I've implemented this same forum software (Drupal's Advanced Forum module) before and I never liked it. IMO there is only one good reason to use it and that is when you need really tight integration with the rest of the website and existing workflows. Specifically, when you already have a Drupal website and you want to integrate a forum with the existing users. At the time of Drupal 6 there were some modules that allowed you to integrate external forums, like phpBB, but I've had stability issues with those. However, it still sidesteps the question of whether we really need the forum to be directly integrated into the project's website software. In Trisquel's case, I am still unsure. We are not a very big community yet, so having everything in one place makes everything look more alive but in the long term it will be better to separate things.
It is clear that the Forum-Mailing List integration isn't working properly. There seems to be more issues on the Forum side. I am not sure if quidam has investigated the problems but at the moment the situation looks unprofessional. As a general observation, I think developers (or developer-minded users) are more likely to use mailing lists and IRC whereas the average, non-developer user will prefer a forum. This is not always the case, like if you have specific accessibility requirements, but I think it is a fair generalisation. At the hand of that observation I would suggest that we have both a forum and mailing lists but that they should be broken apart and be completely separate. I think the Ubuntu model could work. If we have a user-maintained forum then we can use dedicated forum software that still supports email subscription (for those who prefer/need it), but it will also relieve quidam of needing to maintain the forum software. It could be something like trisquelforums.org or trisqueltalks.org or even just forums.trisquel.org pointing to another server. We can then use dedicated mailing lists for development and related purposes only. These would be maintained by the core Trisquel team. It is a good idea that this topic was brought up again. Like I mentioned before, Trisquel 6.0 is going to be a big landmark release and we need to have the web presence to match it. -- Morne Alberts
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