Re: [libreoffice-website] Re: On forums for LibreOffice

Hi Michael, *,

On Wed, Apr 27, 2011 at 11:12 PM, Michael Münch <michael@codingmicha.de> wrote:
> I know there are a lot of discussions already going on in this thread
> but do we already have a consensus about linking to webforums not driven
> by the document foundation?

It's not a question who runs the forum - in fact there is no forum run
by "The Document Foundation" - and none is planned, as there are other
forums already, and creating yet another one would just cause
fragmentation of the knowledge, etc. There just is no point in
creating more and more forums.

The problem is with the ads the libreofficeforum.org uses.

> Apart from minor problems, like if one specific forum has to many/the
> wrong type of ads, what do you want to express with such a link. I would
> say most of the visitors will see it as an "we approve and recommend
> this forum" whatever the exact phrasing of the sentence above the links
> will be.

Exactly. And "approving" a forum that shows ads is what I personally
have a problem with. (and others share similar feelings)

> But can you really officially approve a forum that is not running on
> your own infrastructure?

Yes..

> What do you know about the privacy of the
> userdata and if it they are processed accordantly to the different laws

Well, wherever the forum is hosted, it should have proper privacy statements.

> (see the SONY/Apple discussions now in the media). What about rude
> behaviour/harassment in personal messages as an other example. The
> hardest consequence you can take if the forum gets out of hand is to
> remove the link and this is a rather weak one. But that this forum was
> linked officially linked from our website will be remembered much
> longer.

Well if the forum gets out of hands wrt. low quality of answers/no
answers at all or problems with moderators and spamming, the problem
solves itself. And yes, removing the link would be the only option.
But a forum that is treated as a valuable ressource by its users will
not degrade that easily. It's only those forums that don't have a
strong userbase that will rot along.

> [...]
> If somewhat later there are enough resources to build up an forum on own
> infrastructure

It's not about the ressources. It's about whether it makes sense or
not. And IMHO it absolutely doesn't make sense to setup an own
user-support forum.

> with a detailed plan how to connect threads about bugs
> with bugzilla in both directions, how to take input from the forum into
> the mailing lists / teams / committees and how to keep the users up to
> date about the discussions on the mailing lists.

Duplication of that info/forwarding it to relevant parties is up to
the users frequenting the forums.

ciao
Christian

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