I've been seeing a lot of bugs closed as INVALID when a poor user didn't file the bug perfectly. IMHO this leads to Wine having a user-hostile reputation. Case in point: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11625 What can we do to reduce this kind of behavior? Maybe we should have a "three warnings" sort of policy. If somebody continues to be rude to users after being asked twice not to, we should consider taking away their Bugzilla privileges for a while. Sure, that would hurt our productivity, but it might be better to do that than to alienate our users. What do other people think? - Dan
I think Wine is already considered has user-hostile. In my opinion the main problem is that the bug tracker is too easy to find and the forum too hard to find. Also the forum could be a place to ask question without having to call it a bug but is only a simple discussion channel and totally inconvenient for a user to find / add questions / answers. As wine is attracting more and more people, a place for the simple user which is afraid of compiling / command line / ... should be added. I think Ubuntu is a great example of 'normal' user and information management. The forum could also be used to discuss out of wine source bugs and to keep solutions without perturbing the developers focusing on wine (Think of pulseaudio and wine, that problem will be recurrent has it is seems to be coming as a standard for many future distribution, ...). Dan Kegel a écrit :
I've been seeing a lot of bugs closed as INVALID when a poor user didn't file the bug perfectly. IMHO this leads to Wine having a user-hostile reputation.
Case in point: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11625
What can we do to reduce this kind of behavior? Maybe we should have a "three warnings" sort of policy. If somebody continues to be rude to users after being asked twice not to, we should consider taking away their Bugzilla privileges for a while. Sure, that would hurt our productivity, but it might be better to do that than to alienate our users.
What do other people think? - Dan
Dan Kegel wrote:
I've been seeing a lot of bugs closed as INVALID when a poor user didn't file the bug perfectly. IMHO this leads to Wine having a user-hostile reputation.
Case in point: http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=11625
What can we do to reduce this kind of behavior? Maybe we should have a "three warnings" sort of policy. If somebody continues to be rude to users after being asked twice not to, we should consider taking away their Bugzilla privileges for a while. Sure, that would hurt our productivity, but it might be better to do that than to alienate our users.
What do other people think? - Dan
+1. We need to have someone triage the bugs and link together those that are similar. Marking issues IMMEDIATELY as INVALID shows users that we really don't care about their reports and gives them a negative impression. Marking a bug as a duplicate, after confirmation, does show that we care and that the bugzilla is extremely hard to search through (this is and continues to be a major shortcoming of Bugzilla, not of the Wine/Mozilla projects and is a reason the company I work for did not adopt it.) BTW, this bug appears to be related to the bug I'm working on a patch for. It is issue 6254. James
Tlarhices wrote:
In my opinion the main problem is that the bug tracker is too easy to find and the forum too hard to find.
The appdb is our forum, and it's quite easy to find. I do agree it could use some interface improvements. For instance, I think the front page is too crowded. Also, the 'browse by rating' feature (thanks for adding it!) needs to list apps sorted by name; the current seemingly-random sort order isn't very useful. - Dan
On Feb 18, 2008 12:01 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
Tlarhices wrote:
In my opinion the main problem is that the bug tracker is too easy to find and the forum too hard to find.
The appdb is our forum, and it's quite easy to find.
I do agree it could use some interface improvements. For instance, I think the front page is too crowded.
Also, the 'browse by rating' feature (thanks for adding it!) needs to list apps sorted by name; the current seemingly-random sort order isn't very useful. - Dan
What's the possibility of a winehq forum? There seem to be a few floating around online, but none are too popular. This fragments users looking for help, and doesn't give those wanting to help a consistent place to look. Plus, it's sort of hard to use AppDB to try and get help with compiling wine, figuring out driver/wine issues, and other things that aren't really related to a single application. -Austin
On Feb 18, 2008 12:49 PM, Austin English <austinenglish(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:01 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
Tlarhices wrote:
In my opinion the main problem is that the bug tracker is too easy to find and the forum too hard to find.
The appdb is our forum, and it's quite easy to find.
I do agree it could use some interface improvements. For instance, I think the front page is too crowded.
