subject:"\[tdf\-discuss\] Re\: user forums \?"

[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-28 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-10-28 18:16, Cor Nouws a écrit :

Hi,

I noticed that the old users forums from OOo are not available any more.
I was not a frequent visitor, but helped a bit with questions (on the
Dutch language version) now and then. There was a mixture of questions
related to OOo and of course increasingly LibreOffice.

I heard about migration of the old OOo infrastructure to the Apache
project. I guess the forums will be part of that.

Now I wonder: what about the future of forums for LibreOffice?
It looks convenient to have all at one place. On the other side:
LibreOffice will grow to be different more and more. Different code
base, more functions.
So apart from that it is maybe not fair ;-) to profit too much on the
work of the forums at Apache (when life), it will be increasingly
insufficient for our own users.
Well, that is one way I could look at it.
But of course having own LibreOffice forums ask resources and especially
time..

What do other people think about this?

Cheers,



I thought the purpose of the Nabble site was to fill this purpose. This 
way the mailing lists and "forums" questions are merged, even if it is 
not a "real" forums site.


I would vote to promote more Nabble as our "forums" site and develop our 
own "Nabble" independent site.


Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Larry Gusaas

On 2011-10-28 5:21 PM  Stefan Weigel wrote:

Am 29.10.2011 00:16, schrieb Cor Nouws:

>  I noticed that the old users forums from OOo are not available any
>  more.

Hm. Aren´t they still available?

http://user.services.openoffice.org/

But, you are right, it´s likely they will disappear or be migrated.

The forums have been migrated to Apache servers. The DNS records have been updated and the 
forum is available at the same URL as before.

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Larry Gusaas



On 2011-10-29 1:11 AM  Jonathan Aquilina wrote:

On 29/10/2011 08:23, Jean-Baptiste Faure wrote:

Migration has been done : http://ooo-forums.apache.org/
It works for FR forum but I do not know how users will be aware of the
new url.

Best regards.
JBF


Simple fix. Setup a redirect from the old url to the new one if possible.


The URL is the same as before – http://user.services.openoffice.org
The Apache address was a temporary one until the DNS records got updated.

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Olivier R.

Hello Cor,

Cor Nouws wrote:
> 
> So apart from that it is maybe not fair ;-) to profit too much on the 
> work of the forums at Apache (when life), it will be increasingly 
> insufficient for our own users.
> 

Forums administrators and volonteers have always claim to be
non-discriminative. They support all versions of the software: LibreOffice,
OpenOffice.org, NeoOffice, etc. And almost all of us have already switched
to LibreOffice. Is it really necessary to split again the community in
smaller parts? I don’t think so.

AFAIK, forums migrated on Apache server only because TDF has always favored
mailing-lists and seemed to have low respect for forums. Before Apache, TDF
seemed not concerned with forums hosting.

The forums are now available at the same address than before.

Regards,
Olivier.

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Olivier R.

Hello Charles,

> providing mailing lists seems to mean that we don't
> respect forums

No. You are twisting what I said.

Apache offered to host forums. There have been a lot of discussions, and it
was not easy to find a common ground.
Did TDF offer to host forums ?

Regards,
Olivier

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Olivier R.

Hello,


Italo Vignoli wrote:
> 
> Recently, we have offered a server - without any condition - to host the 
> forums, but the admins have decided to go to Apache. The answer I got 
> when I wrote to the ooo-user@apache mailing list is a testament of forum 
> admins positioning (no answer at all).
> 

I had not heard of it.
I read only sometimes the new new ooo-dev list at Apache, but there is too
many mails to follow it.


Italo Vignoli wrote:
> 
> LibreOffice is going forward and bringing new features to users, with an 
> increasingly different code base. OOo is going backwards, because of the 
> meaningless "license sanification" imposed by Apache (one of the forum 
> admins has recently asked a question on this subject, which - of course 
> - has not been answered).
> 

This is what I think too. I prefer TDF over Apache, even if I am not a TDF
member. What I was stating was only my point of view as a forum user.


Best regards,
Olivier

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Olivier R.

Charles,


Charles-H. Schulz wrote:
> 
> Perhaps, but  I actually heard a similar argument about "the lack of
> respect" to the forums (but apparently you make a different point) from
> several people over the last months, hence my reaction.
> 

Maybe I should have written “lack of consideration” instead of “lack of
respect”.

