Do we need a forum?

[Tom Wickline]

On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 1:13 AM, L. Rahyen <research at science.su> wrote:
>
>  > As for registration, every forum ive ever visited asked for registration,
>  > sorry but I don't understand what your asking for?
>  >
>  > Tom
>
>         Well, there is some forums which provides "quick reply" form at the bottom of
>  the thread (on any of its pages). If you are logged in, you can type text
>  there and then submit it as usually. If you are not logged in, you will be
>  able to enter your nickname, protection code and text with your reply.
>  Protection code is intended as protection from "spam bots". Usually,
>  protection code provided as somewhat noisy image with few digits and user
>  should recognize them and enter correctly in the "protection code" field.
>  Sometimes additional optional fields with password is provided so user can
>  login and send an answer simultaneously. If he/she leave password field blank
>  then reply is posted anyway with provided nickname but with "guest" settings
>  (such as default avatar for all guests or not avatar at all, etc.) and guest
>  privileges. Sometimes nickname collisions are allowed, sometimes not.
>  Typically it is good idea to make "guest" settings in the way that clearly
>  marks all guest posts as such.
>         However, depending on the code base of a forum, it may be simple to integrate
>  such a feature, or hard.
>
>         But registration is one-time problem, especially for people who just want to
>  ask one question or answer to some topic (that was found using Google for
>  example) and don't plan to use the forum frequently. And many people can
>  consider this as "minor" issue.
>         More important problem is lack of ability to subscribe for all messages from
>  the forum as as well as inability to answer via standard mail client. These
>  problems are most important. wine-forum.org doesn't provide such
>  functionality. It would be great if this is fixed.
>         *At least* there should be possibility to subscribe to all messages from the
>  forum and possibility to answer by clicking on the link (to the reply form on
>  the forum) in each e-mail message from the forum (direct processing of the
>  e-mail answers is even better but can be harder to implement). It is also
>  important that after you logged in you don't need to login every time again
>  and there is no short timeout (use of cookies is necessary for this to work).
>  But I have no idea how hard/easy will be to implement these features on
>  wine-forum.org because I know very little about vBulletin used by wine-forum.
>
>         I think that recently created http://forum.winehq.org/ seems to be the best
>  solution. Registration there isn't a problem because anyone can write a
>  message directly to the mailing list without registration on the forum. This
>  is exactly what I imagine as a perfect solution suitable for all users:
>  everyone can post answers without logging in (via the mailing list),
>  everybody can use forum or mailing list (depending on personal choice), and
>  it is possible to receive and answer using any e-mail client you like. So I
>  think winehq.org now have very good forum with nice sync with wine-users
>  mailing list! I really like it. In fact it solves all major problems that I
>  mentioned in my previous messages!
>

http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=52

I sincerely wish you guys the best fighting off the spam assault :D

Cheers,

Tom

P.S.

Hows that song go?....... You ain't seen nothing yet!