Hello all,
As an end user, I would like to know if there is any forward progress on doing something about the CentOS forums?
This apparently has came up time and again, with various examples being given of the deficiencies of the existing setup (depending on your point of view). As near as I can tell the general consensus seems to be 'yes, something needs to be done'... and thats about as far as it gets. I realize everybody has lots on their plate, but this has been languishing for a year or more, with no apparent changes being made. For a self-proclaimed 'enterprise' OS, the associated support forum doesn't make much of a first impression.
http://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=14921&forum=1...
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2008-September/003366.html
https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/viewtopic.php?topic_id=23201&start=...
http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos-devel/2009-December/005252.html
What needs done? What needs decided? Whose backside needs a fire lit under it? What can *I* do?
Monte
On Tue, 25 May 2010, Monte Milanuk wrote:
As an end user, I would like to know if there is any forward progress on doing something about the CentOS forums?
whatever forward means --
You don't like it for various reasons; a post in the first Forum thread listed from a centos devel was made, and no trial implementation indicating satisfaction with the criteria was made that I can see
I would add [with the benefit of time and knowing what is happening in the broader Open Source world] to z00dax' comment, that it should support federated authentication [ldap,OpenID, whatever]; show a low attack surface history at the CVE; be in active maintenance or better, development; be in a language permitting addon extensibility without having to 'marry' the darn thing; and permit 'static' top pages to address 'slashdotting'. Does it integrate well with puppet, mailman, and stock CentOS tools; is it Free and Open Source software using CentOS stock supporting packages?
This apparently has came up time and again, with various examples being given of the deficiencies of the existing setup (depending on your point of view).
I saw chatter and grumbling between people who like 'pull content' such as forums
As near as I can tell the general consensus seems to be 'yes, something needs to be done'
And the mice voted to bell the cat. If all noses are of equal value and no cost is placed on voting and no cost is imputed to the effort needed to make changes, then sure those choosing to speak as to a proposed change (without doing anything to further it) I suppose there is 'general consensus' in favor of said change. But all I see from the talkers, is talk; nothing prevents any of the talkers from doing in a sandbox somewhere, so far as I know.
... and thats about as far as it gets. I realize everybody has lots on their plate, but this has been languishing for a year or more, with no apparent changes being made. For a self-proclaimed 'enterprise' OS, the associated support forum doesn't make much of a first impression.
And meeting the artistic sensibilities of some people is in the core goal set of CentOS, such that the project leaders _want_ to care just, because ...?
The loaded words and finger pointing 'quilting' phrases simply drip from your 'demotivating' post
If flashy and latest hotness Web 2.0 and such are what one runs, rather than binaries that work, with stability and predictably, I guess CentOS fails as a project. So Sad
I see:
X-User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.4
and frankly this is a GUI users complaint, I guess, considering the source
What needs done? What needs decided? Whose backside needs a fire lit under it? What can *I* do?
Look in a mirror perhaps and place your fire there first; Perhaps a running and ovbiously better replacement would convince the core team that it cares to undertake the pain of a conversion, and ongoing maintenance
TANSTAAFL
My $ 0.02
-- Russ herrold
On 5/25/10 2:12 PM, R P Herrold wrote:
I would add [with the benefit of time and knowing what is happening in the broader Open Source world] to z00dax' comment, that it should support federated authentication [ldap,OpenID, whatever]; show a low attack surface history at the CVE; be in active maintenance or better, development; be in a language permitting addon extensibility without having to 'marry' the darn thing; and permit 'static' top pages to address 'slashdotting'. Does it integrate well with puppet, mailman, and stock CentOS tools; is it Free and Open Source software using CentOS stock supporting packages?
Valid points. Any suggested products that meet said criterion?
But all I see from the talkers, is talk; nothing prevents any of the talkers from doing in a sandbox somewhere, so far as I know.
From what I gathered, there *is* some work going on in a sandbox somewhere, it's just never making it to the production server for what ever reason - whether its not working, or just not finished.
And meeting the artistic sensibilities of some people is in the core goal set of CentOS, such that the project leaders _want_ to care just, because ...?
'Artistic sensibilities'... thats a good one. Have you tried looking at the site recently? Specifically the nearly illegible menus in the forum proper? Its not so much a matter of 'looking pretty' as 'being less painful to use'.
I see:
X-User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Macintosh; U; Intel Mac OS X 10.6; en-US; rv:1.9.1.9) Gecko/20100317 Lightning/1.0b1 Thunderbird/3.0.4
and frankly this is a GUI users complaint, I guess, considering the source
Frankly I don't see what OS I run on my day-to-day laptop has jack-all to do with anything related to whether or not the forum software is borderline broken.