Also, the 'browse by rating' feature (thanks for adding it!) needs to list apps sorted by name; the current seemingly-random sort order isn't very useful. - Dan
What's the possibility of a winehq forum? There seem to be a few floating around online, but none are too popular. This fragments users looking for help, and doesn't give those wanting to help a consistent place to look. Plus, it's sort of hard to use AppDB to try and get help with compiling wine, figuring out driver/wine issues, and other things that aren't really related to a single application.
-Austin
Would that be too redundant with the user mailing list? --Zach
Zachary Goldberg <zgold550 <at> gmail.com> writes:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:49 PM, Austin English <austinenglish <at> gmail.com> wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:01 AM, Dan Kegel <dank <at> kegel.com> wrote:
Tlarhices wrote:
In my opinion the main problem is that the bug tracker is too easy to find and the forum too hard to find.
The appdb is our forum, and it's quite easy to find.
I do agree it could use some interface improvements. For instance, I think the front page is too crowded.
Also, the 'browse by rating' feature (thanks for adding it!) needs to list apps sorted by name; the current seemingly-random sort order isn't very useful. - Dan
What's the possibility of a winehq forum? There seem to be a few floating around online, but none are too popular. This fragments users looking for help, and doesn't give those wanting to help a consistent place to look. Plus, it's sort of hard to use AppDB to try and get help with compiling wine, figuring out driver/wine issues, and other things that aren't really related to a single application.
-Austin
Would that be too redundant with the user mailing list?
--Zach
I've been thinking about the appdb from a usability point of view and why some people might think of it as being not much of a forum. looking at the design of the appdb as a "forum", does anyone else think that the pages potentially have too many things going on? I see 5 different things here http://appdb.winehq.org/objectManager.php?sClass=version&iId=7591 1. test results 2. open bugs 3. warnings 4. howtos 5. discussions for the app since the beginning of time although I think it might be a bit busy, rather than fundamentally change the way it looks, I think that the existing data and structure can be reused to provide something closer to the look and feel of a more modern forum. The idea is that a different view be provided of the data, here http://appdb.winehq.org/appbrowse.php we have a list of categories which can be forum areas * Games Games * Multimedia * Graphics, Audio and Video * Networking & Communication * Productivit * Programming / Software Engineering * Reference/Documentation/Info * Scientific/Technical/Math * Special Purpose * Utilities Which would look something like this: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/ Within these areas, visible would be all posts for all applications in that category, sorted by date, visible would be the subject and the specific app name. which would look quite similar to this: http://www.scienceforums.net/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=19 This setup would mean that a user could either post in this new "forum" area, select their specific app version and we would then automatically retain app specific comments on the individual appdb pages and also have a more friendly interface at the same time. I don't think it'd be too hard to implement either, as there shouldn't be any need for a change to database schema.
On Feb 18, 2008 10:21 AM, Zachary Goldberg <zgold550(a)gmail.com> wrote:
The appdb is our forum, and it's quite easy to find.
What's the possibility of a winehq forum? There seem to be a few floating around online, but none are too popular. This fragments users looking for help, and doesn't give those wanting to help a consistent place to look. Plus, it's sort of hard to use AppDB to try and get help with compiling wine, figuring out driver/wine issues, and other things that aren't really related to a single application.
Would that be too redundant with the user mailing list?
As I said above, the appdb is enough of a forum for us. The mailing list is the right place for general discussion. There has been some talk of moving the mailing list to a system with a better web interface, one that allows posting from the web, but there doesn't seem to be enough reason to do it. Adding one more discussion area would just fragment the discussion. Better that we use the existing ones, I think. - Dan
On Monday February 18 2008 17:49:40 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:01 AM, Dan Kegel <dank(a)kegel.com> wrote:
Tlarhices wrote:
In my opinion the main problem is that the bug tracker is too easy to find and the forum too hard to find.
The appdb is our forum, and it's quite easy to find.
I do agree it could use some interface improvements. For instance, I think the front page is too crowded.
