Re: [Gnewsense-dev] New forum

[Jason Self]

In my admittedly short time hanging around gNewSense I've never liked
having separate forums and a mailing list. Others seems to like having
the forums, though, so I've never said anything but it seems (to me)
to artifically divide the community between those on the forums and
those on the list. There could be the same people in each area, but
not necessarily.

I've been operating and maintaining a forum powered by phpBB for
several years and found it to be very extensible. I see that a
Gmane-type thing was discussed in the list archives. It would prevent
such a web/list division from happening, but there is forum software
that can integrate with mailing lists, so this division doesn't have
to exist. phpBB doesn't have this functionality built-in but I believe
that there are free software plugins to accomplish it. Other forum
software has the functionality built-in.

It seems that integrating the the mailing lists and the web should be
a requirement for a cople of reasons: I think that it would prevent a
separate forum entity from becoming "a place for dirty hacks,
recommending poor software, and generally bad advice" (a quote form
Karl in an earlier thread) since everyone in the community -- both
forum and list -- could see the discussions and step in and put the
kibosh on something if needed.

Another concern mentioned previously is a rescue method for the
information as well as the long-term viability of such a project if
someone should take it on. Since the data would also be picked up by
the list archive, all messages and data would be preserved in the list
archives should the forum operator/maintainer lose interest, or if the
forum died for whatever other reason. The same can't necessarily be
said if the forum is maintained as a separate entity from the mailing
lists.

Just my 2 cents.