How should we treat users on bugzilla?

[L. Rahyen]

On Monday February 18 2008 17:49:40 Austin English 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.

	There is wine-users mailing list for such questions. As far as I know it even 
possible to send message to it without subscribing first so I think that it 
is very usable for users. What is more important, it is simpler to use than 
typical forum (no complex registration process, no delays in page refreshes, 
etc.). It is especially important to person(s) that want to help users on 
regular basis - it is very hard to refresh pages on multiple forums but it 
is very easy to receive messages from multiple mailing lists.
	Of course, there is some people who like forums. If we decide to create 
forum specifically for them, it is important to have possibility to subscribe 
for receiving all (full) messages from the forum to e-mail with direct link 
to reply page for corresponding message, and ability to login permanently 
without stupid timeout (using cookies). In fact there is some forums like 
this (unfortunately, all of them are unrelated to WINE) and they are pretty 
usable (however, personally I like mailing lists more, and didn't used forums 
for a long time). Of course, if there is no volunteer(s) to create and 
support such forum - then wine-users is enough I think.