Hello Olivier, Your preference for mailing lists is certainly valid. There's a lot of appeal in managing your involvement in a variety of workgroups (and other communities) automatically through your email inbox.
However, forums do have some advantages of their own for some people: + Forums, in general, are easier to browse and search than mailing list archives + We can organize topics in other ways than by mailing list, where messages are "organized" by workgroup/specification (or the catch-all Community mailing list) -- which can be both good and bad + A forum thread leaves a public place to reference information. This will be especially useful for frequently asked questions, as we can direct people to a forum thread that already has the answer. (Or someone can find the answer to their question on their own) + You can subscribe to an individual thread of interest, so you can be notified of activity at a very granular level of your choosing + Newcomers can ask a question on a forum without subscribing themselves to a mailing list, an option that gives them a smaller commitment and a lower barrier to entry. So forums have their charms, and I think they'll be especially appealing to newcomers. But, yes, building a forum is not a passive activity, and to make (and keep) it useful we'll have to have some people committed to posting, responding, and generally involving themselves. But I think it's a worthwhile endeavor. Thanks, Lee |------------> | From: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Olivier Berger <[email protected]> | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | To: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Lee J Reamsnyder/Durham/IBM@IBMUS, [email protected] | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | Date: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |12/14/2011 05:23 PM | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |------------> | Subject: | |------------> >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| |Re: [oslc] OSLC website now has a forum! (Among other additions) | >--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------| Hi. On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 13:36:27 -0500, Lee J Reamsnyder <[email protected]> wrote: > > I rolled out a lot of additions to the OSLC site last night. > > First, I've set up a discussion forum (http://open-services.net/forums/). > This should make it easier to get public discussions going. I'm looking > forward to seeing what people post. You can sign up here: > http://open-services.net/forums/member/register/ (Yes, unfortunately it's > another login for the site.) > I'm quite dubious about the use of fora for such communities... is there some common expectation for OSLC participants to subscribe and participate to these, in addition to mailing lists ? I'm more inclined personaly to push mode communication channels (like mail) rather than pull-mode ones (like fora)... but that's just my own taste. Of course, fora can be good tools, as you don't need to add another "spam source" (a new mailing list) to your subscriptions, just to be able to post a question... but I'm afraid users may then be expecting some response, even though it's yet not clear if much OSLC people will be there to respond. Hope this helps. Best regards, -- Olivier BERGER http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8 Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF Institut TELECOM, SudParis (http://www.it-sudparis.eu/), Evry (France)