I don’t know what are the relations between forums admins and TDF, and I do
not want to widen the gap.

Regards,
Olivier


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-10-29 08:55, Jonathan Aquilina a écrit :

On 29/10/2011 14:38, Florian Effenberger wrote:

Hi Jonathan,

Jonathan Aquilina wrote on 2011-10-29 14:33:

I am more then willing to volunteer a section on my forums for
Libreoffice and the TDF discussion and support as well. I am using phpbb
for the forums though :(


thanks a lot for that offer. If we, however, decide for TDF forums, I
then would like to host our own ones, within our infrastructure.

We have other choices, of course, one of them being to use one of the
existing forums and appoint them as "official". As I understand it,
the reason of this thread is to find out whether we should go for
hosting our own ones.

If we decide to, I would be more than happy of course of having you as
a contributor there. ;-)

Florian


If you opt to name one as an official TDF mirror it wont take me a
second to setup a TDF section and LO section for use.

I am wondering though if you go for self hosted solution i am wondering
instead of using a seperate user login to login to the forums if one has
an account to edit the wiki lets say can that be used for existing
users, as well as allowing those users who dont edit the wiki to sign up
for an account through the forums and end up as contributors as well for
the wiki if they need it down the road?

Regards

Jonathan Aquilina



I would favour TDF/LibreOffice forums service using OpenID support[1]. 
Drew's Nabble site has shown that we can run forums and in fact, most 
likely, the moderators who do the work there, may want to keep 
moderating on our own forums. The moderators, and, especially Drew have 
done a wonderful job of it. BTW, I don't think we have done this often 
enough, but, thanks to all of these people. I personally don't think 
that we would have any problems finding moderators for a forums if we 
need any. Our community will "step up to the plate" if there is a call 
for help for forums moderators.


Of course we would have to tie everything in with the mailing lists and 
gmane so that all communication is done seamlessly.


As for the duplication of forums services at TDF/LibreOffice, Apache and 
community-run forums. I don't think there is any way to avoid the 
problem of an overall general shake-out where there will be a period of 
anarchy in the office suite forums service. This is an eventuality that 
we have all been putting off. The reality of the matter is that, whoever 
has the largest user-base and the best service will gain the most use. 
Such is nature of the "forums beast". This should be enough incentive 
for us to offer an unbiased approach to a forums service and moderate 
with the utmost of fairness. If we want to run forums we need to run 
them really well and keep in mind that the overlying rule is that we 
want to "community build" and not scare users away.


Cheers,

Marc

[1] http://openid.net/


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-29 Thread jeanmi2403

It is here :
http://user.services.openoffice.org/nl/forum/index.php
http://user.services.openoffice.org/nl/forum/index.php 
Friendly

-
]LibO 3.4.2  Windows 7 Familiale Premium SP1 x64
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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-30 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-10-30 11:40, Florian Effenberger a écrit :

Single sign-on is indeed something I'd like to see soon, but there are
no concrete plans as of now. One option would be OpenID, another one an
LDAP connection - let's see what we can come up with. ;-)

Florian


OpenId is the option that users would be most familiar, there are many 
sites using it. Doing LDAP would not be familiar at all.


Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-30 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-10-30 20:15, Dennis E. Hamilton a écrit :

Um, lest I confuse everyone:  After the English language forum, the French and 
then the Spanish language forums are the next most active in terms of 
registered users and other statistics.  The remainder are in the 1,000-2,000 
range and then Vietnamese is the smallest.  I don't have figures for the 
independent German language Forum.  I'm confident it would create a top 4.

  - Dennis


Thanks for the info Dennis.

Cheers,

Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-10-31 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-10-31 15:49, Florian Effenberger a écrit :

Hello,

thanks everyone for your feedback and your kind offers to help, that's
really much appreciated!

As for which type to use, I must say that a "normal" forum is the only
way, IMHO. We've been experimenting with Nabble, and the result has been
rather mixed. People prefer a forum they know, nothing else. At least
based on my experience.

There are several forums running. What I would like to have is one
"official" LibO forum, either done by us or someone else, that is open
for all languages, and run by a group that does not have members who
openly show hostility towards TDF. I am not saying that everyone does
so, but at least I have heard from some forums, where definitely FUD was
spread, and this leaves me with bad feelings.

