Hi Chris, I agree with you that mailing lists are probably the best platform for discussion at the moment. May be mailing lists are a bit old-fashioned, but IMHO they have some benefits over forums:
- Mailing lists invite the user more into thorough discussion - The user is less distracted by the Bells and Whistles of the forum site - Mailing lists invite less into short (negative, inproductive) comments. (May be it's too easy to press on the commment button in a forum.) However mailing lists (as well as forums) have one weak point: They are volatile. Usefull tips, workarounds, etc. are "lost" in the archives: - You will have to search through the archives to get an item - Items can't be improved or extended As a solution I would suggest a wiki. A LSMB wiki would enable cooperation regarding to LSMB documentation. The LSMB Wiki could be a gathering place for all kinds of documentation: the Book, Howtos, Tips, etc. The great Book project of Erik Huelsmann could be a nice starting point. Kind regards, Marjan Waldorp, Tux4u.nl ========================================= On 2013-07-19 15:46, Chris Travers wrote: > Hi Mikkel; > > Thanks for your comments and offer for help. The forums are actually run by > a contributor named > Chris Bennett who I am CCing for your convenience. The two of you might be > able to talk about how > best to manage things. Even if you don't move to Discourse, perhaps a good > first step would be look > at how to market the forums to attract new users. I would be happy to > collaborate on such. > > I do agree that some users will prefer some mailing lists and some will > prefer forums. I think > there are a lot of reasons however why forums don't get the traction one > might expect. In a lot of > cases, collaboration feels more natural on an email list than a forum. So I > don't see forums ever > replacing email lists for core collaboration. What they can do is provide > help for new markets we > are not serving well, and as such they provide an opportunity for folks such > as Chris and yourself > to try to expand our community offerings and build presence in the community > generally. > > If the forums are targetting new users, this really is an opportunity for > consultants and would-be > consultants to push them and thus improve their own presence in the > community. I don't really see > us moving core functions off email lists any time soon. I don't think this > should stop you, though > and if it is successful enough I could see gradual integration into more > things in which we do, and > such would certainly bring more visibility to those involved. > > Best Wishes, > Chris Travers > > > On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 4:40 AM, Mikkel Høgh <mik...@hoegh.org > <mailto:mik...@hoegh.org>> wrote: > > Hi LedgerSMB people, > > I'm mostly a lurker here, but I'd like to see LedgerSMB get more traction. > > I think one of the great barriers to building a larger community is the > tools currently in use. > > The main channel of communication is the mailing lists. However, mailing > lists are a bit > usability challenged. It's hard to keep track of what's going on, and > harder still to chime in. > It depends a lot on the user being able to configure filters in his > e-mail client, enable > treading, etc. > > In addition to that, there are the forums at http://forums.ledgersmb.org/ > which seem to be used > very sparingly. > > In short, I'd like to suggest replacing both with Discourse: > http://www.discourse.org/ > > A few salient points: > > 1. It's much more friendly to new users (single click login, helpful tips > when posting, etc.) > 2. It can be used much like a mailing list (subscription, replying via > e-mail) > 3. It can be configured to send out digests to users who have not been > logged in for a while, > giving them a quick overview of what happened since they checked the last > time. > 4. Much better handling of images, code samples, and multimedia. Makes it > much easier to support > users. > 5. It has a great search, and it is very search engine friendly, making > it much easier to find > earlier answers. > 6. A healthy open source project with a large community. Widely (and > successfully) deployed. > Take a gander at http://discuss.howtogeek.com/ http://meta.discourse.org/ > or > > http://meta.discourse.org/t/please-visit-our-discourse-forum-directory/3102 > for examples of > existing communities. > > I could go on, I think Discourse is one of the most interesting open > source projects and an > awesome tool for building communities. If you want to know more, check out > http://www.discourse.org/about/ or Jeff Atwood's keynote from ForumCon: > http://blog.discourse.org/2013/06/forums-are-dead-long-live-forums/ > > For the practical side, I'm willing to handle hosting, sysadmin'ing, etc, > as well as conversion > of the existing forums. > > -- > Kind regards, > > Mikkel Høgh <mik...@hoegh.org <mailto:mik...@hoegh.org>> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ > See everything from the browser to the database with AppDynamics > Get end-to-end visibility with application monitoring from AppDynamics > Isolate bottlenecks and diagnose root cause in seconds. > Start your free trial of AppDynamics Pro today! > > http://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/clk?id=48808831&iu=/4140/ostg.clktrk > _______________________________________________ > Ledger-smb-users mailing list > Ledger-smb-users@lists.sourceforge.net > <mailto:Ledger-smb-users@lists.sourceforge.net> > https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/ledger-smb-users > > > > > -- > Best Wishes, > Chris Travers > > Efficito: Hosted Accounting and ERP. 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