Decided for the first time to go look at the forum and see if it looked useful. Can't decide. *Lots* of Qs with few responses.
Anyway, signed up. Maybe I can make some time 'cause some of those look low-level enough for me to contribute a small amount.
BUT, I have one aggravation that I wonder if it can be changed. I wanted to use the same e-mail there as I use n the lists. It wouldn't let me. And I don't see a way to change it once I'm registered.
Did I miss something? Can my desire be accommodated?
TIA
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 11:50 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
Decided for the first time to go look at the forum and see if it looked useful. Can't decide. *Lots* of Qs with few responses.
We need more people to browse the forums and answer questions there.
Anyway, signed up. Maybe I can make some time 'cause some of those look low-level enough for me to contribute a small amount.
BUT, I have one aggravation that I wonder if it can be changed. I wanted to use the same e-mail there as I use n the lists. It wouldn't let me. And I don't see a way to change it once I'm registered.
Did I miss something? Can my desire be accommodated?
Why would it not let you?
We have nothing that ties the e-mails together from the lists to the forum, it should have let you register with it.
If you send me the info off list (username, old address, new address), I will fix you up. (Once you have registered, e-mail can not be changed by the user.)
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
On Fri, 25 Aug 2006, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 11:50 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
Decided for the first time to go look at the forum and see if it looked useful. Can't decide. *Lots* of Qs with few responses.
We need more people to browse the forums and answer questions there.
I always wondered why Fedora split the group of users between 2 sources. Was it to keep the signal-to-noise ratio acceptable on the mailinglists or just because some type of people would otherwise be left out because mailinglists do not appeal to them.
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
But of course that would mean destroying the content available in the current forums. Something that should have been investigated before setting up forums ?
And I'm not sure if any software exists that would allow this. Doesn't seem that hard to write though...
Kind regards, -- dag wieers, dag@wieers.com, http://dag.wieers.com/ -- [all I want is a warm bed and a kind word and unlimited power]
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
But of course that would mean destroying the content available in the current forums. Something that should have been investigated before setting up forums ?
we have developers around who know the xoops codebase, we could potentially transition the existing data over. I suppose a final result would/could be that have the forums, but still allow people to gateway it via an email interface ( sort of the thing that FUDforum lets you do now ).
there was discussion at the time, about integrating forums and mailing lists - but circumstances were such that the decision was made to go ahead with the system, as it is now.
- K
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
I've started a wiki page for Website Ver 2, at http://wiki.centos.org/WebsiteVer2 - now lets see some activity starting off there :)
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 18:56 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
I've started a wiki page for Website Ver 2, at http://wiki.centos.org/WebsiteVer2 - now lets see some activity starting off there :)
Putting this also in the Forum? I bet that will help the response.
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 14:20 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
I've started a wiki page for Website Ver 2, at http://wiki.centos.org/WebsiteVer2 - now lets see some activity starting off there :)
Putting this also in the Forum? I bet that will help the response.
What would really be nice would be some volunteer editors to collate useful answers from both the mail list and forums into the wiki and respond to repeat questions with links to the right places. Neither forums nor mail list archives work very well as historical knowledge bases even though the answer you want might be in there somewhere.
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 13:42 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote:
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 14:20 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
<snip>
What would really be nice would be some volunteer editors to collate useful answers from both the mail list and forums into the wiki and respond to repeat questions with links to the right places. Neither forums nor mail list archives work very well as historical knowledge bases even though the answer you want might be in there somewhere.
A FAQ maintainer? They had on LFS and it worked pretty well. The only drawback was the same that makes current vehicles less useful: as some folks won't search archives, others won't search a FAQ, some won't check the forum(s).
Then the FAQ maintainer issues the refrain from that old song "Please Mr. Custer (I don't wanna go)", "What am I doing here?" and moves on.
*But* that shouldn't stop us from trying.
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 15:06 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
What would really be nice would be some volunteer editors to collate useful answers from both the mail list and forums into the wiki and respond to repeat questions with links to the right places. Neither forums nor mail list archives work very well as historical knowledge bases even though the answer you want might be in there somewhere.
A FAQ maintainer? They had on LFS and it worked pretty well.