Also, the 'browse by rating' feature (thanks for adding it!) needs to list apps sorted by name; the current seemingly-random sort order isn't very useful. - Dan
What's the possibility of a winehq forum? There seem to be a few floating around online, but none are too popular. This fragments users looking for help, and doesn't give those wanting to help a consistent place to look. Plus, it's sort of hard to use AppDB to try and get help with compiling wine, figuring out driver/wine issues, and other things that aren't really related to a single application.
There is wine-users mailing list for such questions. As far as I know it even possible to send message to it without subscribing first so I think that it is very usable for users. What is more important, it is simpler to use than typical forum (no complex registration process, no delays in page refreshes, etc.). It is especially important to person(s) that want to help users on regular basis - it is very hard to refresh pages on multiple forums but it is very easy to receive messages from multiple mailing lists. Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO. -Austin
On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have programming experience with this in the past, and I can create ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then what is acceptable.
L. Rahyen wrote:
On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have programming experience with this in the past, and I can create ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then what is acceptable.
I agree with Austin. Mailing lists are faster and come with less bloat and wasted time waiting for icons to load. I'm assuming most people use an e-mail client like Thunderbird or evolution. What do we have to gain with a forum? The biggest loss with a forum would be more stress and dependence on the server....besides, mailing lists are the standard for this sort of thing.
On Monday February 18 2008 21:07:46 Christopher Harvey wrote:
L. Rahyen wrote:
On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have programming experience with this in the past, and I can create ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then what is acceptable.
I agree with Austin. Mailing lists are faster and come with less bloat and wasted time waiting for icons to load. I'm assuming most people use an e-mail client like Thunderbird or evolution. What do we have to gain with a forum?
Yeah, I agree. This is why I like mailing list more than forums. But some users prefer forums. Just see how many users use forums for general WINE-related discussions, and compare this to mailing list activity. if we decide that we need a forum, I can help here as I said already. But I don't have strong opinion here (because, as I said, I like mailing lists more than forums; however, if there is demand + positive decision in the developer community I will be glad to help anyway). So if someone think that we need such forum - please tell about this! There is no point in whole this discussion if there is no demand for this...
The biggest loss with a forum would be more stress and dependence on the server....besides, mailing lists are the standard for this sort of thing.
Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who have forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; this another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad as it seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course mailing list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between official mailing list and official forum). Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our users) to what we have now or not?...
L. Rahyen <research <at> science.su> writes:
Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who have forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; this another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad as it seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course mailing list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between official mailing list and official forum). Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our users) to what we have now or not?...
We already have a forum, the appdb. I think it just needs some work to make what we have, better so that it actually looks like a forum, as I elaborated on in this post here http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.wine.devel/57058 It's just a matter of some modification to create a better user interface, there's no need to create a new forum, just change how we can view and interact with the existing data.
On Feb 18, 2008 5:10 PM, Jeff Zaroyko <jeffzaroyko(a)gmail.com> wrote:
We already have a forum, the appdb.
appdb seems limited by default to being about applications. What about discussion issues with other linux distros, solaris, OS X and forks of Wine? That was the purpose of http://www.wine-forum.org It should cover everything the appdb forum does not. -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
Steven Edwards <winehacker <at> gmail.com> writes:
On Feb 18, 2008 5:10 PM, Jeff Zaroyko <jeffzaroyko <at> gmail.com> wrote:
We already have a forum, the appdb.
appdb seems limited by default to being about applications. What about discussion issues with other linux distros, solaris, OS X and forks of Wine? That was the purpose of http://www.wine-forum.org
It should cover everything the appdb forum does not.
I don't see what you mean, the majority of discussion or request for help with wine is to do with applications, if a user is experiencing a problem with an application on any distro it still relevant to the application. This is why I think that my idea of simply creating useful view of the current data and a slightly different styled interface would be better than websites like wine-forum.org. I don't see the point in discussing forks of wine in a _wine_ discussion forum, discussion of other projects should be elsewhere imo.
