Do we need a forum?

[L. Rahyen]

On Monday February 18 2008 21:07:46 Christopher Harvey wrote:
> L. Rahyen wrote:
> > On Monday February 18 2008 19:44:08 Austin English wrote:
> >> On Feb 18, 2008 12:35 PM, L. Rahyen <research at science.su> wrote:
> >>>         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.
> >>
> >> In my experience, the 'older' crowd prefers newsgroups, but 'younger'
> >> people prefer message boards. Similar to how more advanced users
> >> prefer CLI, but inexperienced/novices use GUI. It seems to me we're
> >> trying to help the gui type of person, and a message board would be an
> >> easier way to do this, IMHO.
> >
> > 	Then what exactly we want? It is useful to decide what we need. For
> > example, phpBB forum with certain mods/modifications to give
> > functionality I mentioned. If we agree with this (or decide to choose
> > something else), then we can discuss next details, etc.
> > 	In fact, if we decide to create phpBB forum, I can help here. I have
> > programming experience with this in the past, and I can create
> > ready-for-use forum if we decide we need this (of course I can make also
> > its design, etc.). Also, I can give hosting on my server.
> > 	But first, we should make decision what we need. If above offer is
> > acceptable, then design details can be discussed farther. If not then
> > what is acceptable.
>
> I agree with Austin. Mailing lists are faster and come with less bloat
> and wasted time waiting for icons to load. I'm assuming most people use
> an e-mail client like Thunderbird or evolution. What do we have to gain
> with a forum?

	Yeah, I agree. This is why I like mailing list more than forums. But some 
users prefer forums. Just see how many users use forums for general 
WINE-related discussions, and compare this to mailing list activity.
	if we decide that we need a forum, I can help here as I said 
already. But I don't have strong opinion here (because, as I said, I like 
mailing lists more than forums; however, if there is demand + positive 
decision in the developer community I will be glad to help anyway).
	So if someone think that we need such forum - please tell about this! There 
is no point in whole this discussion if there is no demand for this...

> The biggest loss with a forum would be more stress and
> dependence on the server....besides, mailing lists are the standard for
> this sort of thing.

	Actually, forums are the standard also. There is a lot of projects who have 
forums for general discussion. Personally I don't like this at all, 
registration and posting almost always are very complex and annoying; this 
another reason why I like mailing lists more. But this isn't as bad as it 
seems, because it is possible to create better forums, without such 
drawbacks (and I can try to do this in case of positive decision). Server 
isn't a problem, I can give my server for this purpose. And of course mailing 
list will stay as is (so users will be able to choose between official 
mailing list and official forum).
	Question is, will be a (official) forum a useful *addition* (for our users) 
to what we have now or not?...