On Sat, Feb 23, 2008 at 1:13 AM, L. Rahyen research@science.su wrote:
As for registration, every forum ive ever visited asked for registration, sorry but I don't understand what your asking for?
Tom
Well, there is some forums which provides "quick reply" form at the bottom ofthe thread (on any of its pages). If you are logged in, you can type text there and then submit it as usually. If you are not logged in, you will be able to enter your nickname, protection code and text with your reply. Protection code is intended as protection from "spam bots". Usually, protection code provided as somewhat noisy image with few digits and user should recognize them and enter correctly in the "protection code" field. Sometimes additional optional fields with password is provided so user can login and send an answer simultaneously. If he/she leave password field blank then reply is posted anyway with provided nickname but with "guest" settings (such as default avatar for all guests or not avatar at all, etc.) and guest privileges. Sometimes nickname collisions are allowed, sometimes not. Typically it is good idea to make "guest" settings in the way that clearly marks all guest posts as such. However, depending on the code base of a forum, it may be simple to integrate such a feature, or hard.
But registration is one-time problem, especially for people who just want toask one question or answer to some topic (that was found using Google for example) and don't plan to use the forum frequently. And many people can consider this as "minor" issue. More important problem is lack of ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum as as well as inability to answer via standard mail client. These problems are most important. wine-forum.org doesn't provide such functionality. It would be great if this is fixed. *At least* there should be possibility to subscribe to all messages from the forum and possibility to answer by clicking on the link (to the reply form on the forum) in each e-mail message from the forum (direct processing of the e-mail answers is even better but can be harder to implement). It is also important that after you logged in you don't need to login every time again and there is no short timeout (use of cookies is necessary for this to work). But I have no idea how hard/easy will be to implement these features on wine-forum.org because I know very little about vBulletin used by wine-forum.
I think that recently created http://forum.winehq.org/ seems to be the bestsolution. Registration there isn't a problem because anyone can write a message directly to the mailing list without registration on the forum. This is exactly what I imagine as a perfect solution suitable for all users: everyone can post answers without logging in (via the mailing list), everybody can use forum or mailing list (depending on personal choice), and it is possible to receive and answer using any e-mail client you like. So I think winehq.org now have very good forum with nice sync with wine-users mailing list! I really like it. In fact it solves all major problems that I mentioned in my previous messages!
http://forum.winehq.org/viewtopic.php?t=52
I sincerely wish you guys the best fighting off the spam assault :D
Cheers,
Tom
P.S.
Hows that song go?....... You ain't seen nothing yet!