On Monday February 18 2008 22:10:52 Jeff Zaroyko wrote:
L. Rahyen <research <at> science.su> writes:
Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who have forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; this another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad as it seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course mailing list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between official mailing list and official forum). Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our users) to what we have now or not?...
We already have a forum, the appdb.
I think it just needs some work to make what we have, better so that it actually looks like a forum, as I elaborated on in this post here
http://article.gmane.org/gmane.comp.emulators.wine.devel/57058
It's just a matter of some modification to create a better user interface, there's no need to create a new forum, just change how we can view and interact with the existing data.
It is important that someone actually started to work on this otherwise your idea will never be actually implemented (in near future at least). For me, for example, this is to hard to implement because I don't know AppDB good enough and have very limited free time. And personally I think that it will be too hard even for someone who knows AppDB very well. Also, there is naming confusion ("WINE forum" and "AppDB forum" - this will not allow users to find easily official WINE forum). And of course currently AppDB isn't specified as a forum at all (just try in Google "AppDB forum" - it seems that no one call AppDB "forum"). Another problem is that not all questions/comments are related to one particular application or applications at all - for example, general question about compile issues or other problems are possible (just compare wine-users archive with AppDB to see the difference). Currently it's hard for newbie to find a official WINE forum (try in Google for example "WINE forum linux"); well, this is because there is no official WINE forum currently... So most users who want to discuss WINE related issues in a forum discuss them on general Linux/distribution' forums. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to read all such forums, this is really too much "fragmented", this leads to some inefficiencies: sometimes WINE related questions on such forums cannot receive useful answer for a long time. Even worse, even if I find some question that I can quickly answer on the forum, it is impossible to do so without time consuming registration process. In fact there was some cases when I searched for some WINE related issues, find someone's unanswered question that I can answer quickly, but never find enough time and motivation to register. This is actually the problem that should be addressed if we decide to create forum. Registration shouldn't be required. At most (for protection from spam bots), few digits from a small picture should be entered by unregistered users before posting and that's all. As I said earlier, it is also important to have ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum otherwise (reliable) user support will be hard. And there is a lot of other important issues... By the way, http://wine-forum.org don't have these important features at all (just a note). And of course, I'm able to implement myself everything I'm talking above, with well looking design. But I will do this only if there is demand in this... That is, if it would be decided to create forum I will be glad to help, but if not then there is no point in creating of something that is intended for the community and isn't demanded high enough by this community. As I already said, I like mailing lists much more than forums, so my opinion about usefulness/uselessness of the forum is neutral. But I think it is useful to discuss this topic so right decision can be made (create or not to create the forum, or find other solution(s), or don't change anything at all) as a result of the discussion.
On Feb 18, 2008 6:57 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
And personally I think that it will be too hard even for someone who knows AppDB very well. Also, there is naming confusion ("WINE forum" and "AppDB forum" - this will not allow users to find easily official WINE forum). And of course currently AppDB isn't specified as a forum at all (just try in Google "AppDB forum" - it seems that no one call AppDB "forum"). Another problem is that not all questions/comments are related to one particular application or applications at all - for example, general question about compile issues or other problems are possible (just compare wine-users archive with AppDB to see the difference).
We discussed this at wineconf and could not reach consensus on what would be the best method.
Currently it's hard for newbie to find a official WINE forum (try in Google for example "WINE forum linux"); well, this is because there is no official WINE forum currently... So most users who want to discuss WINE related issues in a forum discuss them on general Linux/distribution' forums.