What I took from this thread is, that there are two options: One
de.openoffice.org, and the other one the LibreOffice forum.

Anyone already got in touch with those folks? IIRC, there had been
discussions, with some groups, and that didn't work out - but I must
confess I don't know which ones.

Honestly, my preference would be to have our own forum and see if it
works. If not, we tried it, and we don't lose that much.

Florian



I really don't think this is a case where anyone can win with any of 
these decisions. If de.openoffice.org is "awarded" the care of the 
LibreOffice maintenance of the forums, there will be those who will 
complain about it as not being a real native LibreOffice forums. If the 
TDF raises its own forums, then there will those who will complain that 
communities have been broken and all of the past discussions have been 
lost. The LibreOffice fork of OpenOffice has created a shift in 
community use/support and that is just the reality of the situation. The 
code base differences between LibreOffice and AOO will only get wider 
over time and LibreOffice may find itself at this same situation later on.


Therefore, as there would be no clear way to win, it would seem to make 
the most sense for the TDF/LibreOffice to create its own forums 
infrastructure, offer and invite participation of "already established" 
interested forums related to LibreOffice. The TDF/LibreOffice forums 
could also offer to help facilitate the migration of any historical data 
to its own servers of any group wishing to join the new LibreOffice 
forums project.


It is still early in the game for LibreOffice and it is the right time 
to move on to its own forums services. This will in effect offer our 
users a complete office suite service under the same banner that is 
TDF/LibreOffice.


Marc



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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-01 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-11-01 04:02, Stefan Weigel a écrit :

I estimate at least 80% of the topics/questions/answers will still
be common for all these products. We need to look at this from the
users point of view. The user does not benefit, if the knowledge
base is split up and unequally distributed over several places.

Stefan


I think most of us will agree that ideally this would be preferable. 
However, LibreOffice is considered an important opensource project and 
as such serves a large number of users and if AOO follows in OOo 
footsteps, may also serve a large number of users. I don't think we can 
avoid having the doubling of services until at some point there is a 
shake up of one of these two where the one with the largest user base 
will dominate the forums service.


So, let's have the doubling now and worry about the past knowledge base 
as different forums decide, if they wish, to migrate to one or the 
other's forums. I think TDF/LibreOffice can make a good job of running 
its own forums.


Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-02 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-11-02 06:17, Florian Effenberger a écrit :

Hi,

Stefan Weigel wrote on 2011-11-02 11:13:

Ok. The forum will sure have a search function, just like every
forum has, right? Could our new forum combine automatically three
searches at once?

(1) Show the matches inside our forum
(2) Show the matches within the ML archives
(3) Show Google matches


totally depends on the forum we install and its options. In case we go
for an own solution, there are many options, no decision on any software
yet.

Florian



If I remember correctly, there was previously some comparison research 
done on different forum software solutions. I can't seem to find it on 
GMane, I think my ISP provider only supplies so many of previous posts 
and deletes the rest. Not sure.


But anyway, you may be able to find it somewhere. I am not sure on which 
discussion list. It was a really well research effort and may be 
interesting to review.


Cheers,


Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-02 Thread Ken Springer


On 10/28/11 4:16 PM, Cor Nouws wrote:

Hi,

I noticed that the old users forums from OOo are not available any more.
I was not a frequent visitor, but helped a bit with questions (on the
Dutch language version) now and then. There was a mixture of questions
related to OOo and of course increasingly LibreOffice.




I've been reading this thread as it has developed, and will admit, the 
technical aspects of the discussion are well over my head.


My interest in the discussion was not the technical issues of who does 
this, how LO help areas are interfaced with others, where this or that 
is stored, but what does the average user discover when he/she comes to 
the LO or TDF website in search of help.


With all due respect to those reading this message and using the LO 
mailing lists, regardless of how they access the mailing list, you are 
*not* the average user I encounter.


IMO, when a person finally figures out what's going on with the help 
system at LO, it is the best overall system I've seen in years.  (The 
website needs a lot of help, IMO.  :-) )


What I like about LO's overall help system is any individual can access 
*all* community help efforts regardless of the method of help the user 
prefers.  Although, it's not always easy.  :-)


If you prefer your help system to be a mailing list, that's available 
directly from LO.


If you prefer your help system to be a forum, that's available through 
the Nabble interface and Gmane.


