On 4/22/06, Paul subsolar@subsolar.com wrote:

I don't like web interfaces!

No seriously, I don't have the time to spend going out and monitoring a dozen forums. I find mail lists much more convenient ... the information comes to me, I don't have to go to the information.

We could always make a web interface to the mailing list. Some ideas: - Threads get shown in usual bulletin board style - Moderators can move threads from the main area to other sections. Threads can be created by users directly in user-writable sections - When users signup for an account it could be linked with a username@wineusers.com or similar address - When users post to a thread or create a thread, an email is sent from their wine-managed email account to the list, and the post shows up in the board - When someone replies privately to a user without CC'ing the list, the message is sent to their private inbox - Users on the forum can send messages to other users in a similar fashion - Reply notifications can be configured by the user to be sent to their personal address - Posts are all plain text, with optional attachments (some reasonable limits apply)

Since a huge number of the features usually provided by forums are not needed, this is probably an easier task than it might seem.

n0dalus.

Hello,

I like mailing lists more than forums. But I think most "normal" computer users have a different view. That's why I like the idea of a wine forum.

n0dalus wrote:

On 4/22/06, Paul subsolar@subsolar.com wrote:

...

I don't like web interfaces!

No seriously, I don't have the time to spend going out and monitoring a dozen forums. I find mail lists much more convenient ... the information comes to me, I don't have to go to the information.

We could always make a web interface to the mailing list. Some ideas:

• Threads get shown in usual bulletin board style
• Moderators can move threads from the main area to other sections.

Threads can be created by users directly in user-writable sections

• When users signup for an account it could be linked with a

username@wineusers.com or similar address

• When users post to a thread or create a thread, an email is sent

from their wine-managed email account to the list, and the post shows up in the board

• When someone replies privately to a user without CC'ing the list,

the message is sent to their private inbox

• Users on the forum can send messages to other users in a similar fashion
• Reply notifications can be configured by the user to be sent to

their personal address

• Posts are all plain text, with optional attachments (some reasonable

limits apply)

Since a huge number of the features usually provided by forums are not needed, this is probably an easier task than it might seem.

n0dalus.

The idea is good. But I think that might overload the wine-users mailing list. A forum would have more traffic than the mailing list currently has. That's a positive thing but the mailing list can become IMHO unusable if it gets to many mails, let's say around 100/day? Wine is certainly a big project which has many users so I don't thing this number is too exaggerated. It would be bad if the wine-users mailing list dies because no one posts to it but in contrast it wouldn't be better if it get's too much traffic. So let the users decide whether they want a mailing list or a forum, or both. I am just talking about wine-users and offering another option ;-)

I think that independent forum and mailing list wouldn't spread the information more than it is already. The forum would be able to collect wine-related discussions which now takes place on different forums across the Internet. Even if you hate forums you might be interested that there is only one with wine-related discussions in it. To collect information neither a forum nor a mailing list is ideal. That's the reason for a bug tracker and the AppDB, isn't it? And there are different types of information: -> bugs in wine -> missing features -> distribution specific wine problems -> user with wine/distribution/linux problems -> ... The first and the second one should be interesting for developers, the other things can be solved with the help of other users. It is easier for users to post and help each other if they have a "community" which a forum seems to provide them. And often you can not decide on the first look, whether it's a bug or just a handling problem. You can be selective in a forum (or should I better say the forum selects for you?) by choosing the sub-forum you enter. Therefore the structure of the forum is one important thing, which should be carefully thought of before starting a forum. Could be something like this:

- applications (how to get the app work, open a thread only if you know how to get the app working) --- games ---> Diablo 2 ---> The Settlers 3 --- office ---> Adobe Photoshop ---> MS Office 2000 - distribution specific problems (everything that isn't a bug in wine, but can be tricky for the users of a specific distribution) ---> Debian-based ---> SuSE ---> Gentoo - general questions/problems (did someone try to get the app blabla working? I experience the problem blub, can somebody help me?) - wine philosophie (about the use of wine and why it is important (user comments), just a little bit of talk, but that's the live in a forum ;) )

