On 7/11/11 3:37 PM, Gary Sherman wrote:
On Jul 11, 2011, at 14:50, Anita Graser <[email protected]
<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote:
Hi PSC,
It has already been discussed on developer mailing list: Some action
has to be taken concerning QGIS forums.
The current situation looks like this:
- The forum attracts a lot of spam every day.
- The forum is often down or slow to respond. (Therefor it takes a lot
of time to remove spam and ban spammers.)
- Developers don't frequent the forums so we have to forward people to
the mailing list anyway.
My suggested alternative would be to redirect developer questions to
the mailing list and user questions to
<http://gis.stackexchange.org>gis.stackexchange.org
<http://gis.stackexchange.org>. This would reduce web infrastructure
complexity for us while at the same time increase our visibility on
the platform-independent stackexchange site.
Since we are on our way to the next big release, updating our web
infrastructure and other aspects of the QGIS project, I feel it's
necessary to address this topic.
Best wishes,
Anita
_____________
This is the perfect time to address this---the server providing the
forum is going to be decommissioned soon. The forum has provided good
support for many, but as Anita notes devs don't frequent the forums. I
would like to shutdown the server before the end of July.
I am back from 11 days off the grid. I have always viewed the forum as a
viable support mechanism. My comment about addressing the issue was not
agreement or disagreement with any proposed solutions, but related
solely to the need to decommission the current server.
I think shutting down the forum will be a potential shock to many users
and will no doubt have negative impacts. Forums are a pain because of
bots and spam, however we have a large number of users that rely on the
QGIS forum for support and information. Maybe gis.stackexchange.org can
replace the forum---or maybe not. Either way there are two things that
are certain:
1 - the current server will be offline prior to August 10, 2011
2 - there will by many unhappy users if the forum goes away
The community and psc need to decide if we are willing to accept #2...
-gary
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
Gary Sherman
Chair, QGIS Project Steering Committee
-Desktop GIS Book:
*http://desktopgisbook.com
-Geospatial Consulting & Hosting
*http://geoapt.com
"We work virtually everywhere"
-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-
_______________________________________________
Qgis-developer mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/qgis-developer
