[CentOS-devel] Talk about existing forums

Tue Dec 15 14:22:04 UTC 2009
Ned Slider <ned at unixmail.co.uk>

On 12/15/2009 01:52 PM, Les Mikesell wrote:
> Karanbir Singh wrote:
>>
>> Recommendations:
>> - phpbb
>> - Draw up a list of recommendations / guideline for the moderators
>> - let the languages be independant in their own space ( eg.
>> forums.centos.org/<lang>  )
>
> I'd much rather see the effort go into better handling of the mail list archives
> with a searchable web interface instead of splitting the knowledge base and
> making it take much more work to find and answer questions.
>

IMHO it's about offering choice in available help channels, be that 
mailing list, IRC, Wiki or forums, and making sure that each is as good 
as it can be. This particular discussion is about the forums, how we can 
make them as good as they can be, and how we can best integrate them 
into a coherent community based support strategy for CentOS under the 
current remit of Website Version 2.

How much work is it to head on over to the forums and answer questions 
as they get asked? I don't see how that is "much more work" than 
answering questions by email - it's just using a different application, 
a web browser, instead of an email client. If you use webmail you could 
even use the same application for both :-/

Integrated search is already available, just that atm it only covers 
website, wiki and forums (not mailing lists). In fact if some mailing 
list participants used it occasionally we wouldn't get the same old 
threads constantly regurgitating content that is already expertly 
covered on the Wiki in FAQ or HowTo format. People have spent an 
enormous amount of time and effort producing such content and it very 
rarely gets linked from the mailing list.

Anyway, feel free to write a plugin for the Website version 2 to allow 
integrated searching of website, wiki, forums *and* mailing list as I'm 
sure KB would be most grateful :)