On Tuesday February 19 2008 00:55:23 Steven Edwards wrote:
On Feb 18, 2008 6:57 PM, L. Rahyen research@science.su wrote:
And personally I think that it will be too hard even for someonewho knows AppDB very well. Also, there is naming confusion ("WINE forum" and "AppDB forum" - this will not allow users to find easily official WINE forum). And of course currently AppDB isn't specified as a forum at all (just try in Google "AppDB forum" - it seems that no one call AppDB "forum"). Another problem is that not all questions/comments are related to one particular application or applications at all - for example, general question about compile issues or other problems are possible (just compare wine-users archive with AppDB to see the difference).
We discussed this at wineconf and could not reach consensus on what would be the best method.
Currently it's hard for newbie to find a official WINE forum (tryin Google for example "WINE forum linux"); well, this is because there is no official WINE forum currently... So most users who want to discuss WINE related issues in a forum discuss them on general Linux/distribution' forums.
That was the idea in creating wine-forum. It would be one forum to bind them all so to speak. Currently wine discussion is fragmented across various forums in ubuntu, gentoo, Play on Linux, Winedoors, etc
Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to read all such forums,this is really too much "fragmented", this leads to some inefficiencies: sometimes WINE related questions on such forums cannot receive useful answer for a long time. Even worse, even if I find some question that I can quickly answer on the forum, it is impossible to do so without time consuming registration process. In fact there was some cases when I searched for some WINE related issues, find someone's unanswered question that I can answer quickly, but never find enough time and motivation to register. This is actually the problem that should be addressed if we decide to create forum. Registration shouldn't be required. At most (for protection from spam bots), few digits from a small picture should be entered by unregistered users before posting and that's all. As I said earlier, it is also important to have ability to subscribe for all messages from the forum otherwise (reliable) user support will be hard. And there is a lot of other important issues... By the way, http://wine-forum.org don't have these important features at all (just a note). And of course, I'm able to implement myself everything I'm talking above, with well looking design. But I will do this only if there is demand in this... That is, if it would be decided to create forum I will be glad to help, but if not then there is no point in creating of something that is intended for the community and isn't demanded high enough by this community. As I already said, I like mailing lists much more than forums, so my opinion about usefulness/uselessness of the forum is neutral. But I think it is useful to discuss this topic so right decision can be made (create or not to create the forum, or find other solution(s), or don't change anything at all) as a result of the discussion.
As I stated, we discussed this at wineconf and consesus was not reached. Dan wanted to use google groups, others want to keep mailing lists, while others still want to use the newsgroups. wine-forum is run by Tom Wickline who is a long time wine contributor so while I would support a better system that integrates with appdb and the winehq mainsite better, I am leery of yet another system if its not going to have someone or someones dedicated to maintain it for years to come.
Well, if I created something, I will be able to maintain it as long as it useful. So this isn't a problem. Problem is that I don't see any kind of the agreement even between two people - so it is very difficult (or even impossible) to really create *official* forum in such situation... If agreement cannot be found, I think best idea is to not change anything. Well, that's not that bad - personally I think WINE community and its mailing lists (along with AppDB) are good enough for most users "as is".
Also as I stated, I don't think appdb is covers every discussion topic unless you extend it to support distros, Wine forks, winelib application projects, etc.
That's (almost) what I said in my message (its too hard too implement + other issues mentioned by me and you) - so I agree with you.
Tom is committed to doing this with wine-forum. If there is something you don't like, such as the registration, advertisements, etc I am sure he is willing to adjust the user experience.
OK, then if he is reading this list hopefully he will consider my words as feature request. If he really will fix these issues that would be great. Thanks.