If you like the threaded type view, it's available through LO, and 
Gmane, with varying degrees of sophistication vs. ease of use.


If you prefer printed documentation, it's available via the various 
guides available on LO's website.


Regardless of the technical issues discussed in this thread, if you 
maintain the 4 above methods of obtaining help, or equivalents to those 
options, you will be ahead of everyone else's help system I've used.




--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-03 Thread Ken Springer


On 11/3/11 5:19 AM, Florian Effenberger wrote:

Hello,

Ken Springer wrote on 2011-11-02 22:48:

If you prefer your help system to be a forum, that's available through
the Nabble interface and Gmane.


sadly, Nabble is not seen as forum at all. I don't know why, but many -
especially novice - users have complained and do not use Nabble. My wish
was indeed to have this forum-style gateway to have access to the same
content with two interfaces, but it obviously didn't work out, which is
why I am considering a "real" forum.


I'm not a regular forum user or fan, I only use them when there is no 
other option, and Google, Ask.com, and others have failed me.  I quit 
going to MS when they dropped official support for newsgroups.  My 
feeling is, if you have to resort to Google and others to find answers 
that should be easy to find on an official website, then there is 
something wrong with the help system on that website.  So maybe there is 
something to a forum that I'm missing.


I sure don't see the difference between Nabble and any other forum 
layout.  Are the complaints about Nabble that it's hard to use, hard to 
find, or something else?


To me, a forum is like going to a public bulletin board at your local 
store, posting a note, then coming back later to see if anyone posted an 
answer.  You leave another note, and come back later to try to find a 
reply.  After awhile, the notes you want to read are spread all over the 
bulletin board, and trying to find a previous note that relates to 
something you wrote is just time wasting.  I have other things I'd 
rather do.


Which is why I prefer the threaded view of a newsgroup.  It's like a 
well organized filing system, everything sorted and arranged to be 
easily found.  So much easier to find the relevant messages.


Whatever happens with the the Nabble/forum style of help, I think a big 
plus would be to have a way of handling images, rather than forcing the 
user/poster to put those images somewhere else on the web and then 
provide a link.  That may be something a new LO user may not understand 
how to do.



--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-03 Thread Marc Paré

Hi Florian et al,

Le 2011-11-02 17:03, Marc Paré a écrit :

Le 2011-11-02 06:17, Florian Effenberger a écrit :

Hi,

Stefan Weigel wrote on 2011-11-02 11:13:

Ok. The forum will sure have a search function, just like every
forum has, right? Could our new forum combine automatically three
searches at once?

(1) Show the matches inside our forum
(2) Show the matches within the ML archives
(3) Show Google matches

totally depends on the forum we install and its options. In case we go
for an own solution, there are many options, no decision on any software
yet.

Florian

If I remember correctly, there was previously some comparison research
done on different forum software solutions. I can't seem to find it on
GMane, I think my ISP provider only supplies so many of previous posts
and deletes the rest. Not sure.

But anyway, you may be able to find it somewhere. I am not sure on which
discussion list. It was a really well research effort and may be
interesting to review.

Cheers,

Marc

Sorry, I just now realized that the research on Forums software was done
for Mageia. However, you can find some of the resources they used here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_Internet_forum_software_%28PHP%29

http://www.forummatrix.org/compare/bbPress+FluxBB+FUDforum+Invision-Power-Board+MyBB+Phorum+phpBB+punBB+SMF+vBulletin

After leaving Mandriva, the Mageia project built their own forums in EN
using phpBB[1] and I believe they are also pointing to other established
community driven language group forums.

Marc

[1] https://forums.mageia.org/en/

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-03 Thread Ken Springer

Hi, Augustine,

On 11/3/11 8:12 AM, Augustine Souza wrote:
> On Nov 3, 2011, Florian Effenberger wrote:
> "sadly, Nabble is not seen as forum at all. I don't know why, but many
> - especially novice - users have complained and do not use Nabble. My
> wish was indeed to have this forum-style gateway to have access to the
> same content with two interfaces, but it obviously didn't work out,
> which is why I am considering a "real" forum."
>
> As a novice user, I made two posts in the Nabble "forum" under the
> login name "chimak111". The first was promptly and efficiently dealt
> with by Cor Nouys (I'm spelling from memory).
And this is a perfect example of what is truly excellent with the LO
help system.