That was the idea in creating wine-forum. It would be one forum to bind them all so to speak. Currently wine discussion is fragmented across various forums in ubuntu, gentoo, Play on Linux, Winedoors, etc
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to read all such forums, this is really too much "fragmented", this leads to some inefficiencies: sometimes WINE related questions on such forums cannot receive useful answer for a long time. Even worse, even if I find some question that I can quickly answer on the forum, it is impossible to do so without time consuming registration process. In fact there was some cases when I searched for some WINE related issues, find someone's unanswered question that I can answer quickly, but never find enough time and motivation to register. This is actually the problem that should be addressed if we decide to create forum. Registration shouldn't be required. At most (for protection from spam bots), few digits from a small picture should be entered by unregistered users before posting and that's all. As I said earlier, it is also important to have ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum otherwise (reliable) user support will be hard. And there is a lot of other important issues... By the way, http://wine-forum.org don't have these important features at all (just a note). And of course, I'm able to implement myself everything I'm talking above, with well looking design. But I will do this only if there is demand in this... That is, if it would be decided to create forum I will be glad to help, but if not then there is no point in creating of something that is intended for the community and isn't demanded high enough by this community. As I already said, I like mailing lists much more than forums, so my opinion about usefulness/uselessness of the forum is neutral. But I think it is useful to discuss this topic so right decision can be made (create or not to create the forum, or find other solution(s), or don't change anything at all) as a result of the discussion.
As I stated, we discussed this at wineconf and consesus was not reached. Dan wanted to use google groups, others want to keep mailing lists, while others still want to use the newsgroups. wine-forum is run by Tom Wickline who is a long time wine contributor so while I would support a better system that integrates with appdb and the winehq mainsite better, I am leery of yet another system if its not going to have someone or someones dedicated to maintain it for years to come. Also as I stated, I don't think appdb is covers every discussion topic unless you extend it to support distros, Wine forks, winelib application projects, etc. Tom is committed to doing this with wine-forum. If there is something you don't like, such as the registration, advertisements, etc I am sure he is willing to adjust the user experience. -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
On Tuesday February 19 2008 00:55:23 Steven Edwards wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 6:57 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
And personally I think that it will be too hard even for someone who knows AppDB very well. Also, there is naming confusion ("WINE forum" and "AppDB forum" - this will not allow users to find easily official WINE forum). And of course currently AppDB isn't specified as a forum at all (just try in Google "AppDB forum" - it seems that no one call AppDB "forum"). Another problem is that not all questions/comments are related to one particular application or applications at all - for example, general question about compile issues or other problems are possible (just compare wine-users archive with AppDB to see the difference).
We discussed this at wineconf and could not reach consensus on what would be the best method.
Currently it's hard for newbie to find a official WINE forum (try in Google for example "WINE forum linux"); well, this is because there is no official WINE forum currently... So most users who want to discuss WINE related issues in a forum discuss them on general Linux/distribution' forums.
That was the idea in creating wine-forum. It would be one forum to bind them all so to speak. Currently wine discussion is fragmented across various forums in ubuntu, gentoo, Play on Linux, Winedoors, etc
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to read all such forums, this is really too much "fragmented", this leads to some inefficiencies: sometimes WINE related questions on such forums cannot receive useful answer for a long time. Even worse, even if I find some question that I can quickly answer on the forum, it is impossible to do so without time consuming registration process. In fact there was some cases when I searched for some WINE related issues, find someone's unanswered question that I can answer quickly, but never find enough time and motivation to register. This is actually the problem that should be addressed if we decide to create forum. Registration shouldn't be required. At most (for protection from spam bots), few digits from a small picture should be entered by unregistered users before posting and that's all. As I said earlier, it is also important to have ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum otherwise (reliable) user support will be hard. And there is a lot of other important issues... By the way, http://wine-forum.org don't have these important features at all (just a note). And of course, I'm able to implement myself everything I'm talking above, with well looking design. But I will do this only if there is demand in this... That is, if it would be decided to create forum I will be glad to help, but if not then there is no point in creating of something that is intended for the community and isn't demanded high enough by this community. As I already said, I like mailing lists much more than forums, so my opinion about usefulness/uselessness of the forum is neutral. But I think it is useful to discuss this topic so right decision can be made (create or not to create the forum, or find other solution(s), or don't change anything at all) as a result of the discussion.
As I stated, we discussed this at wineconf and consesus was not reached. Dan wanted to use google groups, others want to keep mailing lists, while others still want to use the newsgroups. wine-forum is run by Tom Wickline who is a long time wine contributor so while I would support a better system that integrates with appdb and the winehq mainsite better, I am leery of yet another system if its not going to have someone or someones dedicated to maintain it for years to come.