IMHO it would be very useful for wine and for the users to get this forum as a "connection". An unofficial wine forum would be a bad solution because it would seperate two things which belong together (program/users). But if that's the only choice I would support it. it's better if things get connected (AppDB, bugtracker, forum, ML, etc.). A seperation of forum and wine-hq would make this more difficult. The more the things get integrated, the more useful they are and can be automated (i.e. link threads with bug entries, etc.) Currently I am busy (next week exams+have to write a program) otherwise I would see whether I could program an example how I would do it. Also I'd like to see what wine doors does (if I remembered it correctly, he would like things in the AppDB to change?)

However if this topic is still actual when I'll have more time, I am going to put more effort into it :-)

Greetings KGJ

Molle Bestefich wrote:

Paul wrote:

...

No seriously, I don't have the time to spend going out and monitoring a dozen forums. I find mail lists much more convenient ... the information comes to me, I don't have to go to the information.

I feel the same. I'd like to know exactly what it is that people find so convenient about forums. I'd also like to know why the wine list archives can't provide the same convenience.

Two things come to mind:

• Ability to apply a 'star' rating to topics (called "sticky"?) that

are enlightened and/or of general interest. (I think that designated forum administrators perform this task.)

• Ability to post under a pseudonym (without going through the trouble

of finding a free e-mail provider, creating an account, figuring out how their web interface works, etc.)

People have problems with pseudonyms, I am evidence to that. People get upset with me cause I won't reveal my real name, and act as if I am discredible cause of such.

• ... What else?

Molle Bestefich wrote:

Paul wrote:

...

No seriously, I don't have the time to spend going out and monitoring a dozen forums. I find mail lists much more convenient ... the information comes to me, I don't have to go to the information.

I feel the same. I'd like to know exactly what it is that people find so convenient about forums. I'd also like to know why the wine list archives can't provide the same convenience.

Two things come to mind:

• Ability to apply a 'star' rating to topics (called "sticky"?) that

are enlightened and/or of general interest. (I think that designated forum administrators perform this task.)

Actually, "sticky" posts are ones that don't or can't get deleted

• Ability to post under a pseudonym (without going through the trouble

of finding a free e-mail provider, creating an account, figuring out how their web interface works, etc.)

• ... What else?

How about the ability to post/read/respond to messages even when you're not at your own computer? Many people on Yahoo Groups, for instance, don't even have a computer at home and access their groups from works or library computers. To my mind, this is probably the most important advantage a forum has over an email list.

David Shaw

Molle Bestefich wrote:

David Shaw wrote:

...

Actually, "sticky" posts are ones that don't or can't get deleted

Aha. So people usually delete posts from bulletin boards after some time? Who decides what gets deleted, an administrator or the postee, time, or?...

That's a feature that would be very hard to implement as a web interface on top of a mailing list. Would you deem it as important?

No, its not that they get deleted, but under a category, with time the posts that aren't sticky are at the bottom of the pile (page 300 of 1000, etc).. Posts that are made sticky stay at the very top.

...

How about the ability to post/read/respond to messages even when you're not at your own computer? Many people on Yahoo Groups, for instance, don't even have a computer at home and access their groups from works or library computers. To my mind, this is probably the most important advantage a forum has over an email list.

Great. I could implement that in a web interface on top of a mailing list Really-Really-Fast (tm)

Sarcasm aside, I agree that it would be nice to not have to go to the web interface of gmail to check the mailing list from work.. And dont even get me started on using VNC to remote login to my computer so I can use Thunderbird (yes i do that too from work sometimes)...

...

• ... What else?

How about the ability to post/read/respond to messages even when you're not at your own computer? Many people on Yahoo Groups, for instance, don't even have a computer at home and access their groups from works or library computers. To my mind, this is probably the most important advantage a forum has over an email list.

