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

[From: Karoliina T. Salminen]

Hi,

Weinehall David wrote:

<snip>

>>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 find discussion forums useful only for short-lived discussions; any
>discussions where I might want to go back to something that was
>discussed a long time ago, I much prefer e-mail.
>
In my opinion, forums are just great for shot-lived discussions.
That is their purpose. E-mail lists really are not chat places however.
Intention was not to replace e-mail list but add an additional feature,
in other words, like the topic says "enchance maemo.org".

>  Also, e-mail allows
>the use of a real editor (vim) when writing something, while I'd be
>forced to use the sucky input field of a browser to post something
>to a discussion forum.
>  
>
It really does not matter if it is the browser field when posting to
a forum. I don't think the art of text editing is the reason for
posting to a forum, if it is the matter of capabilities of the
text editor, then the forum is really not the right choice for posting.

>Finally, another thing to think about is that we'd have to have a
>registered users only forum, otherwise trolls and spambots will attack
>it pretty soon.
>
That is true, we ran some forums that allowed unregistered postings and
spammers came quite quickly. In addition to the spam, because of direct
linking, the average load on the server increased to over 3... Cleanup took
some time indeed.

>  And while spam is common for e-mail too, deleting a
>spam from my mailbox is easy, since I have a local copy, but someone
>with administrative rights needs to remove forum posts that are
>superfluous.
>  
>
That is true with forums. For example I am running a forum for one friend
and he tends to send me e-mail "Some horrible message is on the forum, 
remove
it immediately!" (meaning some spam, and in the case like that he says 
it without please for sure).
It is not too fun to be administrator in the situation like that, feels 
like being half-guilty
despite not being guilty but a victim of a spammer...

>All this said, I dont't mind *adding* a discussion forum, as long as my
>precious mailing-lists doesn't disappear =)
>  
>
I wasn't really suggesting replacing mailing lists with a forum, but
I have quite much used to use forums as a replacement for chat. It is 
kind of
off-line chat with people that would not join to a online-chat anyway. 
Mailing lists however, are something more serious
since the mails are being sent to thousands of mailboxes and editing 
messages
after sending is not possible. As I said, forums are great for 
short-lived discussion (IMHO).
It is especially short-lived because people can edit and remove their 
messages
and what I have evidenced on the forum-scene, that happens all the time. 
Someone says something wrong or stupid, he or she can remove or 
edit/correct the message, but on a mailing list what was said was said 
and delivered to everyone. Requires thinking twice before pressing the 
send button.
If no one but me likes forums, we don't need to do forums of course. I 
was just
thinking of adding something completely different.

>
>You've never tried reading a nested discussion forum like Slashdot with
>the N770 then, right? =)
>  
>
Of course I have used Slashdot as a regular Slashdot reader :).
I didn't mean nested discussion forum, but
just those phpbb-like things instead which don't have multiple levels. I 
don't like
nested discussion forums anyway.

Anyway, is the conclusion now that actually forum is not needed and no 
one else but me actually likes them? The idea was not to replace
mailing lists but add an additional feature, a forum for less serious 
discussion, as the topic was "how to enchance" maemo.org. If no one 
really wants it, it is of course easier not to do it as no one needs to 
then spend efforts for administrating it against spammers (spammers in 
fact tend to register to forums even if they would be closed forums, if 
the registration procedure is not protected against it (e.g. with a
manual approval from administrator or with some code confirmation that 
protects against robots)). Anyway, this is why I asked you to vote if 
you like or do not like the idea.

Any more votes?

a) An additional web based forum would ruin the site
b) Indifferent, ok to add or ok to be without.
c) It has some benefits to add a web based forum
d) Would love to have an additional forum

Best Regards,
Karoliina Salminen