at least) at 
least "lurk" in it, I go to forums (and wikis) only if I have a 
specific problem I'm trying to solve.

Randy Kramer
-- 
I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I created a video 
instead.--with apologies to Cicero, et.al.

Quoting Svetoslav Chukov ####@####.####

> We have completed the first task of creating the Wiki. But now we have to
> accomplish even harder tasks. In order to do that work better and to
> strengthen our social connections,  we need  a place where we all could
> discuss some questions and share opinions and thoughts.
> What do you think about forum?

That sounds like a perfect description of this mailing list.

-- 
Cheers,                "I'm sorry Dan, what's right isn't always popular, 
Rick Moen              and what's popular isn't always right."
####@####.####                     -- George R. Moscone, Nov. 27, 1978

Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting Svetoslav Chukov ####@####.####
> 
> > We have completed the first task of creating the Wiki. But now we have to
> > accomplish even harder tasks. In order to do that work better and to
> > strengthen our social connections,  we need  a place where we all could
> > discuss some questions and share opinions and thoughts.
> > What do you think about forum?
> 
> That sounds like a perfect description of this mailing list.

I also prefer mailing lists but know of people that prefer forums.

Anyone know of a mailing list <-> forum gateway setup so we can have both?
Seems like a common enough feature. I don't know of many forum packages,
just phpbb which supports it in v2. 

-- 

John Eikenberry
####@####.#### - http://zhar.net]
______________________________________________________________
"Perfection is attained, not when no more can be added, but when no more can be
removed." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Quoting John Eikenberry ####@####.####

> I also prefer mailing lists but know of people that prefer forums.

OK, gang, obligatory list of arguments that need to be aired whenever
and wherever this sort of thing is proposed -- posted in hopes of
shortening the cycle on this ritualised discussion.


Web forums characteristically have really bad (nonexistent) threading,
horribly inflexible reply modes, no possibility of scoring/killfile
features, and poor prominence in Google and similar indexes.  The
more-thoughtful contributors tend over time to shy away from
contributing at all, because they aren't (easily) able to retain 
usable local copies of their own (and others' related) posts, such
that, when inevitably the Web forum collapses and disappears, their
work gets lost.  By the time a contributor has seen a few well-crafted
posts vanish off the Internet in that fashion, it's very common for the
contributor to say "Screw this", and (mostly) abandon Web forums for
more-robust, better technology such as mailing lists and newsgroups.

So, you end up with a situation where the Web forums are dominated by
people who have no idea what they're talking about, propagating
misinformation to each other (see, e.g., ubuntuforums.org and the long
tradition there of really bad advice about how to best install
non-packaged software).

The "Web forum" packages of my experience tend to be extremely slowly
performing for commodity hardware, prone to severe congestion when they 
get significant levels of traffic, and prone to back-end database
problems requiring intensive administration.  (Think you have an
exception?  Build it and show us.)

Are you offering to be the ongoing sysadmin to build, run, maintain, and
debug such a system, in any event?  Is anyone here making that offer?
Do we all seriously have nothing better to do with limited volunteer
time and resources?

(Is this mailing list determined to rehash _every single_ dumb argument
that has plagued the Internet?)

John Eikenberry wrote:

> Rick Moen wrote:
> 
> > Quoting Svetoslav Chukov ####@####.####
> > 
> > > We have completed the first task of creating the Wiki. But now we have to
> > > accomplish even harder tasks. In order to do that work better and to
> > > strengthen our social connections,  we need  a place where we all could
> > > discuss some questions and share opinions and thoughts.
> > > What do you think about forum?
> > 
> > That sounds like a perfect description of this mailing list.
> 
> I also prefer mailing lists but know of people that prefer forums.
> 
> Anyone know of a mailing list <-> forum gateway setup so we can have both?

Wikipedia has a few lists:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software_(PHP)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_internet_forum_software_(other)

> Seems like a common enough feature. I don't know of many forum packages,
> just phpbb which supports it in v2. 
 

-- 

John Eikenberry
####@####.#### - http://zhar.net]
______________________________________________________________
"Perfection is attained, not when no more can be added, but when no more can be
removed." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Oh, and I forgot to mention:

Quoting John Eikenberry ####@####.####

> Anyone know of a mailing list <-> forum gateway setup so we can have both?

To the extent that they exist and actually work, one result is that the
mailing list gets hit with a barrage of thread-breaking and badly formatted 
posts gatewayed from the Web forum.  So, you've now injured your mailing list.

Rick Moen wrote:

> Quoting John Eikenberry ####@####.####
> 
> > I also prefer mailing lists but know of people that prefer forums.
> 
> OK, gang, obligatory list of arguments that need to be aired whenever
> and wherever this sort of thing is proposed -- posted in hopes of
> shortening the cycle on this ritualised discussion.
<snip excellent list of reasons why forums suck> 

We currently have a great mailing list archive setup. Couldn't we just
rework the way the current mailing lists are presented to make them easier
to find and use.

Direct links to the current months archives along with some CSS work could
give the archives enough of a forum-like feel to make them more inviting to
those used to forums and wouldn't be that much work.

-- 

John Eikenberry
####@####.#### - http://zhar.net]
______________________________________________________________
"Perfection is attained, not when no more can be added, but when no more can be
removed." -- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

Svetoslav Chukov a écrit :

> What do you think about forum? 

to add to what have already been said by others, I think a forum is
not what the LDP is good for.

LDP goal is to build a managed documentation (ie a documentation with
authors). We only have a need for communication between the authors,
not to do interactive hotline.

We have all the server power to do whatever we want. We have undergo a
design (re)setup and we can also revamp the mailing lists archives.

What we can do (if Sergius is able to do, I'm not able to - and he's
in vacations) is to have in sync the mailing list and a *news* server.
this don't make any problem.

may be simply add LDP discuss to gmane?? (if it's not already the case??)

I know I have often both gmane and mail accounts for the same list, as
so I don't miss a post and if, by error, I delete a mail I can find it
back (the problem, with archives is that the e-mails are obfuscated
and so one can't reply)

of course having news counterpart may add to the spam sent to users...

jdd

-- 
jdd for the Linux Documentation Project
http://wiki.tldp.org
http://www.dodin.net