Are Yahoo Groups allowing to access regular newsgroups? Supposing it is, making Wine's mailing a newsgroup would make it accessible through that service and others (ex Google Groups). I haven't used that feature, but I know Google Groups allows to rate posts with 1-5 stars.

I'm not an heavy newsgroup user, so I'll leave it to you to find disadvantages of using that approach.

2006/4/22, Sterling Christensen sterling.christensen@gmail.com:

For Wine, stickies would be useful for questions that keep getting asked very frequently. Asnwer it once then sticky it. That way others thinking of asking the same question will see the stick instead for weeks, months to come - until you decide there are too many stickies and unstick it.

Forums generally don't delete messages. Posting to a thread bumps the thread to the top of the list. A sticky is a message that always stays at the top, to keep it visible. Usually used for important topics such as "Posting rules - read this before posting.", but also for FAQs on issues too temporary to be added to a real FAQ page.

You raise the idea of a FAQ here. I'd simply like to point that a FAQ can be maintained - and needs to be maintained - regarless of the format you choose (list or forum, stickies or not). FAQs are not built instantly out of stickies. I personnally prefer a well written FAQ to stickies (some newsgroups have awesome FAQs, ex comp.c.lang @ http://c-faq.com/).

Just sharing my opinion :-)

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006, Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea) wrote:

You can't reply to the archives.. you still have to sign up for the mailing list. I don't like having my inbox flooded with emails from the devel and bugs lists. If I go to a forum, I see a topic once and read all of the posts to that topic if I want to, whereas I have to delete every email I dont want/need to read and then delete it from the trash (or shift+del to avoid the trash).. I'd prefer the forums because I can turn off email notifications

You can do the same with the mailing lists, via the Mailman GUI: Just set "Mail delivery" to Disabled.

I think Gmane (and the other mailing list frontends) provides all the forum features that we need.

Regards,

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 17:30 +0200, Molle Bestefich wrote:

I'd like to know exactly what it is that people find so convenient about forums.

A lot. If forums are made, they should be user, not developer, targeted. Normal users, as opposed to power hackers, prefer forums for a variety of reasons:

1. They can bookmark forum posts.

2. Webmail interfaces are very popular but often suck at threading mailing lists.

3. phpbb has become so widespread that signing up for a forum is something that they know how to do and are familiar with.

4. phpbb is so widespread that it's a familiar interface.

5. Subscribing to a mailing lists requires setting up filters so that you're main inbox isn't flooded with posts.

6. A forum has a throttleable amount of involvement. I don't want to have to subscribe to a mailing list to just ask one question and then probably never participate again, and then have to go through the whole sign up process again on the off chance that I do have another question.

7. Nobody whines when you attach large images or files.

8. It is easily searchable, and unlike the giant "wine-users" or "wine-devel" lists, you can narrow your search to specific subforums.

9. Posts that aren't active get filtered down to the bottom. Browsing the web interface to the mailing list just gives me a giant topic dump for the last month.

10. Sticky posts can alert users to the presence of the FAQ and answers to popular problems (like, click here for the WoW patch).

Nobody on wine-devel should be concerned that they can't read a phpbb in mutt. Wine forums would be about centering users discussion in one place. I wouldn't expect the moderators to be actual wine developers, but people pulled from the community. The Ubuntu forums do this. The Ubuntu developers do not do much direct posting and everything works great. I wouldn't worry about communication between the lists and the forums at all.

There is also a tendency for users that read both to arise and post important stuff back on the forums. For example, Stefan's ddraw->d3d patch would probably get immediately posted by someone, despite starting on the list. The community just takes it and runs with it.

I think wine forums would get a lot more people running wine succesfully. Right now if you want to run World of Warcraft on wine, you need to hunt down a specific popular thread on gentoo.org. It'd be a lot easier for all wine users if they could just go to one place.

Doing all the work to improve the mailing list web interface seems like a bad idea when you can just spare yourself all the work and use something like phpbb. Why reinvent the wheel?

