Forum integration

[Matthew East]

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Hi,

Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Fri, Jun 02, 2006 at 07:32:15PM +0100, Matthew East wrote:
>> 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.

I think that Ryan from the forums has had some contact with Andrew about
this, but I have no idea where it led to. So I've CCed Ryan to this too.

>> 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.

I don't think it is a big deal, but absolutely every other site in the
community ends in dot ubuntu dot com. I think if the forums used that
url structure too it would be a good symbolic move.

>> 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.

As Peter mentioned elsewhere on the thread, it's impossible to prevent
community members from giving non authoritative information from time to
time. But we can improve this drastically by ensuring that the
documentation that exists is central to the support process. Answers on
the mailing lists and irc (especially to common questions) can always be
answered by a reference to the documentation, and community members can
be encouraged to search the documentation resources (which they are
likely to be more familiar with than the person seeking support) before
giving answers.

The problem is slightly exacerbated on the forums by the macro-community
thing I mentioned in the previous post - the forums have developed their
own documentation resources (the howto section and even a wiki) that (as
far as I know) people use regularly when giving support. Also, lots of
people use documentation resources developed by individuals or teams
which are outside the Ubuntu community and which as a result do not
benefit from (or add to) the authoritative nature of the Ubuntu
documentation.

In my opinion a strong central documentation resource is really vital
for bringing the various different technical support communities
together. And ensuring that the function of the technical support
community is well defined is central to achieving that. I'd like to see
the forums focusing on technical support, and embracing this concept of
a more central resource for documentation. I think that would be a big
step towards (a) bringing the forums closer to the wider community, (b)
improving the quality of technical support given, and (c) encouraging
contribution to the documentation by forum members.

Matt
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