On Tue, 2010-05-25 at 18:54 +0200, Martin Bähr wrote: > hi, > > after reading todays discussion on our limited capacity to manage forums > because to many spam users sign up and it is extra work to monitor yet > another area the following two random ideas popped in my head: >
In the interest of framing the discussion, the initial situation was that our forum has been down with a blank page for a while. I've poked TForsman to do something about it a couple of times and yesterday he got in touch with Ken and eventually Stef got it up and running again, which prompted Og Maciel -- wearing his community manager hat -- to say (and I quote): <OgMaciel> thing is, we're really short staffed and I feel that the forum is not really ready to be re-opened... (...) I just don't want to give the community the impression we have an active forum and then have this image crumble down when it becomes obvious to others that we can't maintain it. (Og: Please chip in if you feel you need to elaborate on this) I, for one, would like to take this opportunity to thank TForsman and Stef for the initiative :) The larger picture here is creating and maintaining proper communication channels for developers as well as new and existing users. We primarily discussed using Google Groups vs. a Forum and how to aggregate information so that important user feedback and questions aren't lost. And for the record, I doubt that we're the first project looking for a good solution for this. So maybe we should instead focus on what others have done that worked? Before FL went dormant, I tried to get a picture of the communication infra we have in place. My notes can be found here: http://issues.foresightlinux.org/browse/IT-69 > moderate forum registration: > don't allow spambots to sign up by requesting a verbal description of why > the user wants to join. or have them request a forum account in person > on irc. (this may not be worth the effort, but it would certainly help > cut down spam registrations) > Spam is a problem that everyone have to deal with. It sucks, but it's life. The only interesting question is: Who in FL would like to cultivate and run a user <-> user communication channel? Once that someone steps forward, everyone else need to back that person up and help with the technical details surrounding spam prevention and weeding. Scott (smerp) put it this way: Any community of any size needs to dedicate a person to just that task At least, on a daily basis. Any X is better than none; pick ONE and use it well. > > can we turn the issue tracker into a forum? > after all most forum posts will be questions that need an answer from > devs, not sozialising. we would just need a simplified form that would > create an issue with a default priority and a category eg "user > question". > > this has a few advantages: > we can track all questions and make sure they get answers. > we can mark answered questions as done. > we can elevate questions that point to bugs to a real issue. > we can assign questions to the right person to answer. > if there is a public filter that can be linked to, people can browse the > questions. > users can see the status of a question, and thus have more assurance > that the answer solves the problem. > people should get used to browsing and using the issue tracker for issues > anyways. > any user can post to any issue already, thus a discussion like in a > forum is possible. > also, categories can be finetuned and be like a list of different > forums with different topics. > > this would make the forum more like a helpdesk, which in a way is is, i > think, and the difference from a helpdesk to an issue tracker is not > large, it's all just a question of appearance. > Launchpad has many of the features outlined above, suggesting that your ideas certainly have merit. Canonical also had the budget and the manpower to develop such a thing themselves in the first place, while realistically, we don't. Therefore, in my humble opinion, prudence dictates that: * We use a turnkey solution that requires minimum technical maintenance once it has been set up. * We use a solution that has good aggregation tools so that developers and advanced users who want to follow user discussion or just gauge user concerns can do that with a minimum of hassle. * We focus on how the user <-> user communications infra supports the goal of building a healthy contributor base. Just getting 5 extra skilled or semi-skilled contributors would be heaven. * We investigate what other (succesful) projects have done that worked for them and why. >From my perspective, we therefore need to explore the viability of running our own forum vs. Google Groups vs. having a forum at linuxquestions.org. And then we need to keep working on getting our own house in order re. documentation aimed at new or returning contributors. Any thoughts? /ermo _______________________________________________ Foresight-devel mailing list Foresight-devel@lists.rpath.org http://lists.rpath.org/mailman/listinfo/foresight-devel
