Re-proposal: web forums

[Dan Kegel]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> [Let's set up web forums for wine users]

I dislike the thought of having to monitor multiple forums.
Worse still, if a particular web forum goes offline, all its
content is lost; not so for mailing lists, which are archived
in multiple locations and so are much more reliable and long-lived.
Let's keep it all in wine-users, please.

If your goal is to make sure that the average person can
get answers to his or her questions about Wine, that's
a noble enterprise.   I would prefer a solution that doesn't
have the reliability and usability problems of the current crop of
web forums.  I would also prefer an evidence-based approach
to demonstrating the problem(s) with the current situation.
"Some people prefer web forums" is not sufficient evidence.

As I've said before, Mike is brilliant but misguided :-)
- Dan

--
Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv

[James Hawkins]

On 4/22/06, Dan Kegel  wrote:
> If your goal is to make sure that the average person can
> get answers to his or her questions about Wine, that's
> a noble enterprise.   I would prefer a solution that doesn't
> have the reliability and usability problems of the current crop of
> web forums.  I would also prefer an evidence-based approach
> to demonstrating the problem(s) with the current situation.
> "Some people prefer web forums" is not sufficient evidence.

We could have a Support/Questions section on winehq.org where a user
can enter a question or comment, as they would on wine-users had they
the time or knowledege of the ML, along with his/her email address. 
The question would be forwarded to wine-users, and any replies would
also reply to the given email address.  Sound reasonable?

--
James Hawkins

[Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea)]

Dan Kegel wrote:
> Mike Hearn wrote:
> > [Let's set up web forums for wine users]
>
> I dislike the thought of having to monitor multiple forums.
> Worse still, if a particular web forum goes offline, all its
> content is lost; not so for mailing lists, which are archived
> in multiple locations and so are much more reliable and long-lived.
> Let's keep it all in wine-users, please.
>
> If your goal is to make sure that the average person can
> get answers to his or her questions about Wine, that's
> a noble enterprise.   I would prefer a solution that doesn't
> have the reliability and usability problems of the current crop of
> web forums.  I would also prefer an evidence-based approach
> to demonstrating the problem(s) with the current situation.
> "Some people prefer web forums" is not sufficient evidence.
>
> As I've said before, Mike is brilliant but misguided :-)
> - Dan
>
> --
> Wine for Windows ISVs: http://kegel.com/wine/isv

What about just an unofficial (read 3rd party) forum but done by the 
developers and users who want one?  If we do that we can knock out the 
backup problems by having multiple servers serving the pages, and set it 
up to sync the posts.  Then do round robin DNS (which if we do, I will 
offer some of my bandwidth), to take care of load distribution...

Tom

[Mike Hearn]

On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:49:15 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
> I dislike the thought of having to monitor multiple forums.

Well, it's not like non-forumers would be banned or anything :)
> Worse still, if a particular web forum goes offline, all its
> content is lost; not so for mailing lists, which are archived
> in multiple locations and so are much more reliable and long-lived.

If you mean archived in peoples inboxes, then I'd argue that this is
really not an archive at all. I don't remember ever seeing a mailing list
archive that got lost being restored from inboxes.

If you mean backups in general, nothing stops people backing up the
databases.
> "Some people prefer web forums" is not sufficient evidence.

It's hard to prove a negative like that. Obviously _some_ people post to
wine-users, but judging from other projects I'd expect there to be a lot
of others who don't, simply because they're not comfortable with mailing
lists as an interface.

The amount of traffic experienced by sites like ubuntuforums.org vs their
-user lists is a fairly compelling piece of evidence, I'd say.

thanks -mike

[Molle Bestefich]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> Obviously _some_ people post to wine-users, but judging from other
> projects I'd expect there to be a lot of others who don't, simply
> because they're not comfortable with mailing lists as an interface.

When I first tried Wine many a year ago, it didn't work.

I saw there was a mailing list, but it required me to subscribe, which
very much sounded like:
 1.) You'll get a whole lot of stuff in your inbox every day that you
don't care about.
 2.) You'll expose your name and address to spammers worldwide.

Didn't sound like a good deal, so I thought what the heck and threw
Wine in the wastebin.

(I've come back since, but you can't expect everyone to be as stubborn
as I am..)
> The amount of traffic experienced by sites like ubuntuforums.org vs their
> -user lists is a fairly compelling piece of evidence, I'd say.

Yay.

But I so very much dislike the notion of splitting the user base into
'the mailing list people' and 'the forum people'.

I hope we can find a better solution, one that is both easily
accessible to newcomers but can also deliver content directly to the
inboxes of those that have an interest in Wine itself.

[Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea)]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> On Sat, 22 Apr 2006 07:49:15 -0700, Dan Kegel wrote:
> > I dislike the thought of having to monitor multiple forums.
>
> Well, it's not like non-forumers would be banned or anything :)
> > Worse still, if a particular web forum goes offline, all its
> > content is lost; not so for mailing lists, which are archived
> > in multiple locations and so are much more reliable and long-lived.
>
> If you mean archived in peoples inboxes, then I'd argue that this is
> really not an archive at all. I don't remember ever seeing a mailing list
> archive that got lost being restored from inboxes.
>
> If you mean backups in general, nothing stops people backing up the
> databases.

I can offer to setup an FTP on my box (I have plenty of space and plan 
on adding more).  Then we just need a cron script to take care of 
uploading the db's nightly...

Or as an alternative, I can setup a gmail account, and register it on 
the forum to receive _every_ post to the forums.  Then if we do lose the 
db's its a matter of logging in and going thru all of the emails (time 
consuming but not diffcult)..

Another alternative is to just have someone (me if need be) upload the 
db's to their gmail inbox on a regular basis (weekly?)

And lastly, if we are going to have the forum posts go to a mailing list 
anyways, gmane will archive it all, so we shouldnt have _any_ problems 
with backups...

[Dan Kegel]

Mike Hearn wrote:
> > Worse still, if a particular web forum goes offline, all its
> > content is lost; not so for mailing lists, which are archived
> > in multiple locations and so are much more reliable and long-lived.
>
> If you mean archived in peoples inboxes, then I'd argue that this is
> really not an archive at all.

No, I mean that there are multiple archives of many mailing lists;
if one goes offline, the others are there and usable.
(And if you don't like the user interface of one, you have options.)
> Obviously _some_ people post to
> wine-users, but judging from other projects I'd expect there to be a lot
> of others who don't, simply because they're not comfortable with mailing
> lists as an interface.

The null hypothesis (that wine is just unpopular) still needs to be
disproven :-)
I'd rather fix that problem (by getting Wine working) before worrying about
whether my Aunt Tillie can post Wine support questions!
- Dan