Fair point indeed, I'll agree first up that anything relevant on the maillists should go onto the xwiki.org site - totally valid. Being on sevreal different forums (from technical to consumer), and different maillists, I think it's true that there is no one solution. A really good user group tool is one that is workable via forum and email (such as google groups), in this way answers come to you, but you can also easily research problems (and answer older problems too). I've had to dig a few times through the maillist and usually end up re-emailing the list - as much as 90% of the time; purely as it's not an easily searchable interface. Forums are designed to be easily searchable (the ones I've used anyway, phpBB being the most flexible); and are also designed with the "sticky/announcement" features built in - so important/often-asked topics can be answered quickly, without re-posting. Know what would really rock? Creating a class and relevant documents to mimic a forum within the xwiki.org site; linked into the email lists (so that "topics" or master documents are automatically created). XWiki already has a tagging interface (haven't used it much yet though myself), and it would be quite a nice improvement over the older - dated - FAQ class example. Perhaps what would help is to setup the proposed system for review; and we can see how that works. To be perfectly honest, if folks are really behind a forum, as to the cost of setting up forums/etc.. there are a lot of free hosting solutions that offer phpBB, and variants of it (including phpBB themselves); so the cost of it is not too prohibitive, especially if it's run by users. And yeah, if folks are happy to buy into the idea; I'll set it up and help anyone else interested in assisting with maintaining it (ensuring xwiki devs have logon details to the admin account naturally, just in case). ________________________________ From: Vincent Massol [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 14 March 2007 15:55 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [xwiki-users] Do we need a forum? On Mar 14, 2007, at 4:45 PM, Esbach, Brandon wrote: Actually, I'd be inclined to say the pro's far exceed the cons on a forum... Actually, I'd be inclined to say that cons far exceed the pros on a forum :-) What this means is that you need to answer to the points I've raised against a forum. You can't just say you'd like one. In my post I've answered Sergiu's points and proposed an alternative solution. I'm curious to know why you think the proposed solution is not good enough. In the case we agree to have a forum, does this mean you're willing to set it up, administer it and pay for the cost of the hardware? :) Thanks -Vincent ________________________________ From: Martin Barrs [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: 14 March 2007 15:42 To: [email protected] Subject: RE: [xwiki-users] Do we need a forum? Forum - Yes. ________________________________ From: Sergiu Dumitriu [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 4:36 PM To: [email protected] Subject: [xwiki-users] Do we need a forum? Hi, We're currently using mailing lists and IRC (and person2person chats) for answering user questions. But: - IRC has no history (yet; when's that bot coming online?) - mailing lists are not that easy to browse and search. Should we make a forum for users? Pro - One place where users can find information, organized by topics - Users are used to posting on forums, and we might get a larger community Con - Soon it will get too crowded, and (some) developers won't have the time to answer all the emails; we need a strong community, and advanced users knowing the code, and for this we need documentation As a developer, I'd stick to mailing lists. As a user, I'd say forum. What's your opinion? -- http://purl.org/net/sergiu -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] mailing list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected] For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

Given that it'd be difficult to justify completely abolishing the mailing lists in favor of forums, we'd need to keep both, and having two information sources to follow is just worse in my opinion. Thousands of other open source projects that have way higher and broader activity than XWiki use mailing lists as the only communication mechanism and they manage fine. After initial shock, users generally learn to cope with high mailing list volume... and/or change their mail client. My medicine for managing open source mailing lists is gmail and nabble and I'm -1 for XWiki forums. Kalle On 3/14/07, Vincent Massol <[email protected]> wrote:

On Mar 14, 2007, at 5:47 PM, Esbach, Brandon wrote:

Fair point indeed,

I'll agree first up that anything relevant on the maillists should go onto the xwiki.org site - totally valid.

