How should we treat users on bugzilla?

[Jeff Zaroyko]

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.