Sum-up: Re-proposal: web forums

Molle Bestefich molle.bestefich at gmail.com
Sun Apr 23 21:25:03 CDT 2006


Tom Spear (Dustin Booker, Dustin Navea) wrote:
> > 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),

A single brave soldier.  Not exactly the number I was hoping for.
On the bright side we won't need a mailing list to communicate ;-).

I wonder about two things right now:

1.)
===
Do we agree on the way forward?

I'll quote in a more concrete fashion what I think would be neat in a moment.

I have this idea in my head that you'd like a phpBB forum and then
implement a mailing list on top of each category.  I think that will
lead to somewhere near zero subscribers on those lists.  Am I
completely off the track here?

If we (the two of us, for a start) seem to agree, then we can try
persuading Mike Hearn to hold the implementation of forum.winehq.org
via phpBB off for a while while we try to make something work.


2.)
===
Is two people enough to implement the labourious parts, fx. a
forum-like web interface?

I don't know.


Concrete proposal (also attached, in case Gmail linewraps too badly)
=================

* 'Register' web page
  - Same functionality as Mailman subscribe (piggyback Mailman list
configuration)
  - Email delivery is turned off when registering
  - Wording in emails should be altered ("forum" vs. "mailing list",
"register" vs. "subscribe")

* Forum login web page
  - Piggyback Mailman user database.  We'll automagically achieve
single sign-on whenever Mailman @ WineHQ does ;-).

* Threading and import daemon
  - Imports raw .eml files
  - Stores in DB
  - Assigns internal thread/topic ID to each mail based on Message-ID,
References and Subject
  - Inspiration?: weaverd @ http://weaver.gmane.org/

* Forum web interface
  - Sorted by Category, assignable to each thread/topic (Also wanted:
subcategories)
  - Threaded view
  - Search engine (use DB fulltext index)
  - Allow posting with your registered email address (automagically
sets "Reply-To:list" !)
  - Allow ticking of topics you're interested in ("follow this topic"
checkbox when posting or so)
  - Inspiration?: http://forums.mysql.com and phpBB

* Notification daemon
  - Pick up a list (DB) of which topics users want notifications for
  - For each new message in DB,
    - Send an email to interested users (if any)
    - Flag as 'notification complete'


Labor requirements guesstimate
==============================

* 'Register' web page:            Low
* Forum login web page:           Low
* Threading and DB import daemon  Medium
* Notification daemon             Medium
* Forum web interface             High


Futureware
==========

The following can be done later, or not at all:

* Additions to Forum web interface
  - Keep track of which threads and/or messages you've read (does a forum?)
  - Rating system, fx. 'Sticky', 1-5 stars or Slashdotish

* Mail gateway allowing to post with a pseudonym <random>@obscure.winehq.org

* Additions to Threading and DB import daemon
  - Try to guesstimate category for new list-originated topics
-------------- next part --------------
Concrete proposal
=================

* 'Register' web page
  - Same functionality as Mailman subscribe (piggyback Mailman list configuration)
  - Email delivery is turned off by default
  - Wording in emails should be altered ("forum" vs. "mailing list", "register" vs. "subscribe")

* Forum login web page
  - Piggyback Mailman user database.  We'll automagically achieve single sign-on whenever Mailman @ WineHQ does ;-).

* Threading and import daemon
  - Imports raw .eml files
  - Stores in DB
  - Assigns internal thread/topic ID to each mail based on Message-ID, References and Subject
  - Inspiration?: weaverd @ http://weaver.gmane.org/

* Forum web interface
  - Sorted by Category, assignable to each thread/topic
  - Threaded view
  - Search engine (use DB fulltext index)
  - Allow posting with your registered email address (automagically sets "Reply-To:list" !)
  - Allow ticking of topics you're interested in ("follow this topic" checkbox when posting or so)
  - Inspiration?: http://forums.mysql.com and phpBB

* Notification daemon
  - Pick up a list (DB) of which topics users want notifications for
  - For each new message in DB,
    - Send an email to interested users (if any)
    - Flag as 'notification complete'


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