Sort of... FAQs tend to be outdated and stale, and mail lists/forums tend to have too much clutter. I'd shoot for something in between where a fairly large number of people could work to update new information on a wiki and index it for reference by others.
The only drawback was the same that makes current vehicles less useful: as some folks won't search archives, others won't search a FAQ, some won't check the forum(s).
That's the 2nd part: the people who know where things are on the wiki need to respond to new questions with links as well as updating them with new info from other reponses.
Then the FAQ maintainer issues the refrain from that old song "Please Mr. Custer (I don't wanna go)", "What am I doing here?" and moves on.
If people don't use a FAQ there's probably a good reason. Doing it right is a lot more than a one man job. And at some point, weeding out old information about issues that no longer apply becomes an even harder problem. You don't need real expertise yourself to copy someone else's solution into a wiki, but you often do to know when it becomes outdated.
On 8/25/06, William L. Maltby BillsCentOS@triad.rr.com wrote:
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 13:42 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: The only drawback was the same that makes current vehicles less useful: as some folks won't search archives, others won't search a FAQ, some won't check the forum(s).
Maybe the solution for this is putting a good Searcher on the Centos page, so people could just try it with two or three words before having *any* work inside Wiki, FAQ, mailing lists archives, IRC logs (oops), and so on.
Ok, I am thinking about the lazy people, but most of them are ;)
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 16:42 -0300, Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro wrote:
On 8/25/06, William L. Maltby BillsCentOS@triad.rr.com wrote: On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 13:42 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: The only drawback was the same that makes current vehicles less useful: as some folks won't search archives, others won't search a FAQ, some won't check the forum(s).
Maybe the solution for this is putting a good Searcher on the Centos page, so people could just try it with two or three words before having *any* work inside Wiki, FAQ, mailing lists archives, IRC logs (oops), and so on.
Ok, I am thinking about the lazy people, but most of them are ;)
;-) Class warfare? "Them"? # s/them/us/g
People say necessity is the mother of invention. I maintain it is laziness!
-- Vilela
<snip sig line>
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 16:42 -0300, Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro wrote:
On 8/25/06, William L. Maltby BillsCentOS@triad.rr.com wrote: On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 13:42 -0500, Les Mikesell wrote: The only drawback was the same that makes current vehicles less useful: as some folks won't search archives, others won't search a FAQ, some won't check the forum(s).
Maybe the solution for this is putting a good Searcher on the Centos page, so people could just try it with two or three words before having *any* work inside Wiki, FAQ, mailing lists archives, IRC logs (oops), and so on.
You mean like this:
http://www.centos.org/search.php
or using google with a search like this:
"site:www.centos.org xxxxx xxxxx" (where xxxxx are your search terms)
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 04:07, Johnny Hughes wrote:
You mean like this:
http://www.centos.org/search.php
or using google with a search like this:
"site:www.centos.org xxxxx xxxxx" (where xxxxx are your search terms)
The problem with searching is that forums and mail lists have a lot of noise. Even under the best circumstances it usually takes several debugging steps and there are often misleading conjectures before a solution is found. If it is too difficult to manually extract the useful parts to a wiki, maybe an approach like the slashdot ranking scheme could be used to weight the search results so messages someone else had marked as useful would float to the top of the list.
Les Mikesell wrote:
This mail is probably spam. The original message has been attached along with this report, so you can recognize or block similar unwanted mail in future. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
google with a search like this: > > "site:www.centos.org xxxxx xxxxx" > (where xxxxx are your search terms) [...]
HOT_NASTY (100.0 points)BODY: Possible porn - Hot, Nasty, Wild, Young
LOL. Johnny, you young, hot, nasty and wild CentOS developer. Do you strip your packages while they're fresh?
*snicker*
Ralph
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 12:48, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
Les Mikesell wrote:
This mail is probably spam. The original message has been attached along with this report, so you can recognize or block similar unwanted mail in future. See http://spamassassin.org/tag/ for more details.
google with a search like this: > > "site:www.centos.org xxxxx xxxxx" > (where xxxxx are your search terms) [...]
