Re: Forums

Hello,

I've been following the discussion carefully and even though I have no problems communicating via email, I can understand the point that a more web-friendly platform would make sense and would attract more and more visual thinkers, web designers and designers. This can only be a good thing for www-style.

Why don't we reach an established community of web-professionals and run a survey aimed at finding out the reasons why web designers aren't currently following and contributing to discussing the future of the web.

I suggest reaching A List Apart, .net magazine.

The survey could be run on any platform, but the less time it takes to setup, the better. I recommend http://survs.com (i have a pro account I can lend). It allows for basic frequency analysis and exporting in csv and xls.

I believe this could give a better view of what options/paths are worth pursuing and if there is a problem in the first place. 

Some people simply aren't attracted by the process. But hearing them out could prove enlightening to everyone. Current members should take the survey as well. One of the questions could be direct about that.

What do you think?

Cheers,
--
André Luís
http://sapo.pt

On Jan 6, 2012, at 8:32 PM, Sylvain Galineau wrote:

> 
> [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 Monday, 9 January 2012 10:14:03 UTC