Joseph Garvin wrote:

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 17:30 +0200, Molle Bestefich wrote:

...

I'd like to know exactly what it is that people find so convenient about forums.

A lot. If forums are made, they should be user, not developer, targeted. Normal users, as opposed to power hackers, prefer forums for a variety of reasons:

1. They can bookmark forum posts.

I like the ability to do that even if I don't use it much..

2. Webmail interfaces are very popular but often suck at threading

mailing lists.

Aside from gmail, but thats another story..

3. phpbb has become so widespread that signing up for a forum is

something that they know how to do and are familiar with.

4. phpbb is so widespread that it's a familiar interface.

5. Subscribing to a mailing lists requires setting up filters so that

you're main inbox isn't flooded with posts.

That part I hate!

6. A forum has a throttleable amount of involvement. I don't want to

have to subscribe to a mailing list to just ask one question and then probably never participate again, and then have to go through the whole sign up process again on the off chance that I do have another question.

Which is why many users say CC me in all replies because I'm not subscribed! I agree with this in other words..

7. Nobody whines when you attach large images or files.

Very very true

8. It is easily searchable, and unlike the giant "wine-users" or

"wine-devel" lists, you can narrow your search to specific subforums.

9. Posts that aren't active get filtered down to the bottom. Browsing

the web interface to the mailing list just gives me a giant topic dump for the last month.

I hate these 2 "features" of the mailing list archives

10. Sticky posts can alert users to the presence of the FAQ and answers

to popular problems (like, click here for the WoW patch).

Which, since we currently have no way to do that (dont mention wiki because the ones doing this dont read it apparently), is why we have so many dupe bugs and posts to the appdb, and posts to 3rd party forums, and dupe emails on the lists

Nobody on wine-devel should be concerned that they can't read a phpbb in mutt. Wine forums would be about centering users discussion in one place. I wouldn't expect the moderators to be actual wine developers, but people pulled from the community. The Ubuntu forums do this. The Ubuntu developers do not do much direct posting and everything works great. I wouldn't worry about communication between the lists and the forums at all.

I'm not technically a developer (since I haven't contributed any code in forever), so I would definitely qualify as community.. I currently relay info about bugs in bugzilla to the list already anyways, so linking to a forum post wouldnt be much different

There is also a tendency for users that read both to arise and post important stuff back on the forums. For example, Stefan's ddraw->d3d patch would probably get immediately posted by someone, despite starting on the list. The community just takes it and runs with it.

See above

I think wine forums would get a lot more people running wine succesfully. Right now if you want to run World of Warcraft on wine, you need to hunt down a specific popular thread on gentoo.org. It'd be a lot easier for all wine users if they could just go to one place.

YUP!

Doing all the work to improve the mailing list web interface seems like a bad idea when you can just spare yourself all the work and use something like phpbb. Why reinvent the wheel?

Thank you! As I said, the forums dont and shouldnt be anythign official, as long as they have the support of a few people on the devel list (myself, Molle, Mike, and the others (sorry guys!)), and a large majority of the users, then they will succeed, official or not.. I have already offered to pay out of my own pocket for a server to host them on. Granted it would be a virt host, but its a start.

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 08:57:48 -0500, Paul wrote:

I don't like web interfaces!

No seriously, I don't have the time to spend going out and monitoring a dozen forums. I find mail lists much more convenient ... the information comes to me, I don't have to go to the information.

That's a variant on "I don't like web interfaces" ;)

I suspect (but don't know) that one reason web forums are a lot more popular than foo-user mailing lists is that people _like_ not having their inboxes flooded with messages. I always use GMane to post to mailing lists these days, having so many mailing lists all filling up my mail box just didn't work for me (even with lots of filters).

Anyway, there's no rule that says "people must look at them". Even if it ends up being a completely different set of people using them to those that use the mailing lists, it'd still be a useful piece of infrastructure for those who like that kind of thing.

thanks -mike

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 13:17 -0500, Jeremy Newman wrote:

Currently the WineHQ server really does not have much space left over. Alexandre and I have had a few issues with the box running out of hard drive space.