HOT_NASTY (100.0 points)BODY: Possible porn - Hot, Nasty, Wild, Young
LOL. Johnny, you young, hot, nasty and wild CentOS developer. Do you strip your packages while they're fresh?
*snicker*
Oops -- that was added by my outbound relay because I'm posting from home instead of a work machine where the scan would be skippped. And it will probably do it again on this one because of those x's. I bumped up the spamassassin score to help keep things safe for work...
On 8/26/06, Johnny Hughes mailing-lists@hughesjr.com wrote:
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 16:42 -0300, Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro wrote:
Maybe the solution for this is putting a good Searcher on the Centos page, so people could just try it with two or three words before having *any* work inside Wiki, FAQ, mailing lists archives, IRC logs (oops), and so on.
You mean like this:
Yes, thank you. That's ideal.
I would just add that www.centos.org could have a direct Search on the front page - listen, this is just my opinion. I have used the site for a while, but have never noticed the Search link. It is not a problem on the page, it's a problem on the user (me), and I still believe some (or most) users are "lazy" like me. That's a question of comfort which makes things much easier. That's why "we" are accustomed to using google instead of even looking for a search mechanism on the site we are looking at.
or using google with a search like this:
"site:www.centos.org xxxxx xxxxx" (where xxxxx are your search terms)
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 18:56 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
I've started a wiki page for Website Ver 2, at http://wiki.centos.org/WebsiteVer2 - now lets see some activity starting off there :)
Well, I've used a wiki on a little a couple years ago. So I went and registered, expecting to go to the page and click edit. Didn't find it. Selected the pull down for more actions... got the feeling I'd better ask and look dumb than act and be dumb.
Are we supposd to edit this directly as I learned a couple years ago? Or something else.
I'll be going back and reading all the intro pages too.
TIA
William L. Maltby wrote:
Are we supposd to edit this directly as I learned a couple years ago? Or something else.
Please read the "How to Contribute" page http://wiki.centos.org/HowToContribute for that.
Thanks,
Ralph
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 02:23 +0200, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
William L. Maltby wrote:
Are we supposd to edit this directly as I learned a couple years ago? Or something else.
Please read the "How to Contribute" page http://wiki.centos.org/HowToContribute for that.
Saw that first time around. But with Karan's "let's see some activity...", I wasn't sure if it applied to that brand-new page or not. Now I know.
Thanks,
Ralph
<snip sig stuff>
Thanks,
William L. Maltby wrote:
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 02:23 +0200, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
William L. Maltby wrote:
Are we supposd to edit this directly as I learned a couple years ago? Or something else.
Please read the "How to Contribute" page http://wiki.centos.org/HowToContribute for that.
Saw that first time around. But with Karan's "let's see some activity...", I wasn't sure if it applied to that brand-new page or not. Now I know.
There are some ideas on how to make the working on the wiki a little bit clearer and easier without giving everyone write access to the complete wiki, as there is noone who has the time to moonitor the wiki for spam 24/7 (not even 10/7 I would say). Maybe a mailing list of some sort.
Cheers,
Ralph
Ralph Angenendt wrote:
There are some ideas on how to make the working on the wiki a little bit clearer and easier without giving everyone write access to the complete wiki, as there is noone who has the time to moonitor the wiki for spam 24/7 (not even 10/7 I would say). Maybe a mailing list of some sort.
Which until then means: Please use one of the ways described in http://wiki.centos.org/HowToContribute if you want something on the wiki.
Ralph
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 18:39 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
Great! My previous experience had that setup. I think it was quite good. The only downside, IIRC, was the negatives from either place (e.g. flames on list, flames in forum) appeared both places.
<snip>
- K
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 14:00 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 18:39 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
Great! My previous experience had that setup. I think it was quite good. The only downside, IIRC, was the negatives from either place (e.g. flames on list, flames in forum) appeared both places.
Oops! Sorry to reply to myself (virtuality now mimics reality!).
Anyway, there was one other really big negative. Users who hi-jacked a thread or had MUAs that didn't do threads well messed up the whole shebang for those who do not tolerate such aberrations very well.