Well, if I created something, I will be able to maintain it as long as it useful. So this isn't a problem. Problem is that I don't see any kind of the agreement even between two people - so it is very difficult (or even impossible) to really create *official* forum in such situation... If agreement cannot be found, I think best idea is to not change anything. Well, that's not that bad - personally I think WINE community and its mailing lists (along with AppDB) are good enough for most users "as is".
Also as I stated, I don't think appdb is covers every discussion topic unless you extend it to support distros, Wine forks, winelib application projects, etc.
That's (almost) what I said in my message (its too hard too implement + other issues mentioned by me and you) - so I agree with you.
Tom is committed to doing this with wine-forum. If there is something you don't like, such as the registration, advertisements, etc I am sure he is willing to adjust the user experience.
OK, then if he is reading this list hopefully he will consider my words as feature request. If he really will fix these issues that would be great. Thanks.
On Feb 18, 2008 8:19 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
OK, then if he is reading this list hopefully he will consider my words as feature request. If he really will fix these issues that would be great. Thanks.
He lurks on wine-devel all the time so I am sure he wants to make the system easy to please for everyone. I'll discuss it with him at length off list because there was tighter integration I want to see also with appdb. -- Steven Edwards "There is one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come." - Victor Hugo
On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 8:19 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Tom is committed to doing this with wine-forum. If there is something you don't like, such as the registration, advertisements, etc I am sure he is willing to adjust the user experience.
OK, then if he is reading this list hopefully he will consider my words as feature request. If he really will fix these issues that would be great. Thanks.
Sorry for the late reply, ive caught the flu bug and ive been sick for the past week. I have yet to receive the first email of complaint about the advertisements on the forum. I know the Kontera adverts are considered by some as nag, pop-up advertising but ive yet to receive a message or email asking me to remove them. As for registration, every forum ive ever visited asked for registration, sorry but I don't understand what your asking for? Tom
On Thursday February 21 2008 16:37:15 Tom Wickline wrote:
On Mon, Feb 18, 2008 at 8:19 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Tom is committed to doing this with wine-forum. If there is something you don't like, such as the registration, advertisements, etc I am sure he is willing to adjust the user experience.
OK, then if he is reading this list hopefully he will consider my words as feature request. If he really will fix these issues that would be great. Thanks.
Sorry for the late reply, ive caught the flu bug and ive been sick for the past week.
I have yet to receive the first email of complaint about the advertisements on the forum. I know the Kontera adverts are considered by some as nag, pop-up advertising but ive yet to receive a message or email asking me to remove them.
Well, personally I don't care about ads. I simply don't see them in most cases anyway. I use complex custom filters on all web-pages - and auto-removing of ads is just of one their features. In fact, I even didn't know about existence of ads on wine-forum (and many other sites)! BTW, I never mentioned ads in my messages as a problem...
As for registration, every forum ive ever visited asked for registration, sorry but I don't understand what your asking for?
Tom
Well, there is some forums which provides "quick reply" form at the bottom of the thread (on any of its pages). If you are logged in, you can type text there and then submit it as usually. If you are not logged in, you will be able to enter your nickname, protection code and text with your reply. Protection code is intended as protection from "spam bots". Usually, protection code provided as somewhat noisy image with few digits and user should recognize them and enter correctly in the "protection code" field. Sometimes additional optional fields with password is provided so user can login and send an answer simultaneously. If he/she leave password field blank then reply is posted anyway with provided nickname but with "guest" settings (such as default avatar for all guests or not avatar at all, etc.) and guest privileges. Sometimes nickname collisions are allowed, sometimes not. Typically it is good idea to make "guest" settings in the way that clearly marks all guest posts as such. However, depending on the code base of a forum, it may be simple to integrate such a feature, or hard. But registration is one-time problem, especially for people who just want to ask one question or answer to some topic (that was found using Google for example) and don't plan to use the forum frequently. And many people can consider this as "minor" issue. More important problem is lack of ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum as as well as inability to answer via standard mail client. These problems are most important. wine-forum.org doesn't provide such functionality. It would be great if this is fixed. *At least* there should be possibility to subscribe to all messages from the forum and possibility to answer by clicking on the link (to the reply form on the forum) in each e-mail message from the forum (direct processing of the e-mail answers is even better but can be harder to implement). It is also important that after you logged in you don't need to login every time again and there is no short timeout (use of cookies is necessary for this to work). But I have no idea how hard/easy will be to implement these features on wine-forum.org because I know very little about vBulletin used by wine-forum. I think that recently created http://forum.winehq.org/ seems to be the best solution. Registration there isn't a problem because anyone can write a message directly to the mailing list without registration on the forum. This is exactly what I imagine as a perfect solution suitable for all users: everyone can post answers without logging in (via the mailing list), everybody can use forum or mailing list (depending on personal choice), and it is possible to receive and answer using any e-mail client you like. So I think winehq.org now have very good forum with nice sync with wine-users mailing list! I really like it. In fact it solves all major problems that I mentioned in my previous messages!
