On 03/08/2011 03:30 PM, Vincent Massol wrote: > > On Mar 8, 2011, at 3:04 PM, Sergiu Dumitriu wrote: > >> On 03/08/2011 07:45 AM, Vincent Massol wrote: >>> Hi Andreas, >>> >>> On Mar 7, 2011, at 11:13 PM, Andreas Hahn wrote: >>> >>>> Hi everyone, >>>> >>>> I'd like to make the proposal to drop the existing mailing lists in >>>> favor of a forum (bulletin board) software. >>>> >>>> The objective is to promote the XWiki community discussions to a broader >>>> audience. >>>> >>>> 1) A forum serves like an advertising window as anyone can read the >>>> contributions without subscription. >>> >>> You don't need any subscription to read mailing lists. >>> See http://xwiki.markmail.org/ >>> >>>> 2) Anyone can judge the activity by reading the view count. >>> >>> Same here: >>> http://xwiki.markmail.org/ >>> >>>> 3) New users can get in touch with the community without being urged to >>>> subscribe to a mailing list. >>> >>> How? Even with forums you need to subscribe. >>> >>>> 4) Many people consider mailing lists as spam and prefer not to subscribe >>>> 5) Contributions have a longer visibility and older entries will get >>>> responses >>> >>>> 6) Communication gets more efficient as the same topics won't get >>>> repeatedly discussed >>> >>>> 7) To my experience forums get much better indexed by google as mail >>>> collectors like Nabble , Markmail, e.t.c. >>>> 8) Forums encourage user to user discussions and you will see new users >>>> taking an active role >>>> 9) There should be at least one additional category IMHO: administrators >>>> 10) A forum is more pleasure to read once a topic split into many threads >>>> 11) A forum is beneficial when expecting increasing support requirements >>>> - some real large scale forums were run by just a few moderators >>>> 12) More people will see what a teriffic job the XWiki team does. >>>> >>>> Here's my +1 >>> >>> I have some good news for you: we already have a forum! :) >>> >>> See http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/MailingLists >>> And more specifically: >>> http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/Forum >>> >>> Now if this forum doesn't fit your needs could you explain what >>> requirements you'd have for a forum and which solution you'd pick? >>> I personally liked jive forums but it doesn't exist anymore (it's folded >>> into a full collaboration suite now). >>> >>> Thanks >>> -Vincent >> >> This was thoroughly discussed four years ago, and the conclusion was >> against installing a specific forum, and stick with Nabble as a >> forum-like view of the mailing list activity: >> http://markmail.org/thread/gbdnyb7jbh4ha5ja > > Right I had forgotten about this discussion :) > > I do remember another one though (earlier than the one you pointed) where I > was the one wanting a forum as a way to get more participation. > > What I'd really like to have that we don't currently have is a way to more > visibly see who's participating more and thus encourage participation. A lot > of forum do this by giving points to people who answer questions, then they > get a title and a badge based on these points. Then you can list the top > contributors. > > That said, thanks to markmail, I think our mailing lists have become a lot > more browsable than before and we even get statistics: > http://xwiki.markmail.org/search/?q= > > At some point in the past I looked at jive because it has this point system > and it had the feature to be integrated on top of a mailing list. But since > it disappeared I haven't found any other good option that would allow us to > keep the list too. > > Now we have a real open question as to whether we want to keep our list AND > create a getstatisfaction project for XWiki too (getsatisfaction or another > similar tool). So far we've resisted doing this because it means scattering > our support and thus reducing the support quality level (we cannot monitor > several places easily). There are some guys who post and ask questions about > xwiki on developez.com for example (see http://tinyurl.com/4ftdyly) but since > we don't answer there I believe people either think xwiki is not well > supported or they find their way to the official support location. > > One one hand I'd love to use a tool such as getsatisfaction, OTOH I don't > know how we can manage properly both our lists + getsatisfaction. > > One solution would be to remove the user list and only keep the devs list and > move users to getsatisfaction but I'm not sure how good or bad that would be. > > Anyone having any thoughts on this?
The users list is indeed a bit too intrusive for users. When someone has a problem and wants to get help, they have to subscribe to the mailing list, post their question, then be spammed by other people's problems until they get an answer. A forum would be nicer for this kind of problem, you can watch only the topic you're interested in. On the other hand it's difficult for devs, since a forum-only solution means having to watch the forum all day long. It's pull instead of push, and the pull solution works well for users that only care for their problem, but devs don't react unless they're pushed. That's why a dual view of the messages is good, it lets users mind their problems, while pushing questions to devs. Nabble is good as a forum-over-mail solution. I'd be OK to find a reverse solution, a good forum that has a very good email integration. I'm not OK with devs investigating this, so if the community can thoroughly investigate what can be used, we can implement it. Or, if users think that Nabble is enough, but it only lacks visibility, we can try to increase it's visibility (quick link to it, a more prominent display on the mailing list page, a link from the Support page...). -- Sergiu Dumitriu http://purl.org/net/sergiu/ _______________________________________________ users mailing list [email protected] http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