<snip>
- K
<snip sig stuff>
Karanbir Singh wrote:
Dag Wieers wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Thats one of issues high on the list for www.centos.org-2.0
But that'll get really ugly. The only real solution I see is reflecting the mailing lists into newsgroups and set up the "forum interface" as another view to the newsserver.
Otherwise you'll lose references, encoding information and whatever. And that'll make it really hard for the people using the mailing list, as stuff will spread all over their mailreader.
Ralph
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 02:18 +0200, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
But that'll get really ugly. The only real solution I see is reflecting the mailing lists into newsgroups and set up the "forum interface" as another view to the newsserver.
Yeah. I'd say:
- Website, FAQ, current HOWTO's in the Wiki -> MoinMoin - Discussion platform -> mailinglists, also reflected through newsgroups with some webinterface (e.g. [1]?)
It keeps things simple and stupid :).
-- Daniel
Daniel de Kok wrote:
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 02:18 +0200, Ralph Angenendt wrote:
But that'll get really ugly. The only real solution I see is reflecting the mailing lists into newsgroups and set up the "forum interface" as another view to the newsserver.
Yeah. I'd say:
- Website, FAQ, current HOWTO's in the Wiki -> MoinMoin
- Discussion platform -> mailinglists, also reflected through newsgroups
with some webinterface (e.g. [1]?)
It keeps things simple and stupid :).
-- Daniel
are we getting this sort of into into the wiki ?
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 11:18 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
are we getting this sort of into into the wiki ?
Maybe not (it will probably not mix well). Though it should be possible to make some more integrated solution with:
http://docs.python.org/lib/module-nntplib.html
I am willing to look into making an extension that integrates with MoinMoin, but only if it has some potential use.
-- Daniel
Daniel de Kok wrote:
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 11:18 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
are we getting this sort of into into the wiki ?
Maybe not (it will probably not mix well).
I think he means "Are we getting the proposals on the websitev2 page" :)
As you have edit permissions ...
Cheers,
Ralph
On 8/25/06, Dag Wieers dag@wieers.com wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.
Take a look if Google Groups works exactly the way you want.
Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro wrote:
On 8/25/06, *Dag Wieers* <dag@wieers.com mailto:dag@wieers.com> wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.Take a look if Google Groups works exactly the way you want.
we'd want to use something that integrates with our website - if we are going to have forums. Would google groups do that ?
On 8/25/06, Karanbir Singh mail-lists@karan.org wrote:
Take a look if Google Groups works exactly the way you want.
we'd want to use something that integrates with our website - if we are going to have forums. Would google groups do that ?
-- Karanbir Singh : http://www.karan.org/ : 2522219@icq
I bet it doesn't (yet), unfortunately.
They have indexed some of the usenet and one is able to subscribe to a group (or usenet "channel") and choose to receive messages by email or just read it on google group's website like a forum (and write/follow-up from there).
There is one interesting feature, though. One can make a "group" and tell Google to index an already existing mailing list, then Google gives you an email (like group-98123@googlegroup.com) and then you register this email address as a normal user of the existing mailing list, and from then on every email of the list gets archived and usable on the Google Group. At the same time, people may subscribe to the list through GG and use it freely to send and receive email, like a new mailing list or like a forum. The two mailing lists (the old one and the new one) gets synched. Don't ask me HOW google does send message from it's group to the old mailing list - if the "from" address if the same group-98123@googlegroup.com as it is registered there, or if it uses some trick to put the user's real email address. =) There must be some way to send all the "old" emails from the original mailing list to the Group email (like group-98123@googlegroup.com), in order to migrate the entire list.
But if this not indeed what Centos mantainers want, forgive my off-topic =) Just hope this become useful for somebody here.
Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro wrote:
They have indexed some of the usenet and one is able to subscribe to a group (or usenet "channel") and choose to receive messages by email or just read it on google group's website like a forum (and write/follow-up from there).
There is one interesting feature, though. One can make a "group" and tell Google to index an already existing mailing list, then Google gives you an email (like group-98123@googlegroup.com
gmane.org - been doing this for years.
