RFC: Potential idea to consolidate forums and lists

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 6:10 pm

I'm making a request for comments in an effort to bring a minor but
nagging bug to some kind of multilaterally-beneficial conclusion, and
deliberately held off until after the 1.0 release in case this turns out
to be a bigger deal than originally anticipated.

http://bugs.winehq.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13517

The first proposed suggestion is that a more consistent method for
handling the forum/mailing list bridge situation is to consolidate both
on Google Groups, possibly a newsgroup instead of the mailing list.

To summarize the situation: WineHQ relatively recently opened a web
forum bridged to the original mailing lists in an effort to make the
Wine community more accessible to the general public in preparation for
the 1.0 release. Consequentially, this has lead to a sub-optimal
situation that has created needless distraction and headache over time.
The bridge required to maintain communications between the forum and the
mailing list does not honor threads, causing forum posts to start new
threads on the mailing list. Creating further confusion, the forum
interface itself does not encourage users to set up quoting by default.

Google Groups was built from the ground up with both mailing list and
web forum functionality built in.

Pros of Google Groups vs the current situation:

* Forum interface automatically sets up replies with quotes.
* This ensures context is maintained if messages to the
mailing list get lost or filtered.
* Threading is 100% consistent between the forum and email.
* No more broken threads on the mailing list.
* Familiar interface.
* Everyone uses Google at /some/ point already.
* The AppDB is already using Google for search.
* No obvious conflict of interest with Google.
* Google currently provides AppDB's search.
* WineHQ is participating in the Summer of Code program.
* No (additional) software to maintain
* Frees CodeWeavers to spend more time dealing with wine
instead instead of maintaining forum, mailing list and
forum-to-list gateway software.

Potential cons:

* Possibly not "forum-y" enough for "hard-core" forum users.
* This has not been properly qualified. Feedback?

An alternative suggestion that has been brought up, would be to fold
back into comp.emulators.ms-windows.wine, as it is listed by Google
Groups and well-carried on many news servers, including ISPs. Potential
con: No mailing list interface. This could be overcome with readily
available news-to-list software, most of such GPL software is proven
capable to the task of making it seamless (less troublesome software to
maintain to accomplish this task).

I'm posting this to both the wine-users mailing list (so it should also
appear on the forum), as well as the Google Group created as a potential
trial.

Thanks for taking the time to hear this idea out; and thanks in advance
for providing feedback or constructive criticism.

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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Post by **DanKegel** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 7:17 pm

On Thu, Jun 19, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Paul Johnson <[email protected]> wrote:

The first proposed suggestion is that a more consistent method for
handling the forum/mailing list bridge situation is to consolidate both
on Google Groups, possibly a newsgroup instead of the mailing list.

For those who didn't look carefully at the message headers,
Paul send this message to a Google Group already set up for
testing; feel free to join it for a taste test. It's at
http://groups.google.com/group/wine-users
I'm especially interested in feedback from
forum-lovers about why Google Groups is or isn't good enough.
Several people have said it isn't good enough,
but they haven't been specific. Perhaps they don't
like the fact that you can't edit your posts after the fact?
- Dan

Post by **dimesio** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 8:45 pm

DanKegel wrote: I'm especially interested in feedback from
forum-lovers about why Google Groups is or isn't good enough.
Several people have said it isn't good enough,
but they haven't been specific. Perhaps they don't
like the fact that you can't edit your posts after the fact?
- Dan

I don't like it. First, because I don't want to have to sign up for yet another forum with yet another login and password, second, because I don't like large corporations that think it's okay to track my web activity to feed me "appropriate" ads, and finally, because it looks and feels like just another Google group, not an official Wine support forum.

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 9:18 pm

On Thu, 2008-06-19 at 20:45 -0500, dimesio wrote:

DanKegel wrote:
I'm especially interested in feedback from
forum-lovers about why Google Groups is or isn't good enough.
Several people have said it isn't good enough,
but they haven't been specific. Perhaps they don't
like the fact that you can't edit your posts after the fact?
- Dan
I don't like it. First, because I don't want to have to sign up for
yet another forum with yet another login and password, second,
because I don't like large corporations that think it's okay to track
my web activity to feed me "appropriate" ads, and finally, because it
looks and feels like just another Google group, not an official Wine
support forum.

Did you read the other idea about adopting the already-created big-8
newsgroup?

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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Post by **dimesio** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 10:34 pm

I prefer forums, which allow me to scroll up and down to see all the posts in a thread. I also find it easier to find old posts in a forum. Newsreaders are too much like email. Websites that provide access to news groups all have the same problems as Google groups. I don't want to view posts flanked by ads.

Paul Johnson · Post by **Paul Johnson** » Thu Jun 19, 2008 11:02 pm

On Thu, 2008-06-19 at 22:34 -0500, dimesio wrote:

I prefer forums, which allow me to scroll up and down to see all the
posts in a thread.

Google Groups lets you do this in "tree view" instead of "standard
view".

I also find it easier to find old posts in a forum.

How can you get easier than googling keywords?

Newsreaders are too much like email.

That's kind of the point of a newsgroup...

Websites that provide access to news groups all have the same
problems as Google groups.

You don't have to use a website to access newsgroups. There's also
newsreaders.

I don't want to view posts flanked by ads.

Last I checked, winehq had ads (for codeweavers, but they're still ads
nonetheless).

--
Paul Johnson
[email protected]
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Post by **dimesio** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 12:24 am

Paul Johnson wrote:
Newsreaders are too much like email.
That's kind of the point of a newsgroup...

Websites that provide access to news groups all have the same
problems as Google groups.
You don't have to use a website to access newsgroups. There's also
newsreaders.

We seem to be going in circles here. Most of this really comes down to a matter of personal preference. I prefer forums, period. Arguing with me is not going to change my personal taste. I also really do think that becoming just another Google group or newsgroup is a mistake. But that's just my opinion, which you did ask for.

Timeout · Post by **Timeout** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 1:13 am

I don't want a Google group. It's like many forums depending on the Yahoo group.

If you want to add something, you have to register with your personal details and you get a cookie. You HAVE to have a proper identification and let the cookies - and what the hell know what Google does with the cookies (don't tell me it does nothing, you'd never know - it's like when you travel to the USA, you'd get your 10 (!) fingerprints saved in a database for more than 70 years - it's not worrying about today, but data collection can be a very important tool in the future and nobody knows what the future will be and as a consequence you are very unlikely to see me in the USA even for a million $).

I am blocking all cookies except for Wine and a few others and I see that every second website I surf tries to ad me a cookie from Google. I already have cookies set by Firefox. The last thing I want is Google having the cookies set by Firefox by default + a full registration with name and address and IP to track my moves on the Internet.

So much I like forums, if I get forced to register on any Google product to write, then I will let it be - I'm not so important and it's not so important after all.

Post by **dimesio** » Fri Jun 20, 2008 8:11 am

Timeout wrote: I am blocking all cookies except for Wine and a few others and I see that every second website I surf tries to ad me a cookie from Google. I already have cookies set by Firefox. The last thing I want is Google having the cookies set by Firefox by default + a full registration with name and address and IP to track my moves on the Internet.

I use NoScript, and I've found that google-analytics.com shows up on the list of blocked scripts of many websites, with absolutely no warning on the website that information is being harvested and sent to a third party. WineHQ is one of the few sites that does not secretly try to phone home to big brother every time I visit it, and I greatly appreciate that. IMO, Google already has too much power over the web.