On 06/10/2009 09:45 AM, Viktor Szakáts wrote:
I don't think Harbour issues are unwelcome on the xHarbour group,
but it may confuse people.
I think the ideal would be able to count on a structure itself, so we
can concentrate on our project without having to give support or get
information about other tools like xHarbour. Because the philosophy of
the Harbor project and can not be compared with this latter because
it would be an underestimate this work so seriously that all you have
done here ...
Yes.
I'm not sure we need a PORTAL.
Viktor, if we put a forum (phpBB or similar) on our website help?
Certainly be necessary to assess the costs of monthly transfer, etc
... But even a forum needs to have a form of authorization to prevent
spam.
Another option would be news as news.harbour-project.org (but do not
know how this works) ...
=(
I ask this just to understand if we can help here from Brazil in any
way ...
Thanks for your support. I used to believe in forums, but cannot
really tell what makes some of them work and some others don't.
Ppl need to be attracted there somehow, and there is nothing worse
than an dead forum.
I'd personally vote yes for a Harbour forum, probably this +
comp.lang.clipper is enough to give user proper support. Given
that users also know about them, feel them comfortable and useful.
I'd at the same time consider deleting our user mailing list and
redirect users to above places, since it seemingly doesn't function
too well, with 10-20 messages per month. User names still cannot
be seen on the web archive page, which makes it even more confusing
to browse it and very non-personal.
IMO ideally we should add the forum to our website to present
a coherent feel for the users, so let's hear what Phil says, is
it possible to setup one? I'd vote for at least phpPP for the
engine, or something better, if there is one.
Also, I'd like to strongly ask others about this, please give as
much input as you can, even if this isn't a development question.
There are probably ppl among us who are much better qualified
to help making the best decision here.
Sorry, I'm a few days behind on reading my mail.
I think there's very little difference between a forum, a newsgroup, a
mailing list or any other form of interactive information exchange.
If we want postings to the user forums, we need to advertise it.
Like a big entry on the site that says Users, ask your questions on this
mailing list to get help fast!
You would have to promote any forum, newsgroup or mailing list to make
it successful.
It has been my experience that any of the three can be abused. Clearly,
newsgroups are abused and that is why many ISP's are dropping the entire
newsgroup structure. Recently, AT&T has told all of their users to find
another way to access newsgroups, they are dropping their newsgroup
service forever. Seems like the handwriting is on the wall for the death
of newsgroups in general.
So, that leaves mailing lists and forums. I have no specific preference
and I've seen both be successful and I've seen both fail. I don't think
the method is as important as having inertia is. Let's try pumping up
the user mailing list, possibly consider renaming it to something the
clearly conveys support.
Forums have really been problematic in being compromised and used for
many bad things, so I tend to stay towards mailing lists.
I think newsgroups are futile.
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