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 19:02 +0100, Karanbir Singh wrote:
Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro wrote:
On 8/25/06, *Dag Wieers* <dag@wieers.com mailto:dag@wieers.com> wrote:
If we could merge mailinglists and forums (by presenting the mailinglist in a forum-like view) and use the forum comment interface to send mails to a mailinglist, then both groups would be merged instead of seperated.Take a look if Google Groups works exactly the way you want.
we'd want to use something that integrates with our website - if we are going to have forums. Would google groups do that ?
---- seems to be doing that for rubyonrails mail list - they have forum based which sends email to the list and list mail is published in forums and they recently moved it to google groups and it seems to all be working - I don't know the innards
Craig
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 12:14 -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 11:50 -0400, William L. Maltby wrote:
Decided for the first time to go look at the forum and see if it looked useful. Can't decide. *Lots* of Qs with few responses.
We need more people to browse the forums and answer questions there.
That's what I had in mind. I've seen a couple posts from folks saying "no response". So I figured maybe it's just not got to "critical mass" yet. Since I quit smoking last year, I've added a little "critical mass" =>:-O and thought I'd try to put it to a charitable use! ;-)
Anyway, signed up. Maybe I can make some time 'cause some of those look low-level enough for me to contribute a small amount.
BUT, I have one aggravation that I wonder if it can be changed. I wanted to use the same e-mail there as I use n the lists. It wouldn't let me. And I don't see a way to change it once I'm registered.
Did I miss something? Can my desire be accommodated?
Why would it not let you?
It said the e-mail address was already in use. Maybe I registered a *long* time ago and forgot? I sure don't recall doing so, and I *habitually* do not join forums.
We have nothing that ties the e-mails together from the lists to the forum, it should have let you register with it.
That was my suspicion. So I'm leaning toward "at my age... memory is the second thing to go"!
I checked my archive. Only announce, general and (now in another user's box) the new forum appear.
If you send me the info off list (username, old address, new address), I will fix you up. (Once you have registered, e-mail can not be changed by the user.)
I'll send it along shortly. But I first want to change my list subscription. I see spammer's have got hold of it and that never gets better, just worse. I'll private-post you when I've done that.
As a suggestion to increase the utility of the Forum, see if the project guys can squeeze a 25th hour into every third day or so (rotating overburden) to provide an acknowledged presence of expertise. That should draw some more users over there if we start seeing more and more "... recently addressed in the forum" posts.
I know that is not an easy thing, but never hurts to suggest (and get severely pummeled by the affected parties! ;-).
As I can, I'll bop on over there and try to help where I can. But as you've seen over time, I'm on the steep side of the learning curve in many areas.
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
<snip sig stuff>
Thanks!
On Fri, 2006-08-25 at 12:14 -0500, Johnny Hughes wrote:
We need more people to browse the forums and answer questions there.
Thanks, Johnny Hughes
That's why i decided several months ago to participate more in the CentOS Forums ... In fact i still consider that a forum can be a source of useful informations : for example people are sometimes afraid of subscribing to mailing-list due to the mass of mails they think they'll receive and irc is not always the solution because you have to find the correct people to answer your specific question when they are connected ... On the forum it's easier because you just ask your question and you hope that someone can read/answer it in the several days without being connected 24/7 on irc (or even worse, as already seen on #centos, the same question being asked by the same people each day ....) Maybe an official CentOS Dev guy should be more 'active' on the forum, or at least notify people that forum is not the only way to ask centos related questions ... and that irc/mailing-lists exist also (even if this is already mentioned on the CentOS website ... but you know how people like to read docs ... :o) )
On Sat, 2006-08-26 at 08:22, Fabian Arrotin wrote:
In fact i still consider that a forum can be a source of useful informations : for example people are sometimes afraid of subscribing to mailing-list due to the mass of mails they think they'll receive
I ran across the lugnet site which lets you participate in the same discussion via web/newsreader/email almost a decade ago and I've always wondered why anyone would do forums any other way. http://news.lugnet.com/news/ Does anyone know if that software or anything similar is available for others to use?
-
Craig White -
Dag Wieers -
Daniel de Kok -
Fabian Arrotin -
Johnny Hughes -
Karanbir Singh -
Leonardo Vilela Pinheiro -
Les Mikesell -
Ralph Angenendt -
William L. Maltby -
William L. Maltby