Well, you're in luck: we have all the disk space and bandwidth we need on the new box budgetdedicated.com has given us. Currently, all it's doing is hosting a mirror of the .deb APT repository.

User forums would go perfectly there. Talk to me (YokoZar) on IRC or shoot me an email, as currently only I have root to the machine.

We need to know if this is really needed. Is providing a forum really better than: a good FAQ in the Wiki, the forums in the AppDB, Bugzilla, the mailing lists, and finally IRC? We already provide quite a few levels of help.

Absolutely, yes, forums are essential. For a case in point, take a look at the ubuntu forums: http://www.ubuntuforums.org/

Note how a ton of things get posted there, despite Ubuntu having about 40 different mailing lists as well - many people, myself included, greatly prefer web forums to mailing lists.

Also note that a ton of things related to [i]wine[/i] itself get posted there. I run a daily search for Wine and end up finding about 15 new posts a day on it. There is, quite clearly, a user demand for web forums that we are not satisfying, and as a result they go post elsewhere (such as the Ubuntu forums, or the forums on linuxgamers.net, or even Something Awful's tech forum), or, in many cases, don't post at all.

This makes perfect sense to me: I _hate_ mailing lists, especially the kind that I have to subscribe to in order to post - it's far easier to run a search on a web forum (rather than googling the list archives), and if my issue isn't resolved I can create an account and not have to worry about receiving emails or unsubscribing.

The other issue I have is that just adding a forum, is yet another login/password for users to have. What I don't like about the WineHQ website is that the AppDB and Bugzilla do not share a common login system. Adding a bboard just adds more to this problem.

Now, I do not see a reason why the AppDB guys could not use the already written forum in the AppDB to create a not tied to an app forum. Follow me?

Integration with AppDB would be great, but it's hardly as essential as getting a forum up in the first place. Seriously, the worst thing that can happen is it doesn't get used much...not unlike the mailing list itself.

On Sat, 2006-04-22 at 14:39 +0100, Mike Hearn wrote:

...

Running phpBB or some similar type web forum software, with official links and so on from WineHQ. Newman, what do you think, do we have server capacity to do this? Do you have time to set it up?

I can help set this up too, if need be.

Thanks, Scott Ritchie

On Sat, April 22, 2006 9:45 pm, Molle Bestefich said:

Can you explain what's so different between Google and a forum search?

That's pretty obvious: the Google search is just a lot better. Remember when we used to offer our own search on WineHQ? It sucked so badly it wasn't even funny. I'm pretty sure that even now the Google search is way better than anything the forum can ever provide.

This is of course not an argument against the forum. It's just that the search argument is not for forum either :)

Folks, I think these debates are a bit pointless. I know, I absoutely detest forums too, but this is irrelevant. For reasons I can not fathom it looks like some people like them. Let's not debate the reasons, we're not going to get anywhere: de gustibus non dispudandum est and all that.

The only thing that is of concern is whether by creating them we are going to harm rather than help the community. For one, I think it will have very little, if any, impact on wine-devel, as most folks here can't stand them anyway. So it is purely a wine-users kind of thing.

So what can happen? The only negative thing would be for the forum to not get used, unsuspecting users would use them, and get no real support, resulting in frustrated newbies. One cool thing that we can do to avoid that is to simply automatically forward forum posts to wine-users, and maybe automatically post replies from wine-users on to the forum. That would be ideal.

Bottom line: let's implement a forum, and see how it goes. If we can get the wine-users <--> forum gateway, it would be perfect. If not, we have to give it a few months and see if it catches on. If it does not, we'll take it out of its misery. Problem solved.

Hello,

Molle Bestefich wrote:

Scott Ritchie wrote:

...

This makes perfect sense to me: I _hate_ mailing lists, especially the kind that I have to subscribe to in order to post - it's far easier to run a search on a web forum (rather than googling the list archives),

Can you explain what's so different between Google and a forum search?

