I can see problems with separating the forums away, i can already see
people complain "Oh, they only have an unofficial forum".
I say keep the forum where it is - emphasize the _user_ forum aspect,
after all the users are an important part of the distro, which is the
same way we/I am trying to peddle the AUR to the masses. I'd like to
see more flagging of the "devs don't come here much, use the list" but
the phpbb software does not work well in this regard - with better
software we could get much more information over to the users.
Oh, we just got an AUR link next to flyspray and the wiki - what about
some mailing list links? That'd help.
I'll just also say that the people who favour the mailing list may be
being a bit shortsighted. My main fear for promoting the lists too much
is that you are just going to get clueless muppets spamming the crap out
of the lists with inane rubbish that really isn't worth the attention of
the dev team. We can deal with that ok on the forums but far here it is
harder, i think. The upshot of that I forsee is the devs retreating
even more and using non-public mailing lists, which might not be so great.
I've made the last point several times but people rarely pick up on it.
Phil
cactus wrote:
Jason Chu wrote:
What are the forums really useful for these days anyway? ;o)
Maybe talk about it on the mailing list.
Jason
Is this the prevailing stance about the forums by the dev team?
(sorry to use you as an example Jason)
I think with the current setup, there is an expectation that the users
have, since the forums are "official" and listed on the archlinux.org
subdomain, that it is somehow supported and visited by the dev team.
If the devs are not doing so, then I think it will only cause more
issues in the long run. If you want the "meat" of the discussions to
exist on the mailing list, then maybe it is time for few slight changes.
I see a few potential avenues:
1) Spin off the user forums to another domain. Something like
"forums.archusers.org", and have the archusers.org domain managed
entirely by the userbase (forum moderators/TUs). Have it be its own
seperate entity. Then users will know that it is not part of official
arch, and will likely bring more major issues to irc and to the
mailing lists, while seeking day to day help in the unofficial user
forums.
2) Keep the current setup, but add some language to the front page
that the forums are "unsupported user forums". Make the same statement
on the top of the forum header. Clarification could be added that the
devs do actively use the forums.
3) Add a special forum category (developer corner) or something, much
like the new aur category, and have the forum moderator team police it
far more closely than the other forum areas..so that the devs can find
some use out of it without having to deal with regular forum babble.
Maybe even attempt to setup a forum to mail gateway on just that
specific forum category.
Just a couple of ideas to help deal with the current situation. It
currently does seem that users expect the devs to use the forums, and
it seems the devs expect the users to use the mailing lists. Realize,
I am using the term "expect" loosly, with an eye towards a
generalization of percieved expectations. Any clarity that can be
added to the situation would be more helpful in the longrun, I believe.
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