ubuntu-au forums

[Cefiar]

On Wednesday 22 November 2006 23:46, Shane W. Handley wrote:
> This describes a forum/ticket system dedicated to support however, I
> personally don't see the need to have a forum _and_ a list for general
> chatter, unless the two are intimately integrated so that the two
> interoperate transparently (work++), and everyone has their preferred
> interface.

As I see it, the big problems with having an integrated mailing list/web forum 
interface are:
 That web users will need to register to post (not a problem), and that it 
needs to be tied to the same database as the mailing list (the crux of the 
issue). Unfortunately mailing list software tends to lack in the web regard, 
and web forum software tends to lack in the mailing list regard. And getting 
them to use the same database for users can sometimes be a nightmare.
 That mailing lists really require an email address is used on each post, 
whereas a web forum does not. There are some ways around this, either by 
using a generic (posting) address for all web forum posts, or by using the 
web users registered email address as their identity when posting. The issues 
around using the web users registered identity are usually privacy, and 
keeping it up to date (eg: making sure that if they change their address, the 
change isn't accepted until they have verified it by email).
 That web forums and mailing lists have different ideas about threads, and how 
to handle them.

There is some software for mailing lists that have reasonable web interfaces, 
that are getting nearer to web forum-like usage (sympa is one that I know of 
and have worked with a lot, and it's very customisable), but that also means 
that the mailing list and web front end would have to be hosted somewhere, as 
they (in almost all cases) need to reside on the same machine. To me, that is 
not a decision to be taken lightly at all, as it may mean we'd have to move 
the mailing list away from lists.ubuntu.com - effectively removing us, in a 
way, from the Ubuntu community.

There are some web forums that have gateways to mailing lists as well. I've 
not checked out many of these, but from what I understand, some of these 
aren't too bad. They all tend to use email as the communication method 
between the forum and the list, which means that they can be set up on 
disparate machines. However, all of these tend to hide the forum users email 
address, hiding them all behind a generic email address.

All in all, no matter which way you try currently, it's going to be some/all 
of: a lot of work, a lot of customisation, and/or a lot of maintenance. I'd 
personally prefer that we wait a bit, as this sort of thing is progressing, 
in some cases fairly fast. However that doesn't mean that people can't get 
involved in some of the projects out there, helping them along to meet these 
goals, helping them see ways to tie these things together in an usable way, 
or helping to build the necessary parts into existing solutions (hint hint!).

-- 
 Stuart Young - aka Cefiar - cef at optus.net