Thread: forums.postgresql.com.au
Hi Everyone, It has been a long time since this was brought up. It's time. Any important concerns should be discussed at (to keep everyone looking at the same place): http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Forums_at_postgresql.com.au But also keep general discussion on the mailing list. ----- The script that converts the incoming mailing list messages was recently turned back on which converted another ~10k or sopending messages. I will leave it on now, it updates every minute. It's beginning to get google impressions resulting in people finding the forum and signing up. No doubt disappointed theycannot post. - Elliot
On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 10:08:15PM +1000, Elliot Chance wrote: > Hi Everyone, > > It has been a long time since this was brought up. It's time. > > Any important concerns should be discussed at (to keep everyone looking at the same place): > http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Forums_at_postgresql.com.au > > But also keep general discussion on the mailing list. Having looked at that very briefly, there seems to be no consideration that this was all done once before, for Usenet. Has anyone looked at how those issues were resolved there? (FWIW, my impression was "mostly, they weren't". I have pretty serious doubts you're going to do better. Why do these two completely different styles of interaction need to be merged anyway? I think adding forum traffic to the mailing list will be yet another way to make the lists less useful.) A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@crankycanuck.ca
On 6 April 2011 13:15, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: > On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 10:08:15PM +1000, Elliot Chance wrote: >> Hi Everyone, >> >> It has been a long time since this was brought up. It's time. >> >> Any important concerns should be discussed at (to keep everyone looking at the same place): >> http://wiki.postgresql.org/wiki/Forums_at_postgresql.com.au >> >> But also keep general discussion on the mailing list. > > Having looked at that very briefly, there seems to be no consideration > that this was all done once before, for Usenet. Has anyone looked at > how those issues were resolved there? (FWIW, my impression was > "mostly, they weren't". I have pretty serious doubts you're going to > do better. Why do these two completely different styles of > interaction need to be merged anyway? I think adding forum traffic to > the mailing list will be yet another way to make the lists less > useful.) It introduces another point of entry to the community. There will be people who are averse to mailing lists, and find forums more familiar and accessible. Adding more traffic means more users involved in the community. Not sure why this makes the lists less useful. These aren't completely different styles of interaction either. It's good form on our mailing list to bottom-post, which happens to be the style on forums. There are issues to be resolved before it could be accepted, such as forcing plain text, maintaining conversations, importing existing mailing list archives in and not introducing any loopholes for spammers to abuse. The alternative is to have a completely independant forum, which is probably destined to fail as it has several times in the past, especially since the core developers and main contributors exclusively use the mailing list. At least this way they can be brought into a forum transparently. -- Thom Brown Twitter: @darkixion IRC (freenode): dark_ixion Registered Linux user: #516935 EnterpriseDB UK: http://www.enterprisedb.com The Enterprise PostgreSQL Company
On Wed, Apr 06, 2011 at 01:49:24PM +0100, Thom Brown wrote: > It introduces another point of entry to the community. There will be > people who are averse to mailing lists, and find forums more familiar > and accessible. Adding more traffic means more users involved in the > community. Not sure why this makes the lists less useful. When we had the Usenet gateway, from time to time it broke in various slightly annoying ways. Those ways were a distraction on the list. I predict the same will happen here. Anyway, the way some issues were resolved with respect to Usenet might be instructive. The spam-prevention strategies in particular ought to be useful, because if you think spam on the web is bad, you should check out Usenet from five years ago. (It may now be exclusively spam, porn, and warez, for all I know, since I haven't had a Usenet feed for several years now.) > These aren't completely different styles of interaction either. It's > good form on our mailing list to bottom-post, which happens to be the > style on forums. That's not all there is to forums, though. Quite importantly, in a forum there are formatting conventions. Forum users will expect those things to be reproduced in the list in some way. But in plain ASCII text, there's not a good way to preserve such features. That will just frustrate everyone. > There are issues to be resolved before it could be accepted, such as > forcing plain text, maintaining conversations, importing existing > mailing list archives in and not introducing any loopholes for > spammers to abuse. Right. And those all seem to me to be hurdles too high to jump. Though if you're successful, I'll cheerfully concede I was wrong. (I predict that if you force forum users to stick to ASCII text only, you'll spend 20% of the time talking about how much the forum formatting rules suck.) > The alternative is to have a completely independant forum, which is > probably destined to fail as it has several times in the past, > especially since the core developers and main contributors exclusively > use the mailing list. At least this way they can be brought into a > forum transparently. Well, one simpleish answer would be to have a one-way feed from the mail list to the forum, so that people using the forum could see these other things on the list (without being able to post to the list unless they were willing to send mail). That way, their familiar search tools and so on would work on the mail archive, but the interactive portions would have to go on inside the forum itself. This is perhaps less ideal, but it opens a pinhole between the two interaction styles instead of trying to make two incommensurable styles of interaction commensurate. I don't feel strongly about any of this, note, and I'm sure not willing to do any work. I'm merely observing that there are at least spokes of this wheel that have been invented before. A -- Andrew Sullivan ajs@crankycanuck.ca
On Apr 6, 2011, at 8:49, Thom Brown wrote: > On 6 April 2011 13:15, Andrew Sullivan <ajs@crankycanuck.ca> wrote: >> Why do these two completely different styles of >> interaction need to be merged anyway? I think adding forum traffic to >> the mailing list will be yet another way to make the lists less >> useful.) > > It introduces another point of entry to the community. There will be > people who are averse to mailing lists, and find forums more familiar > and accessible. Adding more traffic means more users involved in the > community. Not sure why this makes the lists less useful. Frankly, when I frequented the Ruby mailing lists, I ended up purposely filtering out the posts coming from the forum. Ifound the forum postings to be of much lower quality than the ones coming through the mailing list. Granted, this is anecdotal,and based on my own personal experience. Michael Glaesemann grzm seespotcode net