FWIW, somebody already signed gEDA up for a Launchpad acct: https://launchpad.net/geda
Therefore, it's probably a simple matter of activating the "answers: thingie and embedding a link into each app..... Stuart On Sun, 30 Mar 2008, Peter Clifton wrote: > At the risk of being accused a Canonical / Launchpad fan-boy, if this > were an idea we wanted to implement, I'd take a fair bit of convincing > that we didn't just want to use Launchpad answers... > > > On Sun, 2008-03-30 at 17:55 -0400, Stuart Brorson wrote: >> The idea is twofold: >> >> 1. Create a web-based "support bulletin board". This would be a lot >> like the e-mail list, except that you wouldn't need to subscribe or >> read your e-mail. > > Launchpad answers does require a launchpad account, and reading your > email is a good way to know the question has had a response. Ok, there > is still some barrier to entry. > >> 2. Put a link into each program's help menu item which would open a >> browser up on the support bulletin board page. > > Thats the basic idea. > >> My thought: In principle, a great idea. Indeed, lots of commercial >> software products include stuff like this. >> >> For us, however, it may represent a lot of maintainence work. We're a >> small project with a finite number of developers whose time is >> already streched between family, work, other activities, and gEDA. >> However, maintaining a BBS means administering the box or finding >> hosting. Next, somebody must diligently watch the BBS and remove >> spam, flames, and off-topic junk. Oh, and answer questions too. > > > Using an existing service does take away the pain of writing / > maintaining the web-app code. > >> Hmmmmm.... I'm sorry that sounds so negative. Is there a way to make >> the support site self-service, like the wiki? After all, we already >> link to the wiki from within gschem..... > > > For many projects I've come across, there are good users out there who > will monitor the the answers pages and help those in need of help. > > If it worked, the community has a good opportunity to grow around this. > If not, it would be at least some of the pain you describe. The primary > concern I had that if it were to turn out the idea doesn't work, we've > deployed "n" copies of gEDA irrevocably with a given web-address in it. > > We could, I guess, use a re-direct page on one of our servers, so if the > idea didn't fly we could replace the page with "Sorry, answers facility > closed, please see the geda-user mailing list". > > The web-access logs a redirect page may provide interesting statistics > on the size of our user-base (without needing to make gEDA evil and > phone home). We can probably bet many users will click the menu item > even if they don't end up asking a question. > > -- > Peter Clifton > > Electrical Engineering Division, > Engineering Department, > University of Cambridge, > 9, JJ Thomson Avenue, > Cambridge > CB3 0FA > > Tel: +44 (0)7729 980173 - (No signal in the lab!) > > > > _______________________________________________ > geda-user mailing list > geda-user@moria.seul.org > http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user > _______________________________________________ geda-user mailing list geda-user@moria.seul.org http://www.seul.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/geda-user