As you stated later in your post, you prefer a forums format, but I
prefer a newsgroup style format.  Essentially, a newsgroup format is
similar to Nabble's threaded view.

What is important, IMO, to us as end users, is the ability to see
absolutely all help requests regardless of the format you prefer to use.
  You cannot do this at Apple.  You cannot do this at Microsoft.  You
cannot do this at Mozilla (Thunderbird, Firefox, and others).  At least,
I have not discovered any way to do it.  I actually just discovered
Nabble's threaded view today, researching for this post.

I do not use Nabble at all, I use Thunderbird to read the LO mailing
lists, because of the things I can do with Thunderbird, overall, that I
cannot accomplish if I used the threaded view of Nabble.

If you want to know why I use Thunderbird vs. Nabble, please start a new
thread so we are not off topic, or send an email asking the question.
> The second post may be used to illustrate the current state of the
> Nabble "forum". At issue was the functioning of the global menu bar to
> "integrate" LibreOffice with the Unity aspect of Ubuntu 11.10. A
> couple of responses by "Tom" were to the point. The rest was the type
> of thing seen when there isn't active moderation of posts. The thread
> digressed to the merits and demerits of Unity, Ubuntu, Canonical,
> Linux, and what have you.
You wrote "The rest was the type of thing seen when there isn't active
moderation of posts."  And that is the crux of the problem, as I stated
in a different thread.  LO needs to have active moderation of posts,
ensuring the posts follow the netiquette rules adopted by TDF/LO.  As I
pointed out in another thread, I think the subject was on top posting,
if you don't enforce the rules, why bother to even have them?
> The link to this second post is here:
> 
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LibreOffice-3-4-3-on-Ubuntu-11-10-Unity-3D-td3431366.html#a3431583

>
> Nabble, not per se but for want of moderation or etiquette, shows the
> same weakness of mailing lists in that material is quoted and
> requoted, mostly unnecessarily. Then there are the unwanted headers
> and footers that just bulk up each post and make havoc in posts
> containing quotes and requotes.
I think the problem is twofold.

Problem 1:  In the case of LO, all of the support options, Nabble,
Gmane, mailing lists, etc., all access the same database in the
background (if I understand the inner workings correctly.  So the
moderation only needs to be active on the database.  But as you noted,
there is no one enforcing the netiquette rules.  IMO, the rules are
nicely done, but inadequate in some areas.  That's not meant to
criticize the author, I do not know what guidelines he was working under.

Problem 2:  Lack of knowledge on the part of the user.  How many users
of the LO help system have ever read the netiquette link at the bottom
of every posted message?

IMO, LO could do a lot to solve problem 2, but I don't know if that
subject has ever been discussed.
> I know that moderators are not a dime a dozen, but without strong
> moderation, any forum or mailing list can become quite unattractive.
> All the same, I'd prefer a forum.
 >
> Here's wishing that LibreOffice and its volunteers all the best.

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4

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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-03 Thread Ken Springer

Hi, Augustine,

On 11/3/11 8:12 AM, Augustine Souza wrote:

On Nov 3, 2011, Florian Effenberger wrote:
"sadly, Nabble is not seen as forum at all. I don't know why, but many
- especially novice - users have complained and do not use Nabble. My
wish was indeed to have this forum-style gateway to have access to the
same content with two interfaces, but it obviously didn't work out,
which is why I am considering a "real" forum."

As a novice user, I made two posts in the Nabble "forum" under the
login name "chimak111". The first was promptly and efficiently dealt
with by Cor Nouys (I'm spelling from memory).

And this is a perfect example of what is truly excellent with the LO
help system.

As you stated later in your post, you prefer a forums format, but I
prefer a newsgroup style format. Essentially, a newsgroup format is
similar to Nabble's threaded view.

What is important, IMO, to us as end users, is the ability to see
absolutely all help requests regardless of the format you prefer to use.
You cannot do this at Apple. You cannot do this at Microsoft. You
cannot do this at Mozilla (Thunderbird, Firefox, and others). At least,
I have not discovered any way to do it. I actually just discovered
Nabble's threaded view today, researching for this post.

I do not use Nabble at all, I use Thunderbird to read the LO mailing
lists, because of the things I can do with Thunderbird, overall, that I
cannot accomplish if I used the threaded view of Nabble.

