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

On Wed, Nov 17, 2010 at 00:00, Elliot Chance <elliotchance@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> On 17/11/2010, at 6:22 AM, Stephen Cook wrote:
>
>> On 11/16/2010 10:51 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>>> What I'm more interested in is still a word from the people who would
>>> actually *use* a forum on how this would be better than sites like
>>> Nabble and Gmane.
>>
>> I'm one of those. I'm subscribed to these mailing lists simply because it is the only way I know of to get the
messagesin a timely fashion, but I would greatly prefer a forum-style interface. 
>>
>> I had never heard of Nabble or Gmane until now, but I just checked them out and from my quick look it *looks* like a
webinterface for people who prefer mailing lists. 
>>
>> I like having a category breakdown (at the moment I have my email client splitting the various lists into folders),
andI like having little icons telling me which ones I already read and which are new (my email client has that also of
course).
>>
>> So basically, the email lists are usable, but if this forum works out I'll dump my email subscription in a second
anduse that. I don't think either is inherently better than the other, it's just personal preference. 
>
> I'm not sure if anyone is noticing, or just doesn't want to but all that's becoming of the forum is a viewer for the
mailinglist with the ability to reply. There are already enough forum sites where they shove anything related to
postgresinto a single generic forum - I see no reason in recreating that. 

I think there's a general preference of not fragmenting the discussion
forums, whether they're in mailinglist of web forum format.

It should certainly not be a single forum for everything. But there
should be consistent splits.


> It's a difficult balancing act to leverage the mailing list community but also use all the features that have made
forumsoftware popular in the first place. There will be people who will continue to use mailing list no matter how the
forumis presented or functions simply because that's their preferred method, and some people who are used to the
differentmethods of a forum. Everyones input is important, but for the former who are never going to use the forum
anywayshould have little influence on how it works as forum software. 

They should have a *lot* of influence on how the communication between
the web forum and the mailinglists work. They shouldn't have any
influence on how the actual forum software works.

But I think you're missing one of the main points - the forums will
have a significantly reduced value if they don't get responses from
the people who are currently on the mailinglists. We've had
disconnected forums before, and they've all died because people have
posted questions there, and never gotten answers. The part that "the
mailinglist people" here consider is that this is *worse* for our
"reputation" than not having the forums at all - having forums that
don't get responses.

> OK, so solutions? Here in Sydney it's a bit after 9am so I've had time to sleep on it and heres what I'm thinking;
> - Tagging system. A thread created "Performance of C vs Perl" could be tagged (by a registered user or automated
system)as [Performance] [C] [Perl] this would have no impact on the mailing list but make forum viewing and searching
morereliable, so a search might be like: 
> Search: "benchmark"
> Tags: [Perl] [PHP]

A search system can certainly work that way. As long as there's a
deterministic way of figuring out which mailinglist replies to back
into, and which threads replies-to-those-replies go.

> For someone looking to find a higher performance solution or comparison between Perl and PHP. I'd rather not do this
thoughbecause it will require me to change a lot of code in the phpBB3 codebase and still doesn't use a forum in the
wayits supposed to be used. 
>
> The way I see it theres no reason why the forums can't be split the way they are now. It makes no difference to the
peoplewho will continue to use the mailing list but makes all the difference to forum users who are choosing this forum
overothers because it has all the backing of the masters on the mailing list in a much better layout of forums than any
othersite offers. 

It may be confusing to the end user, but I'm willing to accept that
web forum users are used to that :-) As long as there *is* a mapping,
and that it's consistent, of course.

> There is no perfect solution here, you can't please all the masses all the time. But I do believe there is a workable
solutionsomewhere in the middle. 

That is a very good point :-)

--
 Magnus Hagander
 Me: http://www.hagander.net/
 Work: http://www.redpill-linpro.com/