Perhaps a running and ovbiously better replacement would convince the core team that it cares to undertake the pain of a conversion, and ongoing maintenance
Ya know, I don't really care if there is a forum or not - but since there is, I think it should work as expected. Traditionally new users asking the same questions over and over again are advised to 'use the Search function' - which in the case of the CentOS forums returns exactly one page of results - thats it - over and over again. Doesn't matter what the search parameters are, it doesn't work properly, period.
Mailing lists are fine with me, and judging from some of the posts in the various threads (and yours), maybe CentOS would be better off just not having a forum at all.
Dear Russ.
As an end user, I would like to know if there is any forward progress on doing something about the CentOS forums?
whatever forward means --
You don't like it for various reasons; a post in the first Forum thread listed from a centos devel was made, and no trial implementation indicating satisfaction with the criteria was made that I can see
I would add [with the benefit of time and knowing what is happening in the broader Open Source world] to z00dax' comment, that it should support federated authentication [ldap,OpenID, whatever]; show a low attack surface history at the CVE; be in active maintenance or better, development; be in a language permitting addon extensibility without having to 'marry' the darn thing; and permit 'static' top pages to address 'slashdotting'. Does it integrate well with puppet, mailman, and stock CentOS tools; is it Free and Open Source software using CentOS stock supporting packages?
This apparently has came up time and again, with various examples being given of the deficiencies of the existing setup (depending on your point of view).
I saw chatter and grumbling between people who like 'pull content' such as forums
As near as I can tell the general consensus seems to be 'yes, something needs to be done'
And the mice voted to bell the cat. If all noses are of equal value and no cost is placed on voting and no cost is imputed to the effort needed to make changes, then sure those choosing to speak as to a proposed change (without doing anything to further it) I suppose there is 'general consensus' in favor of said change. But all I see from the talkers, is talk; nothing prevents any of the talkers from doing in a sandbox somewhere, so far as I know.
Besides just talking, let's take a look at the facts:
Sample implementation has already been done. LDAP bind works fine, User creation is not possible from the application, so there needs to be coded something for.
We have written a migration script to port newbb content to phpbb which is documented well and can be found here:
http://wiki.centos.org/WebsiteVer2/forums/newbb_to_phpbb
phpBB theming process has been started, but stalled a bit as we are moving forward to a common visual style:
http://wiki.centos.org/ArtWork/Style/Web/Default
If you got any further questions concerning what has already been done, feel free to ask.
Best Regards Marcus
Hi Marcus,
Perhaps you could arrange a sync-up between KB, yourself and Monte so that he can see how much progress has been made.
I appreciate that this issue takes the lowest priority but with another willing helper on-board, perhaps things could accelerate a little?
Regards, Alan.
Dear Alan.
Perhaps you could arrange a sync-up between KB, yourself and Monte so that he can see how much progress has been made.
I have outlined it in my previous post and it's already documented well in the wiki. I am also going to note down the LDAP Bind settings, soon.
If you are a programmer and willed to code a user management frontend, you are welcome to help, and I guess Ralph and me could describe the requirements.
Best Regards Marcus
Marcus,
Thanks for the input; it's much appreciated. Some of the dates on the stuff in the wiki were from September - I wasn't sure if things hadn't been updated or had stalled out.
Unfortunately not much in the way of useful programmer skills here - starting out, self-teaching from books and tutorials, but nowhere near where anyone would want me near working code ;)
I realize its somewhat of a division of already thin resources... but is there any possibility of someone fixing at least the search function in the existing forum? I realize people want Website v. 2.0 to be done right, and not roll it out before its ready... perhaps this might be an interim fix? Given I'd never heard of newBB until running into it @ centos.org, I have no idea how difficult that may be - it looks like its possibly a problem with pagination of the results in the php scripting?
As an example, this is the url represented by the 'Next >>' link after searching on a general, broad term like 'virtualization' in all forums, since the beginning:
https://www.centos.org/modules/newbb/search.php?since=1000&andor=any&...
If I had to take a guess, I'd say it's supposed to return the next batch of results, starting at #50? What it actually does is simply return the same initial page of results each time its clicked - and I'll take a wild guess and say that the potential results on a topic like that probably go back more than one page. That doesn't seem like it should be the desired/intended effect; whether the problem is in newBB or somewhere else...? I couldn't say.
The moderators of the forum indicate that this is something they don't have control over or access to look at and fix; no one else on the forum (administrators?) seem to show any interest to date.
Monte
@Karan,
Thanks for the input; it's much appreciated. Some of the dates on the stuff in the wiki were from September - I wasn't sure if things hadn't been updated or had stalled out.
Unfortunately not much in the way of useful programmer skills here - starting out, self-teaching from books and tutorials, but nowhere near where anyone would want me near working code ;)
Do you think we could perhaps start something like a 'Call for Coder' on the centos list?
Best Regards Marcus
-
Alan Bartlett -
Marcus Moeller -
Monte Milanuk -
R P Herrold