RE: Forums

[Matthew Wilcox:]
> 
> One of the things being assumed here is that forums would sit alongside
> the list.
> 
> That would never work, they can't have two separate sets of content. My
> point wasn't that we should have a forum as well, it was that we should
> have a forum instead.
> 
> And then we began discussing the merits of each approach and discovering
> what the members need any solution to do in order to work well.
> 
> Here are the options that have emerged from the discussion:
> 
> 1) We ditch lists and go with a forum
> 
> 2) We abandon the forum idea entirely
> 
> 3) We make or patch a forum which maintains all of the functionality of a
> list, for those that don't want to use the forum's interface.
> 
> 4) We adapt the HyperMail software that manages the web-viewable archives
> to become more forum-like.
> 
> 5) We don't do anything and watch as new blood stops coming in over time
> and the place dies out in the same manner that the software it runs on has.

If new blood has stopped coming, that is news to me. WG face-to-face meetings
are about three times larger than when I joined a few years ago and both the
number of participants and volume of activity on this mailing list has gone
likewise. So from my end, #5 is an hypothetical unsupported by the evidence. [1]

There needs to be a space where implementors, spec editors and other parties 
interested in in-depth discussions can have a meaningful conversation. That 
space should be open to all, whether they have something to contribute or
want to look in. This space already exists and there is no objective evidence 
it is "dying out" (far from it).

So before deciding on this vs. that I'd like to understand what it is we're 
trying to fix. So far, most of the argument seems to revolve around a mix of
individual preferences for particular software and user experiences + complaints 
about well-known and acknowledged issues (lousy subscription process, dated archive 
system).



[1] A simple look at our old archive shows the following number of posts for 
2011 vs. 2008

             2011     2008

January       721      613
February      822      341
March         763      445
April         839      527
May           728      270
June          826      396
July          558      630
August        681      272
September     563      245
October       896      359
November      815      558
December      555      237

Monthly avg.  730      407

For an increase of 79%. The number gets crazier the farther back you go.

Received on Friday, 6 January 2012 20:33:20 UTC