On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 1:13 AM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
As for registration, every forum ive ever visited asked for registration, sorry but I don't understand what your asking for?
Tom
Well, there is some forums which provides "quick reply" form at the bottom of the thread (on any of its pages). If you are logged in, you can type text there and then submit it as usually. If you are not logged in, you will be able to enter your nickname, protection code and text with your reply. Protection code is intended as protection from "spam bots". Usually, protection code provided as somewhat noisy image with few digits and user should recognize them and enter correctly in the "protection code" field. Sometimes additional optional fields with password is provided so user can login and send an answer simultaneously. If he/she leave password field blank then reply is posted anyway with provided nickname but with "guest" settings (such as default avatar for all guests or not avatar at all, etc.) and guest privileges. Sometimes nickname collisions are allowed, sometimes not. Typically it is good idea to make "guest" settings in the way that clearly marks all guest posts as such. However, depending on the code base of a forum, it may be simple to integrate such a feature, or hard.
But registration is one-time problem, especially for people who just want to ask one question or answer to some topic (that was found using Google for example) and don't plan to use the forum frequently. And many people can consider this as "minor" issue. More important problem is lack of ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum as as well as inability to answer via standard mail client. These problems are most important. wine-forum.org doesn't provide such functionality. It would be great if this is fixed. *At least* there should be possibility to subscribe to all messages from the forum and possibility to answer by clicking on the link (to the reply form on the forum) in each e-mail message from the forum (direct processing of the e-mail answers is even better but can be harder to implement). It is also important that after you logged in you don't need to login every time again and there is no short timeout (use of cookies is necessary for this to work). But I have no idea how hard/easy will be to implement these features on wine-forum.org because I know very little about vBulletin used by wine-forum.
I think that recently created http://forum.winehq.org/ seems to be the best solution. Registration there isn't a problem because anyone can write a message directly to the mailing list without registration on the forum. This is exactly what I imagine as a perfect solution suitable for all users: everyone can post answers without logging in (via the mailing list), everybody can use forum or mailing list (depending on personal choice), and it is possible to receive and answer using any e-mail client you like. So I think winehq.org now have very good forum with nice sync with wine-users mailing list! I really like it. In fact it solves all major problems that I mentioned in my previous messages!
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=52 I sincerely wish you guys the best fighting off the spam assault :D Cheers, Tom P.S. Hows that song go?....... You ain't seen nothing yet!
Tom Wickline wrote:
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=52
I sincerely wish you guys the best fighting off the spam assault :D
Yeah, it has been difficult. Since I've never run a PHPbb board before, I never know how well these bots had the registration system down. It has really raised my blood pressure a bit this weekend. I think I've come up with a solution that will work for everybody. First, I updated the "captcha" image validation to be more random and harder to screen scrape. Second, I added a text validation field that asks you: "Who is the current maintainer of the Wine project?" This should stop both bots and human spammers that don't know about our forum. To be nice, I at least added a hint link, that takes you to the "About Wine" page on WineHQ, so new users will at least have to read a little bit of our history if they don't know.
