Hi Vincent, Am 08.03.2011 07:45, schrieb Vincent Massol: > Hi Andreas, > > On Mar 7, 2011, at 11:13 PM, Andreas Hahn wrote: > >> Hi everyone, >> >> I'd like to make the proposal to drop the existing mailing lists in >> favor of a forum (bulletin board) software. >> >> The objective is to promote the XWiki community discussions to a broader >> audience. >> >> 1) A forum serves like an advertising window as anyone can read the >> contributions without subscription. > You don't need any subscription to read mailing lists. > See http://xwiki.markmail.org/ > >> 2) Anyone can judge the activity by reading the view count. > Same here: > http://xwiki.markmail.org/ > >> 3) New users can get in touch with the community without being urged to >> subscribe to a mailing list. > How? Even with forums you need to subscribe. > >> 4) Many people consider mailing lists as spam and prefer not to subscribe >> 5) Contributions have a longer visibility and older entries will get >> responses >> 6) Communication gets more efficient as the same topics won't get >> repeatedly discussed >> 7) To my experience forums get much better indexed by google as mail >> collectors like Nabble , Markmail, e.t.c. >> 8) Forums encourage user to user discussions and you will see new users >> taking an active role >> 9) There should be at least one additional category IMHO: administrators >> 10) A forum is more pleasure to read once a topic split into many threads >> 11) A forum is beneficial when expecting increasing support requirements >> - some real large scale forums were run by just a few moderators >> 12) More people will see what a teriffic job the XWiki team does. >> >> Here's my +1 > I have some good news for you: we already have a forum! :) Actually i wasn't aware that there is already an integration with the dev page. I might not have written my proposal if I were. But shouldn't the forums be mentioned / linked in a more prominent place on the homepage ?
However as I wrote - the objective was "to promote the XWiki community discussions to a broader audience" as part of a strategy to make XWiki aware to more users that don't already subscribe and that my not already be aware of XWiki.org. I have no numbers at hand - its just my feelings - that indexing of markmail and nabble to google compares badly to other forum software. But so what - except for the ugly reading of large threads and the meaningless statistics of a threads view count because of the many different access methods - there is not that much left over I guess. > See http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/MailingLists > And more specifically: > http://dev.xwiki.org/xwiki/bin/view/Community/Forum > > Now if this forum doesn't fit your needs could you explain what requirements > you'd have for a forum and which solution you'd pick? > I personally liked jive forums but it doesn't exist anymore (it's folded into > a full collaboration suite now). I have a personal favorite - that is stackoverflow.com. Its fun to read - encourages exploration - there are numerous indications for the relevance of a contribution. I've been pointed to by google a couple of times and for many purposes it became my primary forum website. Many people there that are seeking advice a la 'whats the best tool to ...' However its a developers forum and from a project "owner" perspective I'd hesitate to recommend it as a support forum. Its backed by VC and soon they will need to make money one way or the other. OTOH the tags 'wiki' and 'collaborative' are somehow underrepresented ... bye Andreas > Thanks > -Vincent > > _______________________________________________ > users mailing list > users@xwiki.org > http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users > _______________________________________________ users mailing list users@xwiki.org http://lists.xwiki.org/mailman/listinfo/users
