Re: [tdf-discuss] [libreoffice-website] [Forum] How will the forum be organized?

Hi Narayan, *,

On Mon, Jan 10, 2011 at 11:41 AM, Narayan Aras <narayanaras@hotmail.com> wrote:

> The following features do not exist in a mail list at all:
> 1. Conduct precise searches (with search parameters).

Oh man, you're so mistaken. mail-archive.com provides far more
powerful search than any forum I've seen so far.

> 2. Split the domain into hierarchical forums, which prevents a mixup of issues.
>   This in turn avoids repeat discussion of the same topic endlessly.

Ha, that's a good one, most forums are full of repeating issues
because people are too lazy to switch to the second page or try one of
the "precise searches" etc.

The only solution to this would be a strict moderation that kills such
duplicates immediately, but there hardly are enough moderators to
close down such messages and move them into the "too lazy to search"
forum...

> 3. It establishes credentials of any user so that a casual visitor instantly knows how much to 
> trust him.

Sorry, but if there is no self control (i.e. other people immediately
writing "This is nonsense", then the system is a failure/it is not
used by enough knowledgeable people and thus useless to those seeking
help.

Besides that rating is useless when you're seeking for help.
<sigh>There was a time, when linux was for geeks only. Users had much
more trouble setting it up, but when you were lucky enough to have
internet access already, it was easy to find a solution by just
entering your searchterms into the altavista webserach engine  or
dejavu (newsgroup search) (yes, that was before the google-era) - any
you almost certainly did find a solution to your problem within the
first results.
Nowadays, while many problems might have that specific problems, all
you find is posts about "I also have this problem" or "push up", "hey,
nobody knows the answer",  or my favorite "solved the problem" -
.oO(nice for  you a*hole, just don't tell others how you solved it)...
Especially annoying are those results you get in a technical forum
that deals with multiple versions or editions, that return results
because people like to list their equipment in the footer and search
happily matches the footer that has nothing to do with the
content..</sigh>

>    (is he a SC member or any other office-holder? How many posts are to his credit?)
> 4. We can check out a particular user by looking at his posts (genuine helper or trouble-maker?)

You can do all that in a mailnglist as well. After all there are
forum-interfaces to mailinglists where you got all that. (although I
find those highly inferior to real mailinglists)

Newsgroups were best, but unfortunately even fewer people would use that...

> [...]
> While I think the forum should be established, I am against setting it up for SilverStripe as 
> well. The reason is simple: It will not be possible to migrate the threads from SilverStripe to 
> Drupal. We should not waste efforts on two fronts.

I'm puzzles where you get the idea that it is wanted to set it up
within silverstripe. I mean I have been reiterating right from the
start, before even working on looking at silverstripe, drupal, etc,
i.e. when writing the requirements that forums, wiki, etc should be
seperate.

And everytime someone wrote "forum" on the list, I was writing the same stuff.

Again: *there will be no forum within silverstripe for end-users* (and
also again: I don't consider the nabble ml-interface a forum in this
regard)

While not speaking on behalf the SC (not even member of the SC) - I
don't think there will ever be a forum hosted on the tdf
infrastructure. Mainly because there are existing forums already, and
also because the mailinglists are the primary way of communication.

ciao
Christian

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