Well a forum search is automatically what the user wants. He just needs to enter a keyword or something and he gets everything out of the forum that's related to that keyword. If he uses Google he has to set up these search parameters manually which requires more work and more knowledge that the average computer user doesn't have. Another thing is that he gets the output formated in the nice design of the forum and not in these standard Google pages which are boring after a time. But I'm not a Google specialist, so I could be wrong.

...

and if my issue isn't resolved I can create an account and not have to worry about receiving emails or unsubscribing.

Agreed, the mailman subscribe function/pages are NOT nice.

For a mailing list, the problem you describe could be solved by:

• changing the word "subscribe" to "register",
• turning off delivery of list emails per default,
• providing a web form for posting to the mailing list.

That would make the mailing list act just like a forum in this respect.

A mailing list stays a mailing list and a forum stays a forum. You can mix them up but that wouldn't do what the users want, IMHO. Even the name "mailing list" might scare users away ;)

...

Integration with AppDB would be great, but it's hardly as essential as getting a forum up in the first place. Seriously, the worst thing that can happen is it doesn't get used much...

I disagree, I think the worst thing that can happen is that we get a forum up, and it's a half-ass solution because fx. communication between list members and forum members aren't happening, but it's not bad enough that anyone does anything about it.

I'd like it if we could make a solution that didn't divide users between a mailing list and a forum.

(Others might not see that as a problem. Please do argument why!)

Yes, I see your problem. But as Scott has more or less proven the situation now is even worse. Users and information isn't shared along 2 ways of communication (forum and mailing list) but across the whole Internet. It's easy to look at 2 places if you know of there existence, isn't it? It's just natural that you prefer one of these two. But the situation now is that wine-users exists but perhaps only 1/1000 of the wine users use it because they don't like mailing lists. Instead they use different forums across the Internet you don't even know about. Wouldn't it be better if these users use one central forum on wine-hq instead of many other forums? Surely it would be better two have just one, but two is an improvement from hundreds or?

I think that a forum is important but we should carefully think about how it should be. Now we can start without loosing or converting any data. A forum is important because it allows more users to communicate directly to each other and to wine. This would make it possible to address the users directly and find regressions faster.

OT@Scott I'm using debian unstable. Can I use the new APT repository? I'm sorry to ask such a dumb question but I don't have any idea of Ubuntu and I currently see only Ubuntu packages there. Else it would be nice to have the debian packages there two ;) Also it couldn't hurt if http://winehq.org/site/download-deb could be updated to point users to the new repository or? /OT@Scott

Greetings KGJ

Molle Bestefich wrote:

Scott Ritchie wrote:

...

This makes perfect sense to me: I _hate_ mailing lists, especially the kind that I have to subscribe to in order to post - it's far easier to run a search on a web forum (rather than googling the list archives),

Can you explain what's so different between Google and a forum search?

...

and if my issue isn't resolved I can create an account and not have to worry about receiving emails or unsubscribing.

Agreed, the mailman subscribe function/pages are NOT nice.

For a mailing list, the problem you describe could be solved by:

• changing the word "subscribe" to "register",
• turning off delivery of list emails per default,
• providing a web form for posting to the mailing list.

That would make the mailing list act just like a forum in this respect.

...

Integration with AppDB would be great, but it's hardly as essential as getting a forum up in the first place. Seriously, the worst thing that can happen is it doesn't get used much...

I disagree, I think the worst thing that can happen is that we get a forum up, and it's a half-ass solution because fx. communication between list members and forum members aren't happening, but it's not bad enough that anyone does anything about it.

I'd like it if we could make a solution that didn't divide users between a mailing list and a forum.

(Others might not see that as a problem. Please do argument why!)