Being on sevreal different forums (from technical to consumer), and different maillists, I think it's true that there is no one solution. A really good user group tool is one that is workable via forum and email (such as google groups), in this way answers come to you, but you can also easily research problems (and answer older problems too). I've had to dig a few times through the maillist and usually end up re-emailing the list - as much as 90% of the time; purely as it's not an easily searchable interface. Forums are designed to be easily searchable (the ones I've used anyway, phpBB being the most flexible); and are also designed with the "sticky/announcement" features built in - so important/often-asked topics can be answered quickly, without re-posting.

I haven't used Nabble myself (except for searching) but users of it tell me they get this. Might be good to try it out and see if it fits the bill (I don't think it has to do 100% what forum tools like phpBB do to be good enough for us).

Know what would really rock? Creating a class and relevant documents to mimic a forum within the xwiki.org site; linked into the email lists (so that "topics" or master documents are automatically created). XWiki already has a tagging interface (haven't used it much yet though myself), and it would be quite a nice improvement over the older - dated - FAQ class example.

I knew this was coming... :) BTW did you see my answer to Catalin about the Collaborative RSS Watch tool?

Perhaps what would help is to setup the proposed system for review; and we can see how that works.

To be perfectly honest, if folks are really behind a forum, as to the cost of setting up forums/etc.. there are a lot of free hosting solutions that offer phpBB, and variants of it (including phpBB themselves); so the cost of it is not too prohibitive, especially if it's run by users.

For any of these solutions we would need to keep our mailing lists so the system would have to be usable either from the forum or from the mailing list. But I guess they all do this. I'd hate to loose the list.

And yeah, if folks are happy to buy into the idea; I'll set it up and help anyone else interested in assisting with maintaining it (ensuring xwiki devs have logon details to the admin account naturally, just in case).

Cool! :)

I'd still like to know why Mailing List + Nabble (as we have it today) doesn't fit the bill.

Thanks -Vincent

*From:* Vincent Massol [mailto:[email protected] <[email protected]>] *Sent:* 14 March 2007 15:55 *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* Re: [xwiki-users] Do we need a forum?

On Mar 14, 2007, at 4:45 PM, Esbach, Brandon wrote:

Actually, I'd be inclined to say the pro's far exceed the cons on a forum...

Actually, I'd be inclined to say that cons far exceed the pros on a forum :-)

What this means is that you need to answer to the points I've raised against a forum. You can't just say you'd like one. In my post I've answered Sergiu's points and proposed an alternative solution. I'm curious to know why you think the proposed solution is not good enough.

In the case we agree to have a forum, does this mean you're willing to set it up, administer it and pay for the cost of the hardware? :)

Thanks -Vincent

------------------------------ *From:* Martin Barrs [mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>]

*Sent:* 14 March 2007 15:42 *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* RE: [xwiki-users] Do we need a forum?

Forum - Yes.

------------------------------ *From:* Sergiu Dumitriu [mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]>]

*Sent:* Tuesday, March 13, 2007 4:36 PM *To:* [email protected] *Subject:* [xwiki-users] Do we need a forum?

Hi,

We're currently using mailing lists and IRC (and person2person chats) for answering user questions. But: - IRC has no history (yet; when's that bot coming online?) - mailing lists are not that easy to browse and search.

Should we make a forum for users?

Pro - One place where users can find information, organized by topics - Users are used to posting on forums, and we might get a larger community Con - Soon it will get too crowded, and (some) developers won't have the time to answer all the emails; we need a strong community, and advanced users knowing the code, and for this we need documentation

As a developer, I'd stick to mailing lists. As a user, I'd say forum.

What's your opinion?

-- http://purl.org/net/sergiu -- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]> For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help<[email protected]?subject=help> ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

-- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected]<[email protected]> For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help<[email protected]?subject=help> ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws

-- You receive this message as a subscriber of the [email protected] list. To unsubscribe: mailto:[email protected] For general help: mailto:[email protected]?subject=help ObjectWeb mailing lists service home page: http://www.objectweb.org/wws