On 15 August 2011 22:36, Tristam MacDonald <[email protected]> wrote:
> On Mon, Aug 15, 2011 at 3:13 PM, Michael Red <[email protected]> wrote: > >> Woah, but did anyone look at the fact that, compared to a forum, immensely >> few people will join a mailing list unless they're VERY interested in it? > > >> I don't think we manage a post a day on average over a month for this >> mailing list, true. But by comparison, a forum would be much >> more...newbie-friendly, so to speak. I can't speak for any others, but I had >> to force myself to join the mailing list, because no forum was available. >> This is sufficient, sure. >> > > See, it may be a generational thing, or something else, but I personally > find forums to be a pain in the neck, by comparison to a mailing list. This > lands neatly in my gmail, and gets filtered into its own directory, complete > with importance tagging. By contrast, I would have to manually navigate to a > forum and check it each day - which is not going to happen, given my time > commitments elsewhere. > I'm actually quite sure it is a personal preference thing. I like mailing lists myself, but I don't like using them often, because of the commitment they create in my mind. I'm subscribed, so I automatically receive updates regardless of whether I'm interested or not. If I join a forum, I can not check it for months with few notifications, unless I watch some threads so any posts get forwarded to my mail account. And I can even have summaries sent to my mail account on a schedule, generally. I understand time problems and personal preference, but for general users, I'm not sure they'll pull people towards mailing lists more than forums. > > It is the difference between a push-based event system, versus manual > polling, if you will. > > Along the lines of suggestions, I think if we make a forum, it shouldn't be >> the grand central station every library tries to make theirs become. My >> opinion is that we should have a maximum of 3 sub-forums. One for >> announcements, one for developmental chatter (suggestions, ideas, preferably >> no issues since we have a bug tracker, and possibly dev chat for upcoming >> changes), one for posting projects made in pyglet. >> > > My feelings on your 3 sub-forums are respectively: > > - Any news channel where the user has to manually check for updates is a > bad way to do announcements: you want push notifications, not pull. RSS > feeds from an announcements forum isn't a terrible way to accomplish this, > but the mailing list already does push notifications very well. > I probably wasn't clear. I meant announcements as in threads posted that explain basic things about the forums, etc. For example, the first few topics in my mind would be a thread pointing new users towards pyglet-users for more discussion, a thread explaining the bug tracker, a thread gathering all the resources appreciated by the community as best for new users, and a thread for frequently asked questions about the library. The announcements in the sense of updates would be on the main site, RSS feed, here, wherever. But if you want a collection of recommended resources on the mailing list, most users will be at a loss as to how to obtain it. Searching 'resources', 'help', 'tutorial', and 'faq' gives me no information. There might be ways, but not ones obvious to new users. Asking is generally too much, because it entails registering and waiting for a reply. The forum would have the information instantly. > - My experience is that the majority of programmers are very comfortable > with mailing lists, they tend to have limited time, and communicate from a > variety of devices (for example, my iPhone) where forums software is not > easily accessible. > > Your iPhone would do just fine on any modern forum. Any proper forum software has a mobile mode that works great. And my experience is that the majority of senior programmers are very comfortable with mailing lists. However people new to programming tend to avoid them as much as possible. The forum neither precludes the possibility that users will want to join the mailing list afterwards, nor the possibility that some users will just use the mailing list instead. It's an alternative. > - A projects-with-pyglet forum is a good idea, but it doesn't go far > enough. We need more visibility, like a gallery of (moderated) featured > images directly on the front page - you don't want to make potential > contributors have to mine down 3 levels of forum and trawl through the > dross, just to find interesting projects that use pyglet. > > You're right. In this case, I also suggest have the administrators look through projects and suggest promising ones for main page posting, or take private messages with recommendations. Maybe even a forum thread for suggesting other people's projects, though that can quickly degrade into fighting over ratings and insults. > > > In case it isn't clear, I am not trying to be discouraging. If someone > wants to set up and manage forums, by all means go for it! I just have > reservations as to how useful it will be - and I certainly won't be using it > myself. > > -- > Tristam MacDonald > System Administrator, Suffolk University Math & CS Department > http://swiftcoder.wordpress.com/ > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "pyglet-users" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected]. > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/pyglet-users?hl=en > I should say, in case it's not apparent, I'm not trying to change your decision or opinion, I'm simply arguing pro-forum. I respect your decision, and understand your reasons for it. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "pyglet-users" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. 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