Le 22/12/2013 11:04, jan i a écrit :
On 22 December 2013 10:46, Hagar Delest<hagar.del...@laposte.net>  wrote:

Le 22/12/2013 02:36, Rob Weir a écrit :

On Sat, Dec 21, 2013 at 6:47 PM, Hagar Delest<hagar.del...@laposte.net>
wrote:

Hi All,

For the record, I've created a Gmail account (aoo.forum...@gmail.com) so
that users can really contact the forum team. We had in the past an
automatic process that could reply and give the user basic information
(registered or not, ...). Since it's no longer working since the move to
ASF, we had no means to handle problems from users (login failures and
other
issues).


Is there any reason we can not use a mailing list for this?  I'd
rather we use an Apache-owned mailing list (a private one if needed)
than a GMail account that we do not control.

Why not a mailing list as long as it is private.
If you find someone to explain how it would work and to implement it, no
problem.

you need to file a jira (project infra) requesting the ML. Please add who
should be moderator
https://issues.apache.org/jira

We have another request pending for a german mailing list.
Well, I've no problem with that but the process that was in place in the past was much more powerful: it first checked if it was a first message from the poster and if the mail was already known in the user database. The reply was then adapted (and automated). Moderators had only to check if further action had to be taken. Complete description here: http://www.mail-archive.com/dev@openoffice.apache.org/msg08890.html With a mailing list, we would have to do that manually. It's the same for now with the Gmail address but if we need to set up a ML, I want to be sure that it can't be avoided by restoring the old process. And if a ML has to be created to have the backlog (to replicate what is populated in the forum admin thread about that), I've no problem.

I'm rather worried by the turn over in the admins of the forum. First
Terry,
then JanI who did a lot to update the forums and wiki, then RGB who is
suddenly taking a long break (announced in the private section of the
forum). Imacat seems to have other priorities so there is no one left.

The forums need at least a periodic maintenance to avoid problems like
few
months ago. For the record, phpBB is not up to date, the download icon
has
not been changed yet and of course, there is no automated mailbox reply.
The forums have proved that they were rather efficient, they are a huge
knowledge base now. But strangely, when it comes to administration, no
one
can resist very long.
So is there any problem? Are the forums really part of the roadmap in
this
project?


You tell me.   When the forums came to Apache, you and others insisted
on a large degree of autonomy, to manage your own volunteers according
to your familiar rules.  Hopefully part of this was for volunteers,
with the needed skills, to advance via merit, to take on larger
responsibilities, including eventually admin and sys admin roles.  Is
this not happening?

The problem is that all the volunteers who dealt with the technical issues
linked to ASF have quit.
Strange, isn't it?

Not quit, giving up is more correctly (at least in my case). I am still
highly active in infra, and maintain a larger number of vm for other
project (who find it easier to make decisions).


NB: it may be related to something I'm not aware of. I remember some
discussions on the private ML (not very recent since I unsubscribed a long
time ago) that were appalling, some with high emotional load.
To be honest, I'm starting to believe that the adaptation is only one way
and that some people are not that happy to deal with a forum.


  Have you done a "call for volunteers" recently?  We've had a lot of
luck doing that to find Translators, QA, Doc, etc.  We haven't done
this for forum admins since the assumption (my assumption at least)
was you wanted the forum admins to be familiar with how you run things
there.  But if you want to do a more public "call for volunteers" you
can certainly use our project blog for that.

I made one for the automated mailbox end of June (no reply at all).
I made another one for admins at the end of the summer.
Jürgen volunteered IIRC. Since he does already a lot and that JanI stepped
in, I've not contacted him.
But now we need another admin so yes, this is a call for volunteers.
But it should be someone used to the technical discussion with ASF/infra.
The job doesn't seem to be that easy, needing a thick skin. The technical
job is not difficult on the forum side I think. The main issue is the
relation with the project I guess.

you need to divide, there are 2 types of admin. I am the sys-admin type,
that can maintain the vm with software, configurations etc, but I think you
also need forum admin, that does the magic inside the forum (I am still
confused about the difference between moderator and admin at that level).
We already have the forum admins. acknak and myself are the 2 really active.
Andrew was promoted at the time of the move to ASF servers.

I stepped down, because the PMC group preferred a less formal way of
maintenance (represented by the current sys-admin). I have written it in
other threads, I dont think we need more sys-admin volunteers, we need a
PMC group that chooses the level and type of maintenance (formal version
<-> current version).

At such time where this project is interested in formal regular maintenance
(and its backed by the PMC group, and not just some lazy consensus), I am
willing to help again.
If the conclusion is that lazy consensus is not enough regarding the administration of the forum, then it's time to have a more formal approach. I'm ready to file tickets on jira if needed to track any change requested on the forum. Changes would be discussed of course on the forum. But there are some that don't need such discussion, like keeping php up to date, re-implementing the IP identification, changing the download logo (already agreed).

Hagar

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