2009/6/9 Antti Ilomäki <[email protected]>: > Hi > > I'm currently considering the options. Like I said previously I wouldn't > mind at all having a realXtend discussion forum in some form, we simply > don't have the resources to run both forums and a mailing list. That's why > the original idea was to have Jani host new forums at Cybertechnews, which > we announced months before the forums were closed, but the new forums never > really took off. > > There are two things I require from the solution: > > 1) The forums will be moderated by someone from outside of the realXtend > core team. There is need for moderation, but we don't have the time. > > 2) The developers will continue to focus on the mailing list (again, we have > very limited time available). One of the reasons for shutting down the > official forum was to steer potential questions towards the channel our > developers actually monitor (and again thanks to all of you guys for the > time you spend on troubleshooting, it is valuable to all of us), because we > don't want to appear to be ignoring the users when questions on the board > remain unanswered by the developers. It's also important to know that even > interesting discussions are likely to go unnoticed by the devs. Thus it > would be very important that the board would be profiled as a community > site, not a direct channel to the realXtend developers. Preferrably someone > (again, from outside of our team) should act as a bridge between the two > channels, making sure that valuable information flows from one side to the > other. > > Having a community that provides support for newcomers is immensely valuable > to us. The forums are still there (closed for new contributions, though), > right where they used to be, so nothing is lost yet. Let's see how we can > get thing ssorted out. > > 2009/6/9 EmeraldDilettant <[email protected]> >> >> Hi Ryan, Antti and team, I’ve been reading through the other posts >> about the forum. As a contributor to it, would it be possible (if it’s >> still running). to set up a link to it from the wiki and allow some of >> the userbase to connect with each other. I will try and contact pqirk, >> moni, Jani and few others to see if we could police it (if you’re >> willing to hand over some of the keys!). If someone in charge sends >> me an email I’m prepared to give the team a call to discuss. I do >> think you will have a hole in your armor if you just let it go. The >> forum was well thought out and does give a different dynamic. We could >> then figure out the logistics of moving it to another space. It should >> take some of the burden off this site answering all the 101 questions >> and we could always filter the tough questions back here. >> >> Emerald >> >>
I would like to agree with Antti on all points. We would love to have a forum -- or twelve for that matter -- but the real concern is that the people on the forum would raise issues there instead of the mailing list or bug tracker. Users may become upset that issues gone unnoticed, and developers may become upset that no one mentioned a critical piece of information. Moreover if community content never makes its way back to the wiki, then those who don't prefer forums may never discover it. There are down sides; it would be another disconnect between dev and user. If it's made very clear to all forum participants that the only place one can reasonable expect developers to read their issues is the bug tracker or mailing list, and the forum moderators spend their own time migrating good discussions to wiki, then it could be a net benefit. My preference is that the forum be made explicitly a service from the community for the community, and that realXtend concentrate on issue tracker, wiki, and mailing list. Cheers, ps. A teaser of the new reX viewer running the old "Beneath the Waves" demo on ModreX: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwUdRiR6HS0 --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ http://groups.google.com/group/realxtend http://www.realxtend.org -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
