Sum-up: Re-proposal: web forums

[Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea)]

Molle Bestefich wrote:
> Hi
>
> I've tried to sum up the problems with the wine-users mailing list
> that are urging many people to call for a forum.winehq.org.
>
> I hope it's useful.
>
>
> Problems
> ========
>
>  1) Cannot post without configured mail client
>  2) Browsing old topics and replying/posting new ones happen in two
> different places (web archive vs. mail client)
>  3) Current archive web interface unwieldy (many clicks needed to
> browse, always sorted by month)
>  4) Missing Googlish search function
>  5) "Subscribe" wording and web pages suggest your inbox will fill up
> when doing so
>  6) Subscribing will cause your inbox to fill up; it's not obvious how
> to change it; neither how to receive mail on specific topics you DO
> want once you've changed it
>  7) Missing "forward all postings re this topic to my inbox" feature
>  8) Very difficult to post under pseudonym
>  9) Missing 'sticky' feature (?)
>
>
> Solution 1:  A forum, fx. phpBB
> ===============================
>
>   Pros:
>    ) Easy to set up.
>      We might even be able to sneak it in before AJ returns :-).
>      (Sorry big guy, couldn't resist pulling one on your expense =)..)
>    ) Might attract away from wine-users a high quantity of dumb
> questions that people ask when they can't be bothered to search the
> archives.
>    ) Adds a structural approach by categorizing users' various
> problems, which encourages searching instead of asking.
>
>   Cons:
>    ) Dillutes knowledge; some ends up in forum and some on wine-users,
> unless we nuke wine-users.
>    ) Need to hack the code to get visual integration with WineHQ (menus etc).
>    ) To get single-sign-on, we need either a.) reverse proxy or b.)
> something LDAPish and some amount of phpBB hacking
>
>
> Solution 2:  Point people at Gmane or Google Groups in a prominent place
> ========================================================================
>
>   Pros:
>    ) We don't have to do anything :-).
>
>   Cons:
>    ) If it's not directly on winehq.org, it's probably not official
> enough that people are going to use it.
>    ) Not everyone has a Gmail account (required to post through Groups)
>    ) Not everyone is adept to using Gmane
>
>
> Solution 3:  WebForum-on-top-of-List
> ====================================
>
>   Pros:
>    ) We concentrate people, allowing web and email users to communicate.
>    ) We concentrate (archived) knowledge in one place.
>
>   Cons:
>    ) The reason that forums are often filled with spam might be that
> it's too easy to post to them.  We'd be duplicating that.
>    ) We need to code it all ourselves!
>
>
> I think solution 1 is good, but I prefer the extra icing on the cake
> that comes with solution 3.
>
>
>
> Now, I'm not high on crystal meth or anything, but I'll just assume
> for a moment that we all want better accessibility for the newcomers
> (even with the rise in volume that they bring), and that all agree to
> go with solution 3 :-).  Thus I'll try to outline a battle plan:
>
> Battle-plan for solution 3
> ==========================
>
> We'd like non-Wine developers to be able to join in; so let's make
> sure that this system is generically usable.
> That means:
>  * Standard user authentication, fx. using LDAP.
>  * Componentize a bit, fx. keep the web interface itself separate from
> WineHQ menu structure and logo.
>
> We'd need to:
>  * Prioritize features
>  * Setup a mailing list
>  * Setup a simple project web page
>  * Setup a winehq-like staging area for development (follows
> HEAD/TIP/origin of web repository so everyone can see what the others
> are doing)
>  * Find developers/volunteers!
>  * Get started on the coding
>
> When prioritizing features, we should take a look around and see if
> there are software components available that could be reused, fx.:
>  * PHP LDAP auth bindings
>  * Existing, good web interfaces for the wine archives (mailman?)
>  * ?...
>
> Any holes or oversights in that plan?
>
> If solution 3 ever takes off, I will gladly contribute with coding.
> Realistically, though, i cannot implement something like this all by
> myself, especially not in any kind of a timely fashion.

I can contrib some code (need to start learning php anyways), and as I 
said I will be more than happy to setup a shell with a hosting provider 
for this and irc............