Re: [libreoffice-website] Forum decision - where do we stand? An attempt of a summary...

Hi Christian,

First off, thanks for doing this. Really helpful!

Le 2011-12-06 12:03, Christian Lohmaier a écrit :
> Hi *,
>
> if you're afraid of long posts, jump to
> ###############################
> ###############################
> and see whether you can answer without reading the whole thing (but
> please read the whole thing, it took a while to write it :-)
>
> seems like we did come a halt regarding moving forward with the forum
> testing/evaluation. It's holiday season, and only a few days left to
> get all your christmas presents, so that's understandable :-)) But
> nevertheless, here's the current status from my POV.
>
> Rationale/What is the goal of all this?
> * Decide upon a forum software to be used for the LibreOffice user
> support forum.
> * Decision is between phpBB and JForum currenlty (unless blockers are raised)
>
> What is the difference (big picture)?
> * JForum setup would be different forums for each language, but with
> shared login across all the forums, so the setup would be similar to
> the user.services.openoffice.org forums.
> * phpBB favors subcategories, everything would be in one single forum,
> with the languages organized in Subcategories.

> * posts can be previewed in both forums (phpBB additionally supports
> saving of drafts)
Useful for users to have saving of drafts.


> * both allow searching (JForum: whole forum or single forum, (single
> category also possible, but advanced searches like this or limiting to
> a date-range not exposed in the currently used theme), phpBB whole
> forum or a selection of forums/subcategories)
I find the phpBB search more useful for a finer grained search. JForum a 
little more frustrating.

> But you were talking about differences‽
> Yes, finally here we go. Most of those originate from the different
> organization of the different languages, and thus are not necessarily
> tied to the platform used, but start with one of the intrinsic
> differences:
> * JForum has "nice" URLs, while phpBB uses URLs with Query parameters
> like ?f=5&t=4
From a user point of view "nice" URLs are better but not that 
important. Yup, phpBB URLs confusing.

> * phpBB-subcategory solution: Renders "recent posts" and "active
> topics" useless for most of the userbase. The language that has most
> user/most post will dominate them, smaller NL-Groups cannot make use
> of it to track changes. This mainly affects unregistered users, but
> nevertheless something to consider. (and also is relevant for
> moderators who cannot tell whether a message is spam or legitimate
> when they don't know the language)
Re: spam and moderators. I see this more of a problem from LibreOffice 
admin organization. If spam is suspected in a unknown language then 
Google Translate is our best friend or someone on the list of moderators 
who would be familiar with the language.

Yes, recent/active posts would be nice to have as unregistered for a 
quick look-ups for NL groups. I think this is a recurring topic on the 
phpBB forums. If we were to adopt phpBB, perhaps our asking for a 
workaround to the phpBB devs would have a little more influence?

> * having all in one single forum would allow to search all languages
> at once, however it is doubtful how useful this is. On the other hand
> when trying to only search for one language, the user has to spot the
> corresponding language in the advanced searchform each time.
> Default/simple search is mostly useless.
> * on the other hand, when the languges are separate, the user has to
> visit another forum to search in another language (but I guess people
> will only search in<native-language>  and<english>  usually, and
> logins can be shared across instances, so people can ask in other
> language-forums without having to register in each of them.
Better to search under one forum. Sometimes search items are quoted in 
one language but over many NL groups. I don't think this is a deal 
breaker as you can search in international and native in either scenario.

> * subcategory solution has the problem that the initial landing page
> is crowded, you can basically only list the top-categories, and then
> the landing page is not really different from a page that just points
> to the various languages.
Yup. Forums admins will have to struggle with this and try to get 
consensus for an overall "good" look for the landing page so that it is 
not too crowded. We should try to keep it as tidy as possible.

> * JForum uses a syntaxhighlighter plugin, so for code-posts you get
> colored output, phpBB (at least currently) only has a plain code-box
> with no syntax-highlighting.
>
> #######################################
> #######################################
> So what is needed now?
> I for myself want a decision on whether we go with the subforum style
> or with separate forum (with shared login) style approach, since this
> one basically settles the question of what forum-platform to use.
> But also if you have complaints about either of the forums, please
> mention them. There are a lot of other forum solutions out there that
> we didn't look at yet. (But having a look at those only makes sense
> when we know the answer to the above question - so I really like to
> have this one sorted out)

I like everything under one roof -- subforum style. I know it will be 
disruptive and painful for our communities but the change will assure 
more of a LibreOffice community feeling and branding cohesion throughout 
the forums.
> What really is missing is feedback of those who will be using the
> forum, i.e. the native-lang groups. There's no point in the admins
> deciding upon one and then receiving lots of complaints about how
> crappy the setup is :-)
>
> So please put the discussion to your native-language group and forward
> the feedback please.
>
> phpBB test-installation is at http://forum-test.libreoffice.org/
> JForum test installation is at
> http://forum-test.libreoffice.org:8080/jforum-2.3.2/
>
> Feel free to register and mess around with the system.
>
> ciao
> Christian
> PS:
> While JForum doesn't use Subcategories in the default setup, there are
> big sites running mods with subforums, like for example
> http://www.coderanch.com/forums/  (>2'500'000 message, almost 240'000
> registered users)
> http://forum.spore.com/jforum as another example, uses a (at first
> sight) vanilla version, and it doesn't hurt apparently, they have
> 3'600'000 posts by a litte more than 84'000 users)
> Neither with phpBB nor with JForum we need to be concerned about large
> number of posts or users. They both will do just fine.
The biggest problem I have with JForums is the search options which are 
very limited, I like the phpBB search options a lot. Otherwise phpBB or 
JForum are fine.

Marc

--
Marc Paré
Marc@MarcPare.com
http://www.parEntreprise.com
parEntreprise.com Supports OpenDocument Formats (ODF)
parEntreprise.com Supports http://www.LibreOffice.org


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