[SailfishDevel] was "Acceptable Behaviour.." --> Forum

[Christopher Lamb]

Hi all

I am pleasantly surprised at the volume of traffic resulting from a 
thread that I innocently kicked of that the weekend. Thanks for the 
active and balanced discussion.

I probably won't be able to take an active part in the IRC meeting this 
afternoon, as it is during the Swiss working day, so here is a summary 
of some key points from the thread so far.

There is a strong wish to avoid fragmentation of channels: That implies 
that anything new should be instead of / integrated into / a refinement 
of an existing channel (e.g. TJC)

We currently have the following meeting channels of some interest to 
developers, each with a different focus.
1) Together.Jolla.com (TJC): Q/A site mainly concerned on the phone + 
bugs and flames. So far no dedciated area for development issues.
2) Talk.Maemo.Org (TMO): A forum, strongly used by app developers and 
their users. Unlike other channels. this is Jolla independent.
3) This mailing list: used by developers to developers (both inside and 
outside Jolla).
4) IRC Chat. similar purpose to 3) above.
5) Other non-Sailfish-dedicated developer forums (StackOverflow, Qt 
Project etc.)

We heard from both supporters of mailing lists and forums. The one side 
will probably never convince the other. I suspect that "I am used too…" 
and "personally I prefer …" are more important as anything else.

Both tools have their plus points and weakness. Here are main ones..

Mailing lists (with the appropriate mail client) appeal to those who 
like the structure of tree views.

There is a certain charm in the simplicity of mailing lists (KISS) which 
do not have all the extraneous functionality / bells and whistles / 
baggage / bullshit (you choose) that forum or Q&A sites do.

Mailing lists do require a powerful properly configured mail client to 
be used properly. In a Forum you get that "for free" in a web client 
(but can't do much to customise it).

Mailing lists aggregate communication in your mail client - avoiding the 
"yet another thing I need to visit .." syndrome.

Forums allow editing of previous posts to correct typos / make 
clarifications.

Forums typically have extra functionality: e.g."like", formatting, 
stickies, the dreaded karma…

Privacy: Some forums use avatars, and allow you to suppress your 
personal email.

Forums support sub-forums. At the moment we are talking about splitting 
the list into "development" and "other", but what happens when we want 
to split it further? (Jobs, C++, QML, Silica, OpenSource etc.).

Cheers

Chris



On 26.05.14 21:43, fasza2mobile at gmail.com wrote:
> Hi all,
>    I think Norman is bang on with the fragmentation issue. To address this I propose a possible solution. Why not convert this mailing list to a 'virtual' one; By that I mean move all discussion to a devel section on TJC  and have the mailing list be another frontend or interface if you like for the same content(yet better, keep all mails and posts with their metadata in the same database and create an API that both ML and TJC can call thus eases applification too, kind of like MVC). To accommodate this TJC (or at least the proposed devel section) would have to be changed/improved to have a treelike structure alongside its Q&A nature so that OT answers and its children can easily be tagged and filtered out in both TJC and ML interfaces. OT tag should be available for every poster to tag their answer/comment. To achieve  this  there should be 2 scripts one that converts each mail to mailing list to a new question/answer/comment retaining  the treelike structure and one other sc
>   ript that posts entries from TJC to ML setting the subject correctly as it is now; Perhaps with an x minutes latency to alllow for editing post.
>    If one wants to use a different email address for the mailing list that is set for TJC a setting should be available.
>    Further to this subsections(Qt, Qml, news, politics, ads, jobs etc) could be introduced making  it easier to filter or subscribe to selected subsections only; This could benefit both interfaces.
>    Having this approach I believe would give users/developers the flexibility  to choose, mix and match the best way(for them) to interact with fellow developers whilst not fragmenting the community.
>    The obvious tradeoff is some developer hours, but doing it in the open could reduce that somewhat especially when it comes to maintenance.
>   
>    Please do comment on what you all think about my proposition, be it positive or negative.
>
> Thanks
>   Kris
>
> Ps: I'd prefer Q&A, but mailing list has been more effective in my experience so far.
>     
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