Re: [xwiki-users] Drop mailing lists in favor of a forum software

Hi everyone, I did a quick follow up on what has been said and checked if it's possible to post via email in phpBB. Apparently, hacks for that have been made although they are probably ages old, hacky and prone to errors. See more here: http://area51.phpbb.com/phpBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=24559 Either way, I still like the idea of using common bulletin board software. Receiving forum posts shouldn't be a problem for the developers. The only requirement would be to compose the notification emails in a way the new posts content is also added to the email. This can be a requirement for the system to be. IIRC, phpBB does not do that natively but there are plenty hacks for a lot of things in that software (e.g. http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopic.php?f=70&t=1095015 ). Only downside would be that devs would have to click the link and then the reply button (why not add a reply link in the email, too, saves a click!) to reply. Only downside compared to email replies I see here that a web browser that has the credentials saves is necessary and possibly another click will have to be made. Not saving the credentials obviously increases the number of steps and effort. I would still like to point out that scrapping the Mailing List is not mandatory or can actually be unfortunate for other users who do not care for forum software either. OpenOffice.org has both so I think it is not too bad, although admittedly, XWiki is quite a lot smaller so having both might balance the load between list and board and in the end you have two semi-dead support channels. That is also ignoring that the support answers would be distributed among both, redundancies might increase and supporters would have to use either. Now, another thing I would like to propose instead of switching to a board software at all is just disabling the requirement for subscription on the user list. I did actually post in this thread before the message that made it through because I thought I had already subscribed to this mailing list... apparently I had not. I later did but the post I made on nabble still was not accepted. My point being, while nabble presents a nice board like front end the registration and subscription bits are a bit messy unless you know exactly what you do. It is less intuitive than in most board systems and if you forget to change the mailing list settings you wind up being sent emails and emails you do not care for. Lastly, I think marketing is very important in this regard. First of all, when I go to XWiki.org I see a large number of links on the right side. The ecosystem is pretty good, that one is supposed to hold all projects. But if I read further down I find a bulk of links, half of which I don't need if I am simple user who wants a bit of support. Besides, it is on the right side and like I discussed with some of you on the IRC channel, that is a bit confusing to many users who expect this to be on the left side. Anyway, I know this is WIP for you. Okay, so if I cared enough to read through all of that I get to the Support page, eventually. Here I find... more text. The links are well visible and the idea to make the user follow a scheme before asking is also understandable, while not very user oriented. I think that page should feature a number of larger buttons to go to the three most important pages which would be Forum, Mailing List and FAQ (in no particular order here). Below that you can still keep much of the current, IMO. Now, however, I probably get to MailingLists page and most of the page on my FullHD resolution is plastered with information about the Mailing Lists and rather tiny somewhere at the end there I see Forum. I am pointing out all of this because I remember how some of you on the IRC channel actually pointed out to me there is a way to view the lists like a Forum. Back to the third section... I see... another sentence, yet more reading to do before finally asking my question. Chances are I hit the Nabble link because I heard Nabble at some point in time and am sort of a quick clicker... which I am... which makes me fail because Nabble points to Nabble and not the XWiki Nabble Forum. If I finally got through to Nabble I now have to subscribe (2 steps), turn of the email delivery and then I can finally ask for support. Also note that the Support page on www.xwiki.org has no link to the IRC page either. I got to go. Still hope this is a little useful to you. Regards, Johannes -- View this message in context: http://xwiki.475771.n2.nabble.com/Drop-mailing-lists-in-favor-of-a-forum-so… Sent from the XWiki- Users mailing list archive at Nabble.com.