Fwd: Postgres forums ... take 2 - Mailing list pgsql-general

From: Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com>

Date: 15 November 2010 9:02:43 PM AEDT

To: Thom Brown <thom@linux.com>

Subject: Re: [GENERAL] Postgres forums ... take 2

On 15/11/2010, at 8:37 PM, Thom Brown wrote:

On 15 November 2010 08:34, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:

Hi again,

I've taken in all the feedback about http://forums.postgresql.com.au and the general consensus is that nobody wants a separate entity - a few people mentioned that if it was interoperable with the mailing list that it would be better. So I did.

The concept goes like this;
1. Any posts to the general mailing list will be picked up by the forum, the email data is converted and posted on the forum, for example;
http://forums.postgresql.com.au/viewtopic.php?f=30&t=39
2. Any reply to the forum will do the reverse and send the post back to the mailing list as a reply.

This means the forum can be fully controlled through the mailing list without the need to visit the forums directly. However those people who prefer to use a forum interface can, and those messages are relayed back through the mailing list to get answered.

Step 1 is complete (might need a little tweaking, i've only tried it with a couple of topics.) Step 2 I haven't begun - wanted to get some more feedback.

All the forum topics and posts are back-dated to match the emails, which means it would be *theoretically* possible to load in the entire postgres mailing list archive but I wouldn't do that on a server that couldn't handle that much data.

Disclaimer about user names:
User names are registered automatically based on the unique email address of the person emailing the response. Each user is given a random 8 character password. You can use the recover password page to login to your account and change your user name to anything you want, the only important thing is that your email address matches.

I know this is a sensitive issue with some people, i've made sure no information is posted thats not already currently being indexed by google.

The only maintenance I can see is that all new topics are pushed into the General > Other category as the script can't differentiate what category it should in fact belong to, once the topic is moved it will stay there. This shouldn't be a real problem as theres not many new topics being created on any given day.

Elliot,

That's actually some good work you've done there!  I didn't know phpBB supported bidirectional mailing list support.

It doesn't. I have a subscription address that is piped into a PHP script that uses the phpBB3 APIs to do all you see.

I think, however, that having such a forum at a .com.au address isn't particularly desirable, as it implies it's regional.  If others are happy for you to work on this, it might be an idea to speak to the existing web team to see if they are able to provide you with pointers and possibly resources to get such a thing up and running.  It would be nice, for example, to have forums.postgresql.org set up.

I was just amazed that postgresql.com.au was available (in australia you need a registered company to get a .com.au address so that's why.)

At the moment its running on mysql (I know, but they don't support postgres) but it will work with postgres. The forum software, database and scripts I've written are all portable so theres no reason why it couldn't be moved to another domain any time in the future. Obviously at the time I couldn't use forums.postgresql.org.

Lets see how it goes, if it does turn out to be useful then we'll have a chat to the developers.

A few points though.  I think we'd need to disable smileys, bbcode, any form of rich text formatting, flash or embedded images.  In short, plain text only, which is the policy on the mailing list.  I think it would be more useful if each forum directly corresponded to a mailing list too.  What I mean is that if there was a forum on the site which didn't match to a mailing list, only forum users could use it.

If someone were to send a reply on the forum all the bbcode would be stripped before emailing it to the mailing list to keep the mailing list "pure." Is that what you mean?

Also, if someone registers on the forum, do they get a major domo registration email?  And if so, would this be set to receive no emails upon registration?  I'm not clear as to how this step would work because, at the moment, mailing list subscribers have to subscribe on a list-by-list basis.  So registration to the forum site wouldn't necessarily mean they'd want to join any particular mailing list.  Similarly, could they unregister easily?  And anyone who attempts to post to a mailing list they aren't subscribed to requires moderation, so we don't wish to exacerbate this.

No they are not registered on the mailing list, but they actually don't need to be, let me explain:

1. John Smith has a postgres related question and finds the forums, he signs up and posts his question.

2. His post is then emailed to the mailing list under a generic registered address like "mailinglist@postgresql.com.au"

3. Bob House reads Johns question on the mailing list and simply sends an email reply.

4. The email reply is piped into the forum and matches the topic based on the email subject (thats how it currently does it.)

5. John gets an email from phpBB along the lines of "Bob House has replied to your post, click here" (all forums do this) he reads the response and is happy.

This is the best balance of no-fuss and expert response, keeping in mind that:

* John can still sign up to the mailing list like anyone else if he wants to.

* All of John's forums communications are in the postgres mailing list archive now.

But that's a nice start. :)

I thought smilies were banned ...... :D

Nothing is set in stone. There almost definitely will be forum categories added/merged/removed, lets call this a beta.

Cheers

--
Thom Brown
Twitter: @darkixion
IRC (freenode): dark_ixion
Registered Linux user: #516935