Forum integration

[Matt Zimmerman]

On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 07:32:15PM +0100, Matthew East wrote:
> I'm quite interested in the question of integrating forums with the
> wider community and vice versa.

As am I.  This is starting to happen in small steps through ad-hoc liaisons
who help to bridge the gap.  For example, while some of us have been
brainstorming ideas for Edgy in the wiki, others have done the same
independently in the forums.  Brent Larsen was kind enough to email me with
a summary of the discussion there, so that I can respond and fold the
relevant ideas into my own lists.  Likewise, some forum users participate in
Malone and relate experiences from other forum users.

> First and most obviously is a unified forum/rest of community
> authentication. It would be really great to sort out forum<->LP
> authentication communication (I know this has been worked on in the past
> but I don't know how far it got). A good gateway for mailing lists would
> help too.

This is a good idea; I'm CCing Kiko for input on this.

> Next, working the forums into the structure of the Ubuntu community.
> Right now the forum doesn't share the same design as the rest of the
> Ubuntu websites ({wiki/www}.ubuntu.com - the width is different and the
> tabs are related to _within_ the forum rather than the wider community.
> What I'd really like to work on for Edgy are a group of websites which
> are designed to be a coherent and complete system of "help". So I'd
> envisage tabs like this (in brackets are the links):

> | Documentation (help.ubuntu.com) | Forums (ubuntuforums.org) | Live
> Chat (link to details of IRC) | Mailing lists (ditto) |
> 
> The same tabs would appear on help.ubuntu.com, with the documentation.

Also agreed; CCed Henrik regarding the web bits.

> Another part of working the forums into the structure of the Ubuntu
> community would involve the url - this should move to forum.ubuntu.com.
> And the forums should be hosted on an Ubuntu server, if the software is
> permitted.

I don't think the domain name is as important, but I have no objection.

> Then, I think we should also try to get as much social integration as
> possible. Perhaps this would mean means that forum moderators whould get
> appointed in public irc meetings (held in #ubuntu-meeting, and should be
> Ubuntu members before they are moderators.
> 
> Obviously, the forums provide a technical support resource as does IRC
> and as do the mailing lists - there is never going to be perfect
> integration and there doesn't need to be. But we can do some things to
> bring the communities together.
> 
> I'd definitely be interested in working on the social side of any
> initiative to integrate the forums and the wider community more during
> the next release cycle.

The community in general would benefit from some more formal approach to
quality assurance regarding Q&A.  Too often I see incorrect or misleading
information given out by community members when authoritative and correct
answers are available in documentation, the wiki, etc.  I don't think
there's any shortage of official answers, but somehow they don't reach the
people who are giving out answers informally.

-- 
 - mdz