If you want to know why I use Thunderbird vs. Nabble, please start a new
thread so we are not off topic, or send an email asking the question.

The second post may be used to illustrate the current state of the
Nabble "forum". At issue was the functioning of the global menu bar to
"integrate" LibreOffice with the Unity aspect of Ubuntu 11.10. A
couple of responses by "Tom" were to the point. The rest was the type
of thing seen when there isn't active moderation of posts. The thread
digressed to the merits and demerits of Unity, Ubuntu, Canonical,
Linux, and what have you.

You wrote "The rest was the type of thing seen when there isn't active
moderation of posts." And that is the crux of the problem, as I stated
in a different thread. LO needs to have active moderation of posts,
ensuring the posts follow the netiquette rules adopted by TDF/LO. As I
pointed out in another thread, I think the subject was on top posting,
if you don't enforce the rules, why bother to even have them?

The link to this second post is here:
http://nabble.documentfoundation.org/LibreOffice-3-4-3-on-Ubuntu-11-10-Unity-3D-td3431366.html#a3431583

Nabble, not per se but for want of moderation or etiquette, shows the
same weakness of mailing lists in that material is quoted and
requoted, mostly unnecessarily. Then there are the unwanted headers
and footers that just bulk up each post and make havoc in posts
containing quotes and requotes.

I think the problem is twofold.

Problem 1: In the case of LO, all of the support options, Nabble,
Gmane, mailing lists, etc., all access the same database in the
background (if I understand the inner workings correctly. So the
moderation only needs to be active on the database. But as you noted,
there is no one enforcing the netiquette rules. IMO, the rules are
nicely done, but inadequate in some areas. That's not meant to
criticize the author, I do not know what guidelines he was working under.

Problem 2: Lack of knowledge on the part of the user. How many users
of the LO help system have ever read the netiquette link at the bottom
of every posted message?

IMO, LO could do a lot to solve problem 2, but I don't know if that
subject has ever been discussed.

I know that moderators are not a dime a dozen, but without strong
moderation, any forum or mailing list can become quite unattractive.
All the same, I'd prefer a forum.

Here's wishing that LibreOffice and its volunteers all the best.

--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4

[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-04 Thread Marc Paré


Hi Drew, Florian, ...

Le 2011-11-04 06:18, Florian Effenberger a écrit :



It would be great, in case we go with own forums, to have a handful of
moderators right from the beginning. If not, I would even be willing to
see how things develop and have the guts to just do it. In case the
forum gets just messy and has to be shut down, c'est la vie, but we at
least tried it.

Florian



I really don't think we will have problems getting moderators from our 
membership. Moderating is a forums job that is very trainable and I 
think that once we put a call out for moderators, we will have enough 
who volunteer to run a forums board with enough moderator support.


Once the forums is definitely OK'd and once the decision on whether it 
will be an EN forums only (which is what I think you are talking about) 
or multiple languages, we should just make a call for help on all lists.


If we are talking about a multiple languages forums, then we should only 
support those where the mailing lists are most busy. We could then 
branch out to other languages once moderator support is available.


I could also help out with moderating if need be.

Marc


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-04 Thread Ken Springer

Apologies for the double post, but the Gmane system is giving me 
fits...  Again!  :-(


I actually wrote and sent the second post before the first post even 
showed up for me.  Note the huge difference between the timestamps.


--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-06 Thread Tom Hart


Am 04.11.2011 11:18, schrieb Florian Effenberger:

Hi,

Christian Lohmaier wrote on 2011-11-03 16:17:


You cannot move threads to other topics, you cannot edit messages
afterwards, you cannot delete posts, you cannot mark posts as sticky
or "resolved", etc.


indeed, good points. However, I am not sure if this is what the majority
of users would do anyways (althought it's agreeably a nice feature), but
I think it's simply a "It doesn't look like a forum I know"-thing that
keeps people from using it.

