[Devel] forum research

[Asheesh Laroia]

On Sun, 19 Jun 2011, Mark Freeman wrote:

> Good morning everyone.  I apologize for being unable to make it to 
> yesterday's meeting, as Saturday afternoons tend to be a little tough 
> for me to make.  I was hoping to be able to get on and update everyone 
> as to my work thus far.
>
> I finished looking at a few options and made my notes and 
> recommendations available here: 
> http://openhatch.org/wiki/Choosing_a_forum. As expected, the options 
> really came down to the first few packages that were recommended during 
> last week's meeting.  I was especially impressed with Vanilla, as my 
> recommendation shows.
>
> Hopefully this will trigger some discussion so we can make a decision on 
> how to proceed.

Mark, thanks for working so much on this!

I notice FUDForum didn't make the review; is there a reason for that?

Assuming that FUDForum shouldn't make it, here's how I see it:

* Vanilla looks great visually, out of the box, and is designed to be an 
excellent forum. (I've actually been kind of in love-at-a-distance with it 
since I first heard of it in 2005ish.)

* If we install GroupServer, so far, it seems that I'll be the one to 
maintain it. (If it's even installable!) I'm not particularly interested 
in personally being the one to maintain more stuff on the OpenHatch 
server(s). If we drop Mailman, I might possibly be up for it.

What I think is that, for now, we should give up on the dream of solid 
integration between the web forum and email lists. Then we can use Vanilla 
for at least two forums: (1) "User help" (e.g., "I am stuck on this 
training mission!"), and (2) OpenHatch Publicity chatter.

For now, I think everyone on [OH-Publicity] is also on [Devel], so I'll 
ask here:

If (for example) we move the Publicity group to be a web board, would that 
be the kind of thing that would *stop* anyone who is involved now from 
contributing? (Note that with Vanilla, you will be able to susbscribe to 
receive email updates about a thread or a board automatically. You just 
can't hit "reply" in the mail client.)

If not, then I think the best next step is to install Vanilla, figure out 
how to get the login integration going, and then try using it for 
Publicity chatter, and also figure out other uses for it and open it up to 
that.

How does that sound?

-- 
-- Asheesh.

http://asheesh.org/