Want mailing list back ;(
----- Original Message -----
From: Richard D. Worth
To: jquery-en@googlegroups.com
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2010 10:31 AM
Subject: Re: [jQuery] New Forums
On Fri, Jan 22, 2010 at 10:23 AM, Octavian Rasnita <orasn...@gmail.com> wrote:
From: "Karl Swedberg" <k...@englishrules.com>
On Jan 21, 2010, at 8:11 PM, brian wrote:
FWIW, I'm pretty sure the decision to drop Google Groups is due to
John Ressig's account being spoofed by spammers.
No, that's not it. Okay, maybe it was one of the last straws, but
we've been talking about moving to a forum for a couple years now. If
you want to know what factors were involved in the decision, please read
http://jquery14.com/day-07/new-jquery-forum/
I read that:
"Additionally, we wanted something that lowered the barrier to asking a
question - something that anyone would be able to use"
Well, for some categories of users, the movement to a forum has done
exactly the reverse, because a forum is much less accessible than a mailing
list for screen reader users for example, but for other categories of users
also.
For example, if a user uses a good mail client, he or she could configure
it so all the messages from the list to go to a specific folder, the messages
that contain some words in the subjects or in the body to go to another special
folder as they arrive, the messages are automaticly grouped by conversation,
and they can easier be all saved locally or all deleted (or individually).
And if a user has a good rss reader they can do the same with a forum. Also,
using rss2email services, they could have the best of both worlds.
The best solution from the perspective of the users would be to have a
mailing list system that can also offer and present the messages on the web,
but this would involve more work for JQuery developers, and it seems that this
idea is the best, but there is nobody willing to help doing and administering
it.
So the JQuery developers have chosen to use a forum which is administered
by somebody else. That's very OK, but I think at least the JQuery mailing lists
should not be disabled, while there still are users that prefer using them.
I don't know that they will be disabled, but if not they will be completely
unmoderated. This means way more spam than before. In addition, many active
contributors, including jQuery team members, have moved over to the forum, so
there will be a lot less traffic on the mailing lists. People may still find
help and answers, but it won't be the official forum. Just as before when the
mailing list was the official forum, people found answers elsewhere.
To be honest, I've never been a fan of forums, either. But after
spending some time in the jQuery forum, I'm starting to appreciate its
advantages over a plain mailing list.
Can you please tell us which are those advantages?
(in general, not only regarding JQuery forum.)
Tags
I tag and filter emails, and it's been really nice. But it's always bothered
me that all the tagging and filtering I do has to be duplicated by everyone
else consuming the same content. Using tags on the website forum, all this
metadata can be shared.
Types
On the forum, there are 5 type of threads: Discussions, Questions, Ideas,
Problems, and Announcements. These can be selected by the OP and corrected be a
moderator, and searched and filtered on. Another piece of shared metadata.
Categories
Before we had 5 or 6 mailing lists for different sub-topics. Many times a day
as a moderator, I would have to kindly ask someone to move a discussion to the
correct forum, to keep noise down, to keep the list on-topic, and to ensure
people saw the question and the answer in the right place, whether via email or
web archive. This was not only a real pain, but it's not that much fun for
anyone involved, especially new users that may not have a clue that there's
more than one list, or which list to post to: jquery-en, jquery-dev, jquery-ui,
jquery-ui-dev, jquery-a11y, etc. On the new website forum, not only is it
easier to see which top-level forum topics are available for posting, but if
something is posted in the wrong forum, a moderator can simply select 'Move
this topic' and then select the correct sub-forum. That immediately reflects in
any sorting, filtering, or categorization anyone does. Another piece of shared
metadata.
Status
In addition to being able to tag, type, and categorize each thread, a
moderator and/or the OP can set the status of a thread. The OP can select an
answer as the best, meaning future visitors can read 2 messages instead of 20.
Moderators can set the status as 'more info needed', closed, answered, open,
in-progress, etc. All these statuses can be used in sorting and filtering.
Another piece of shared metadata.
Noticing a trend?
Moderation edit controls
Posts can be edited. This isn't possible with email, since the message was
already sent. And the web archive stores only the original message. This needs
to be used judiciously, but can be great for fixing typographical errors,
adding some important keywords to a thread topic, fixing some formatting, etc.
Permalinks
Have you ever tried to email someone a google groups mailing list thread? Or
post it to a webpage, or another thread? Yuck. Here's how it goes, more or less:
1. grab the title of the thread
2. open up the google groups web interface (don't forget to open the right
mailing list, there are 5-6 for jQuery)
3. search for the title of the thread
4. ????
5. hope you got lucky in step 4 and it actually showed up. Many many don't.
Or sometimes you have to be creative with your search terms
6. click on the link
7. fuss with the url so it looks something like this
http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-en/browse_thread/thread/de2f89ee41d36535
instead of like this
http://groups.google.com/group/jquery-en/browse_thread/thread/de2f89ee41d36535/a735ff98c43bfc95?lnk=gst&q=plugin#a735ff98c43bfc95
8. Lament that your url contains only a GUID and no words from the post title
(Note that it needn't be this complicated, as all mailing list threads and
posts have unique identifiers. So this complaint is more specific to the google
groups web interface than mailing lists in general. Many mailing lists have a
permalink in the post itself)
With the web-based forum, while on the thread you want to email or link to
1. Click 'Permalink'
http://forum.jquery.com/topic/boxy-hide-parent-22-1-2010
I'm right there with Karl. In fact we were together last week and both
commented that we weren't thrilled about giving up the mailing list and
switching to the forum. And he and I are among the top posters. I was always
really happy with the mailing list, and pleased with the flexibility it offered
in terms of mail clients. Every user was in complete control of their
experience, and could combine it with experiences they had with other mailing
lists. I wasn't anxious to give that up for a forum, especially if it wasn't
going to send emails, and let me respond via email. But I'm coming around.
One of the compromises of a web-based forum is that the client (the web
browser) you choose is not as significant as the tools provided by the forum
itself. The website is basically the client for that back-end server data. And
as an end-user, you can only control that inasmuch as you get involved and
provide feedback on what features are important to you. Also, if it's a good
one, with web services such as RSS, APIs, advanced search, RESTful urls, you
could make your own clients, web browser/site or otherwise.
- Richard
