Re: [gNewSense-users] Changing the forum

[Ali Gunduz]

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 8:42 PM, Brian Brazil <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> This conversation has been had before, I haven't change my mind.
> The effort to maintain an additional piece of software and an RDBMS isn't 
> currently worth it.

I respect Brian's decision, especially since I am not volunteering for
the application of what I was suggesting.

On Wed, Aug 20, 2008 at 9:42 PM, Yavor Doganov <address@hidden> wrote:
>
> I didn't know that gNS had a forum.
>
> Why not just teach all the "forum people" to learn the basics of
> electronic communication -- how to cite properly, avoid top-posting,
> etc. and learn the principle of avoiding annoying others and
> respecting their time -- and finally, annihilate the forum (and all
> nefarious facilities of that kind) once and for all?  It is a
> nuisance, unmaintainable, un-followable and un-replyable mess, and a
> genuinely bad idea just like the "invention" of HTML mail and all the
> gancy (sic) things that followed it.

For better or worse, it has become the convention to provide user
support over a web forum (and IRC) and use the mailing lists for
development. The actuality of this convention can also be seen in the
gNewSense faclities, since the forum is full of user issues whereas
messages containing such issues are only a minority here in the list.
Similarly, when ubuntu-modules update disabled my wireless card
support, I headed to the forum and the IRC channel for a quick
diagnosis, but posted my announcement of the turkish translationwww
here.

I have seen the forum features used very effectively especially in
tutorial making, where the first post is the how-to and may be
continuously tweaked according to the incoming feedback. Additionally,
I do not think anyone here would want to see this list flooded with
irrelevant or inconsistent messages that the newcomers invariably
bring. Such messages are easy to ignore (or be corrected) in a forum
environment.

Yet, I do not claim that web forums are, in any way, superior to the
mailing lists, since I am not very familiar with mailing lists. (I
have been occasionally reading some parts of them for a year or so but
started actually using them only a week ago. And, I am discovering how
useful they actually are.)

However, what I was suggesting was, if we are going to have a forum
(which is linked in the left hand menu, whereas this list is not), we
should have a more usable one. On the other hand, if we prefer to only
have a platform proper for "the basics of electronic communication",
then we should start acting on it instead of maintaining a diversion
starting right on the home page.

> Not that I want to sound ironic, but why didn't you post this request
> to the forum?  (Hint: Because no sane person reads forums, and it
> would be like a voice in a desert.  Even people who read them can't
> follow all the possible posts, simply because that's not feasible and
> doesn't scale even in the slightest way.)

One reason I came up with this whole suggestion was because the forum
became more or less unusable for me, along with other users. (The
details are at http://wiki.gnewsense.org/ForumMain/CanNotPostReply)
This is also why I would not start a thread there. The other reason is
my suggestion involved development and this is definitely  the place
for that purpose.

Ali