Re: Postgres forums ... take 2

On 17/11/2010, at 6:22 AM, Stephen Cook wrote:

> On 11/16/2010 10:51 AM, Magnus Hagander wrote:
>> What I'm more interested in is still a word from the people who would
>> actually *use* a forum on how this would be better than sites like
>> Nabble and Gmane.
>
> I'm one of those. I'm subscribed to these mailing lists simply because it is the only way I know of to get the messages in a timely fashion, but I would greatly prefer a forum-style interface.
>
> I had never heard of Nabble or Gmane until now, but I just checked them out and from my quick look it *looks* like a web interface for people who prefer mailing lists.
>
> I like having a category breakdown (at the moment I have my email client splitting the various lists into folders), and I like having little icons telling me which ones I already read and which are new (my email client has that also of course).
>
> So basically, the email lists are usable, but if this forum works out I'll dump my email subscription in a second and use that. I don't think either is inherently better than the other, it's just personal preference.

I'm not sure if anyone is noticing, or just doesn't want to but all that's becoming of the forum is a viewer for the mailing list with the ability to reply. There are already enough forum sites where they shove anything related to postgres into a single generic forum - I see no reason in recreating that.

It's a difficult balancing act to leverage the mailing list community but also use all the features that have made forum software popular in the first place. There will be people who will continue to use mailing list no matter how the forum is presented or functions simply because that's their preferred method, and some people who are used to the different methods of a forum. Everyones input is important, but for the former who are never going to use the forum anyway should have little influence on how it works as forum software.

OK, so solutions? Here in Sydney it's a bit after 9am so I've had time to sleep on it and heres what I'm thinking;
- Tagging system. A thread created "Performance of C vs Perl" could be tagged (by a registered user or automated system) as [Performance] [C] [Perl] this would have no impact on the mailing list but make forum viewing and searching more reliable, so a search might be like:
Search: "benchmark"
Tags: [Perl] [PHP]
For someone looking to find a higher performance solution or comparison between Perl and PHP. I'd rather not do this though because it will require me to change a lot of code in the phpBB3 codebase and still doesn't use a forum in the way its supposed to be used.

The way I see it theres no reason why the forums can't be split the way they are now. It makes no difference to the people who will continue to use the mailing list but makes all the difference to forum users who are choosing this forum over others because it has all the backing of the masters on the mailing list in a much better layout of forums than any other site offers.

There is no perfect solution here, you can't please all the masses all the time. But I do believe there is a workable solution somewhere in the middle.

>
> --
> Sent via pgsql-general mailing list (pgsql-general(at)postgresql(dot)org)
> To make changes to your subscription:
> http://www.postgresql.org/mailpref/pgsql-general