Has anyone even thought of the divide we already have between mailing lists?! People post a question to wine-users and the devs who are subscribed there then forward it here if it can't be answered to anyone subscribed to wine-users. And bugzilla! I have to forward bugs here for this or that reason (usually because the developers who know x component don't subscribe to wine-bugs....) If we do solution 3 that was mentioned before, we have the perfect balance between ml and forums, as long as everyone on both wine-devel and wine-users subscribes. I say we scrap both wine-devel and wine-users, and make wine-forums, and have the forums post to there. Then make categories in the forums for each of the current mailing lists, and let users subscribe to those categories if they prefer mailing lists. Then we can make more categories, which can be subscribed to, for those same people that want to get this or that kind of email ("Q&A for the Non-Technical" category anyone?) Its hard to explain but I have an idea how this would work and pretty much satisfy everyone that has a complaint about either side of the divide..

Tom

Jeremy Newman wrote:

Currently the WineHQ server really does not have much space left over. Alexandre and I have had a few issues with the box running out of hard drive space.

I offered space on my box, so space shouldn't be an issue.

We need to know if this is really needed. Is providing a forum really better than: a good FAQ in the Wiki, the forums in the AppDB, Bugzilla, the mailing lists, and finally IRC? We already provide quite a few levels of help.

Yes you do, but personally I hate the appdb, and im rarely ever going to pull up irc even though it is installed, because i dont like having to switch networks back and forth. The mailing lists are nice because everything is delivered to my inbox, but they also stink for the same reason.. it floods my inbox. The FAQ in the wiki won't get read by people who don't rtfm (read: most people), so then they will still seek support.

The other issue I have is that just adding a forum, is yet another login/password for users to have. What I don't like about the WineHQ website is that the AppDB and Bugzilla do not share a common login system. Adding a bboard just adds more to this problem.

It doesn't make sense to not have a universal login for the entire site, and even you complain about it.. Just curious, but why are we not able to fix that?

Now, I do not see a reason why the AppDB guys could not use the already written forum in the AppDB to create a not tied to an app forum. Follow me?

For the same reason I posted above.. I personally hate the appdb

I'm sure that the majority of users (the non-techies anyways) will second most of what I said above. I think the winehq site suffers from information overload (theres waaaay too much info all over it), and so putting a forum in will make things a lot easier to maintain..

Personally I think all we need is winehq, bugzilla, the mailing lists and the forums. IRC can stay, but lets make it our own server, irc.winehq.org, so that we have some control over what happens.. versus not having any control when the server dies. Come to think of it, I have been netadmin for multiple irc networks, and server admin on several others. Hell most of my C experience was in modifying servers to do what I wanted, and to fix bugs that the devs didn't properly fix... I may be a bit rusty, but I would be glad to get another shell account somewhere and host irc.winehq.org out of my own pocket (maybe with a little help from the fund, but not much), and at the same time I can put the forums on there too..

Tom

Kai Blin wrote:

• "Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea)" speeddymon@gmail.com [23/04/06, 11:40:39]:

...

Yes you do, but personally I hate the appdb, and im rarely ever going to pull up irc even though it is installed, because i dont like having to switch networks back and forth.

[...]

...

I'm sure that the majority of users (the non-techies anyways) will second most of what I said above. I think the winehq site suffers from information overload (theres waaaay too much info all over it), and so putting a forum in will make things a lot easier to maintain..

How will a forum make maintance easier? I would see that for a Wiki where everybody can edit.. but a forum?

See directly below.. People see all of these choices on where to go to get help, but dont like any of them (dont want to be flooded with emails, dont want to search the archives, or it isnt in the archives, dont know how to use bugzilla and dont want to learn, dont like the appdb, etc, etc, etc), so they go to somewhere else. The wiki isnt really designed for posting questions to, so they dont use that either..

...

Personally I think all we need is winehq, bugzilla, the mailing lists and the forums. IRC can stay, but lets make it our own server, irc.winehq.org, so that we have some control over what happens.. versus not having any control when the server dies. Come to think of it, I have been netadmin for multiple irc networks, and server admin on several others. Hell most of my C experience was in modifying servers to do what I wanted, and to fix bugs that the devs didn't properly fix... I may be a bit rusty, but I would be glad to get another shell account somewhere and host irc.winehq.org out of my own pocket (maybe with a little help from the fund, but not much), and at the same time I can put the forums on there too..

