Re: Forum
As someone who actively dislikes mailing lists I think this would be a positive move. Have you considered just using the projects existing Github issues for this purpose? I’ve always been confused by the split between bug reports on github and everything else here, when many projects simply use GitHub for both. You need to inplement a bit of structure in terms of labels and issue templates but could this be a viable alternative and keep everything simple and in one obvious place? > On 17 Jan 2019, at 6:04 pm, Dan Morphis wrote: > > I've created the first Discourse post :) > > -dan > >> On Thu, Jan 17, 2019 at 1:01 AM Zaid Abdulla wrote: >> Hi, >> >> First off, apologies for not being active here for a number of months >> now. Last year has been a very busy and stressful year for me and I was >> barely able to keep up with work from the commercial side. I hope I'll >> be more active now that I'm a little more on top of things :) >> >> That said, I want to hear your thoughts about possibly moving to a >> forum software for the community discussions. I like mailing lists, but >> I have two major gripes with them: >> >> 1) Formatting and threading. Most email clients use HTML emails and >> have different formatting quoting styles. Then there's those corporate >> email footers with a wall of text and logos! Worse yet, some email >> clients don't handle threading properly. All that may not be a deal >> breaker during the conversation, but it doesn't help make the email >> archive into a good reference for future readers. These issues can be >> *partially* mitigated by enforcing plain-text in Mailman (the mailing >> list software), stripping attachments, and generally being anal about >> posting rules. >> >> 2) This may not be a problem per-se, and maybe it's just me, but IMO >> email is best for thorough and complete responses while in a forum a >> back and forth exchange of short messages is perfectly okay. With >> email, after a few exchanges you end up with a deeply nested thread and >> the quoted text becomes an unreadable mess. >> >> With regards to the forum software of choice, I really like Flarum. >> However, Discourse, which I also like, offers a hosted version and that >> is a big plus for me as I'd rather not deal with maintenance and >> upgrades. I went ahead and started a trial with Discourse. It's >> available at forum.genieacs.com. Feel free to sign up and give it a >> spin. >> >> -- >> Zaid Abdulla >> >> ___ >> Users mailing list >> Users@lists.genieacs.com >> http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users > ___ > Users mailing list > Users@lists.genieacs.com > http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users ___ Users mailing list Users@lists.genieacs.com http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users
Re: Forum
I can see where you are coming from and a forum is certainly a positive change (imho mailing lists are a bit alien to a lot of devs these days). Obviously this is your project and your free to manage it how you see fit, but I think part of the problem is that issues and PRs aren’t getting much attention besides the non-bug issues being closed. Hopefully that can begin to change. Have you considered creating more documentation along the lines of a readthedocs site or something similar, to help reduce the amount of repeated questions from new users? > On 19 Jan 2019, at 12:14 am, Zaid Abdulla wrote: > >> On Fri, 2019-01-18 at 15:50 +0000, jmc...@sirran.com wrote: >> Have you considered just using the projects existing Github issues >> for this purpose? I’ve always been confused by the split between bug >> reports on github and everything else here, when many projects simply >> use GitHub for both. You need to inplement a bit of structure in >> terms of labels and issue templates but could this be a viable >> alternative and keep everything simple and in one obvious place? > > Github issues are tied to the repo and oftentimes users don't know > whether a given problem they're facing is related to genieacs or > genieacs-gui. And some discussions don't belong to either repo (e.g. > help getting started). Also a Github issue should eventually be closed > but I doubt many will bother closing the issue after they get the help > they need. > > I see Github issues as a way for one to contribute to the project by > reporting software issues and rough edges. My simple rule of thumb is > if you don't expect a thank you, then it probably doesn't belong there. > > I have actually been considering closing Gthub issues altogether. Many > people seem to get confused by the mailing list and prefer to seek help > by opening a Github issue. The vast majority of the issues there don't > constitute valid bug reports and Dan has been ruthlessly closing those > :) With a forum, my hope is that people will naturally prefer it over > Github issues. > > -- > Zaid Abdulla > > ___ > Users mailing list > Users@lists.genieacs.com > http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users ___ Users mailing list Users@lists.genieacs.com http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users
Re: Forum
This exactly. When we were getting up and running it was a tough job to work out how GenieACS actually works and how we had to leverage that to implement what we needed. There are plenty of examples for very specific use cases on the wiki but those weren’t applicable for us at all (we don’t and cannot use provisions). Happy to help contribute to new docs when you get those up and running! > On 20 Jan 2019, at 3:09 am, Zaid Abdulla wrote: > >> On Sat, 2019-01-19 at 13:34 -0900, Dan Morphis wrote: >> There is a ton of documentation on the wiki. I’ve shared several >> scripts, enhanced the documentation, etc. When I have a problem and >> can’t figure out how to solve it from reading the docs on the wiki, I >> always circle back around and update the documentation when I figure >> out a solution. >> >> In fact, almost every issue I see come up in either GH or the mailing >> list is from people not reading the docs for either genie, or the TR- >> 069 (and related) docs. > > I think what's missing is structure. There's a decent amount of > documentation scattered around but there's no well structured guide for > new users to go through. For example, the fact that Genie doesn't fetch > all device parameters by default may be confusing for a new user. They > can't tell if it's an bug in Genie, a misconfiguration, or a client > issue. I'm sure it's mentioned in the wiki somewhere but that isn't > good enough. > > -- > Zaid Abdulla > > ___ > Users mailing list > Users@lists.genieacs.com > http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users ___ Users mailing list Users@lists.genieacs.com http://lists.genieacs.com/mailman/listinfo/users
