Re-proposal: web forums

[KGJ]

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 at 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 at Scott>


Greetings KGJ
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