Two things:

• How would getting our own IRC server fix the "having to switch networks back and forth" problem? As opposed to freenode, where I can hang out in #wine-devel, #winehq, #samba-technical and so on, I now need to switch networks if I want to go from #wine-devel to #samba-technical.

It doesnt prevent that, it just makes it easier to control how fast the server comes back up in the event it goes down for whatever reason..

• You said some paragraphs before that you didn't like IRC. Why do you suddenly volunteer to run a server?

I didnt say I didnt like IRC, matter of fact I love it, but I have too much other things running on my computer and going on in my life to keep something like xchat or mirc (depending on what box im on) open all the time like i do for thunderbird.. If I'm renting a shell, I setup the server and forget about it, plus I'm more likely to spend time in #winehq, etc, if I am running the server it is on, because that way I can monitor when it goes down, etc.

Tom

Just my EUR 0.02 Kai

Kai Blin wrote:

• "Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea)" speeddymon@gmail.com [23/04/06, 13:00:51]:

...

See directly below.. People see all of these choices on where to go to get help, but dont like any of them (dont want to be flooded with emails, dont want to search the archives, or it isnt in the archives, dont know how to use bugzilla and dont want to learn, dont like the appdb, etc, etc, etc), so they go to somewhere else. The wiki isnt really designed for posting questions to, so they dont use that either..

And that make maintance easier how?

Because we only have 1 place to update, the wiki (as it is now) and then the rest should just link to there, including sticky topics in the forum, which will most likely be the most read thing on there.. If it doesnt make maintenance easier it at least cuts down on the duplicate questions posted all over wine-devel, wine-users, third party forums, irc, newsgroups, bugzilla and the appdb..... That is what i really meant by makes maintenance easier... But it wasn't the proper wordiong obviously.

...

...

• How would getting our own IRC server fix the "having to switch

networks back and forth" problem? As opposed to freenode, where I can hang out in #wine-devel, #winehq, #samba-technical and so on, I now need to switch networks if I want to go from #wine-devel to #samba-technical.

It doesnt prevent that, it just makes it easier to control how fast the server comes back up in the event it goes down for whatever reason..

If I read http://freenode.net/irc_servers.shtml correctly, they seem to have 16 servers up and running. I never had any major problems connecting. As opposed to us having a single point of failure. Besides, freenode is where I'd look for most free project's IRC channels

Fine whatever.. Personally I dont like having to keep an irc client open, but i would be more inclined to do so if we had our own server... Then we could do java irc from one of the website's servers, making another point of contact (and also making live help more readily accessible to those unfamiliar with irc)...

n0dalus wrote:

On 4/24/06, Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea) speeddymon@gmail.com wrote:

...

Fine whatever.. Personally I dont like having to keep an irc client open, but i would be more inclined to do so if we had our own server... Then we could do java irc from one of the website's servers, making another point of contact (and also making live help more readily accessible to those unfamiliar with irc)...

There's no reason we can't set up a java irc client to connect to freenode.

n0dalus.

I thought you had to have the irc and web daemons on the same server as the jirc page? hmm

On Sun, 2006-04-23 at 11:40 -0500, Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea) wrote:

It doesn't make sense to not have a universal login for the entire site, and even you complain about it.. Just curious, but why are we not able to fix that?

Nobody has taken up the task of trying to figure out a way to merge the Bugzilla and Appdb user databases. If I had my way I would have the appDB codebase modified to also be a bug tracker. The appDB has a fairly nice backend. We just need a volunteer to write a replacement bug system using that code.

For the same reason I posted above.. I personally hate the appdb

If you hate it, and you seem to want to help so badly, why don't you volunteer to help make the appDB better.