Jeremy Newman wrote:
Tom Wickline wrote:
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=52
I sincerely wish you guys the best fighting off the spam assault :D
Yeah, it has been difficult. Since I've never run a PHPbb board before, I never know how well these bots had the registration system down. It has really raised my blood pressure a bit this weekend.
I think I've come up with a solution that will work for everybody. First, I updated the "captcha" image validation to be more random and harder to screen scrape.
Second, I added a text validation field that asks you: "Who is the current maintainer of the Wine project?"
This should stop both bots and human spammers that don't know about our forum.
To be nice, I at least added a hint link, that takes you to the "About Wine" page on WineHQ, so new users will at least have to read a little bit of our history if they don't know.
I just tried to register and locked myself out. I don't know if it was the capcha or what I was putting in for Wine's maintainer (Alexandre Julliard) but one of them was wrong every time. I am pretty sure I got the name of Wine's maintainer right so I think it has to be the capcha but I have never had problems with them before. Just so's you know... -- Tony Lambregts
L. Rahyen wrote:
On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have programming experience with this in the past, and I can create ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then what is acceptable.
Why not make a forum and then have winehq link to it? If it becomes popular maybe it'll become the official one. That's the spirit of the GPL, the way I see it, don't need popular support or permission.
On Feb 18, 2008 8:53 PM, Christopher Harvey <arbuckle911(a)gmail.com> wrote:
L. Rahyen wrote:
On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have programming experience with this in the past, and I can create ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then what is acceptable.
Why not make a forum and then have winehq link to it? If it becomes popular maybe it'll become the official one. That's the spirit of the GPL, the way I see it, don't need popular support or permission.
If everyone seems happy the way wine-forum.org is organized, we could simply add a link on winehq. That way we don't add another forum to the mix, and also have one area that can gather users of wine with winehq's blessing. -Austin
On Tuesday February 19 2008 03:11:24 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 8:53 PM, Christopher Harvey <arbuckle911(a)gmail.com> wrote:
L. Rahyen wrote:
On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research(a)science.su> wrote:
Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose something else), then we can discuss next details, etc. In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have programming experience with this in the past, and I can create ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server. But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then what is acceptable.
Why not make a forum and then have winehq link to it? If it becomes popular maybe it'll become the official one. That's the spirit of the GPL, the way I see it, don't need popular support or permission.
If everyone seems happy the way wine-forum.org is organized, we could simply add a link on winehq. That way we don't add another forum to the mix, and also have one area that can gather users of wine with winehq's blessing.
What I want to say is to wait 1-2 months and see what will change in wine-forum after this discussion. If major issues will not be fixed after this time then I think creating the forum from scratch is better just because I already have heavily modified and improved source code of phpBB forum (but it is somewhat old; however, updating to new version should be not very hard task) - so in my case much less programming is needed at the start. If I decide to create the forum in next few weeks, then let another 2-3 months to pass... After this it should be possible to make elaborated decisions. There is no need for rush in this case I think. Also Christopher Harvey is right, maybe it is better to create the forum first and only after this + 2-4 months waiting discuss this topic again. Then comparison with other forums will be possible in order to pick the best. But as I said, I want to wait at least 3-4 weeks to see if wine-forum.org will start to improve or not... If not I probably will try to create something better.
"Austin English" <austinenglish(a)gmail.com> wrote:
In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger' people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an easier way to do this, IMHO.
It's pretty much easy to see who needs help then. And assuming that inexperienced/novices can't help themselves, and people who really can answer their questions are not going to participate on forums (because it's mostly a waste of time IMO) the answer should be clear enough. Of course, if the creation of the forum doesn't aim to really help, but just a general form of discussing everything here and there, for the sake of it... -- Dmitry.
participants (13)
-
Austin English -
Christopher Harvey -
Dan Kegel -
Dmitry Timoshkov -
James McKenzie -
Jeff Zaroyko -
Jeremy Newman -
L. Rahyen -
Steven Edwards -
Tlarhices -
Tom Wickline -
Tony Lambregts -
Zachary Goldberg