When people complained we have nothing like a forum, and I pointed them
to Nabble, all I got was a "This is not a forum", without further
explanation, which makes nailing down the problem a bit troublesome. ;-)


Maybe this looks more like a forum?

http://arkanis.de/projects#nntp-forum
https://github.com/arkanis/nntp-forum

The key idea here is to have an etablished system newsgroup under the 
hood (for the more "conserative" users) and a fancy webinterface forum 
(for the "new" generation). So to enable exchange between those two user 
groups (the author also writes about the ides behind this software on 
his blog) - and free choice of reader for everyone.



just my 2cents (and to throw in another alternative in the pot *d&r* ;-)
tom


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-07 Thread Ken Springer


Hi, Florian,

On 11/7/11 3:55 AM, Florian Effenberger wrote:

Hi,

Tom Hart wrote on 2011-11-07 02:11:

Maybe this looks more like a forum?

http://arkanis.de/projects#nntp-forum
https://github.com/arkanis/nntp-forum

The key idea here is to have an etablished system newsgroup under the
hood (for the more "conserative" users) and a fancy webinterface forum
(for the "new" generation). So to enable exchange between those two user
groups (the author also writes about the ides behind this software on
his blog) - and free choice of reader for everyone.


thanks for this proposal! Indeed, an interesting approach, as in the
beginning, I was also thinking about setting up an NNTP server (which
could even interact with the mailing lists).

However, the clear feedback I got from users it that they want "a forum
they know", i.e. phpBB or something in these terms. That's why I am so
hesitant against other solutions, although technology-wise, they would
make sense.


If the look and feel of a newsgroup server is "a forum they know", does 
it make any difference what is running in the background?


How would that be any different than reading the LO mailings lists in a 
newsgroup reader using Gmane?



It's about the users and their needs, and even if we see things
different, we should follow their demands to give them a good
experience, IMHO.


Exactly, and give users the interface they are comfortable using.  For 
me, it's a newsgroup "experience".  I, and I suspect most users, care 
less what is the driving force behind what they see on their monitor. 
They just need to have something on their monitor they are used to 
using, and/or are satisfied with the way they perceive the system to work.


I know mailing lists, which I despise and find horribly wasteful for me, 
are the underpinnings of the NNTP display I see, but I don't care.  :-) 
 I can access the content of the mailing list using a format that fits 
me.   :-)


FWIW, if nothing else, I would suggest LO look at their own Gmane and 
Nabble type access to the mailing list.  Recent and ongoing experiences 
with those interfaces for a different software product indicates to me 
that using third party services to provide those types of access is not 
the way to go.  You have no control over the performance of third party 
products.


I will once again say, that of all the open source programs I've tried 
and would like to use, LO is far and away the best organization at 
providing a help system for everyone.



--
Ken

Mac OS X 10.6.8
Firefox 7.0.1
Thunderbird 7.0.1
LibreOffice 3.3.4


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[tdf-discuss] Re: user forums ?

2011-11-10 Thread Marc Paré


Le 2011-11-08 11:52, drew a écrit :

On Tue, 2011-11-08 at 15:34 +0100, Florian Effenberger wrote:

Hi,

ads, independent to what they advertise for, are basically a no go for me.


Howdy Florian



right, well I have no doubt of the sincerity behind that comment, but it
does get a bit dicey in practice IMO.

For instance very few had a problem with pointing directly to the
official Document Foundation and LibreOffice pages on Facebook - ads.

Document Foundation and LibreOffice twitter accounts - ads.

TDF/Libo G+ pages - no ads, yet.

Alright, so a simple aversion to on-line ads is not the only determining
factor, exceptions are made all the time.

This is not a way to argue in favor of treating LibreOfficeForum.org or
lo-portal.de/forum as 'official' sites, but I would like to again
suggest that it, alone, is not a reason to in effect shun them either.

IIRC Micheal Meeks, in one of his presentations, suggested a goal of 200
Million users for the LibreOffice suite - I think that is a laudable
goal, and also believe that it will not be attained without this wealth
of extended, external, activity.

Which of course if not exactly on-topic and I will get directly back to
topic in reply to an earlier email but for this point - I hope we can
find some useful way to incorporate all the energy coming from these
auxiliary effots - it's not easy I know but I think it will be well
worth the effort.

Now - off to write the on-topic email,

//drew




Yes, well, then there are strange ad behaviour that you would see like 
on http://www.LinuxToday.com where Microsoft banners show regularly and 
where there are regular ads disputing the validity of linux as an OS.


Good points and bad points all round. But, for me, preferably, no 
outside ads and forums hosted on TDF/LibreOffice servers where we are in 
control of ad content and decide which ones are published rather than 
leave it in the hands of "whoever".


Marc


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