[maemo-developers] [maemo-developers] how we can enhance the maemo.org

[From: Nils Faerber]

-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
Hash: SHA1

Karoliina T. Salminen wrote:
> Hi,
Hi!

> I think we have been thinking about adding wiki and that it would be a
> good idea.
> However, I have another improvement idea in mind:
> 
> How about discussion forums? I think they are easier to manage
> than mailing lists, but that is just my opinion as I am a forum heavy
> user and not
> all are like that. Could you by the way tell your opinion about forums,
> do you like or dislike
> them? Adding e.g. phpbb running on the server wouldn't be a huge task I
> think.
> We have several forums running on our home server already with phpbb and
> the configuration
> (including the MySQL database setup) was one evening task or so.

I would strongly vote against forums.
I think forums are not very user friendly. Reason is following:

1. Every forum look differently. Every time you want to join a new
community you have to get to know this special forum. We should keep in
mind that especially developers do not work on one project only but on
many. Having to join several forums can be a pain.

2. It is inconvenient for the users to track forums. If you are part of
more than one such community you would have to visit several different
web sites after another, having to go through several different web
layouts and several different authentucation schemes in oder to be
allowed posting.

3. Forums are not very common in the open source developer scene.
Mailinglist are accepted though.

Mailinglist posts arrive just in time in every developer's mailbox. The
users can filter them with their preferred mail client. They only have
to get used to one user interface, their mail client, which they already
know.

Better have more mailinglists and good search tools on your website,
maybe also with an anymous posting facility so that inexperienced users
could also browse and post to the lists via a web interface.

> One of the benefits with forums is that they are very easily accessible
> with
> the 770, I surf some forums with the 770, easy interface to check topics
> that I am just
> interested to and nothing else without waiting for ages the e-mail
> buffer to be
> transferred via (my mobile phone's) GPRS to the device (I don't have
> EDGE or UMTS on my
> phone yet, therefore I don't have the luxury to download huge amounts of
> data when I am
> not connected to WLAN with the N770, however, looking what is new in a
> forum is
> a few seconds long task with the N770 even with a GPRS-connection :) ).

For this a good web interface to the mailinglist and archive would be
enough.

> Karoliina Salminen
CU
  nils faerber

- --
kernel concepts          Tel: +49-271-771091-12
Dreisbachstr. 24         Fax: +49-271-771091-19
D-57250 Netphen          Mob: +49-176-21024535
- --
-----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.1 (GNU/Linux)
Comment: Using GnuPG with Thunderbird - http://enigmail.mozdev.org

iD8DBQFCrtzkJXeIURG1qHgRAuh9AKCvvwm9p4gPzwnB8lmgQAoxlz3YYwCfZxYI
w58dqlz/I8wEXbOfIB3olmw=
=/gIJ
-----END PGP SIGNATURE-----