That was a joke, right? You're not seriously comparing nntp clients with browser clients and claiming that news servers are just as popular and useable as forums, and more reliable to boot? Seriously? Seriously?

OK, I get the picture!

I knew that I wasn't going to convince anyone who wasn't willing to give new technology a fair go! But we do need to at least be fair with our evaluation of technology, not just go with what we know and love. It's not fair to the users who may not know the difference, or who may have been genuinely interested in better ways of communicating with everyone else here.

One of the critical points I tried to make when suggesting a forum as an option, was moving ALL the historical data to the forum DB, to make it available to everyone, via the more powerful search engines available there. It may not have been a great fit, but it seemed a more transparent option than what's currently available. This was never a "cut and run" proposition, and I apologise if that's the way it came across. I thought I was particularly clear about that, but obviously I could have done better! (Mea maxima culpa!)

Please, please don't just dismiss forums because you prefer nntp. Nntp still has something to offer, in terms of archived newsgroups/data inaccessible elsewhere, but if all that data was freely available via forums, don't you think that it would make much more sense to give it a try and make up your mind with your own evidence?

Honestly, I'd prefer it if you didn't cast aspersions on my professionalism or my discipline, simply because I recommended an improvement to the current state of the FPC site. I thought I was being fairly open about the limitations and the benefits of the alternatives for the site and the current situation, but hey, I can take a hint!

Thanks for the opportunity to discuss these ideas, anyway. It was a great learning experience.

Kind regards,
Pete

Cephas Atheos wrote

You're not seriously comparing nntp clients with browser clients and claiming that news servers are just as popular and useable as forums, and more reliable to boot? Seriously? Seriously?

Well, I think so.

One of the critical points I tried to make when suggesting a forum as an option, was moving ALL the historical data to the forum DB, to make it

Well, maybe try and do that first, because telling everybody to try the forum. Currently there is NO historical data in that forum you setup.

I also couldn't find a way to show a treeview style list of discussions. I rely on a treeview style overview of conversations... who replied to what message. This is why I hate Gmail, as it simply lumps the last response to the bottom of a long list. That doesn't give me any indication to what message that person replied to, and I can't follow the various branches (discussions) in the same thread.

professionalism or my discipline, simply because I recommended an improvement to the current state of the FPC site.

Maybe you are tackling something that isn't actually a problem. The mailing list (even though I don't like them much) are working. Maybe concentrate your efforts on the website improvements instead. Get more usable information easily available on the FPC home page. Add a more detailed menu on the FPC site so we can pick what we want to view, without navigating through many static pages, etc.

Regards,
- Graeme -

Cephas Atheos ha scritto:
[..]

[...]

I'm afraid that you're are under the false impression of talking to a newbee audience, who's never seen a forum in his life.

The sample forum you proposed is very similar to the one I did set up for a cultural association I'm member of. It uses the same tools and also the layout isn't very different. For its purpose it is quite easy to use, and the most suitable tool. I would never have dreamed to propose to this association to set up a newsgroup. But, by knowing this tool, and by knowing also other tools, such as the capabilities of modern mail clients, I fully agree with Graeme that the forum is a clumsy tool as compared to a newsgroup, as far as fpc/Lazarus developers requirements, needs and capabilities are concerned. Different purposes and different audiences need different tools.

May I remind you that being "more modern" doesn't mean "more suitable"? Tombstones are still made of stone. Stone age technology. But the most suitable for that purpose. A plastic sheet printed with the latest digital printing technology appears much more modern, but id would fly away at the first wind blow, and it would fade away under the sun in a few months.
Nobody today would dream to carve a public announcement on a stone slab, as it was customary in ancient Rome, but nonetheless there's a field where stone age technology is still the most suitable.

Please do follow Graeme suggestions, and concentrate where problems exist, and improvements would be welcome. Fpc/Lazarus Wiki search is a nightmare, because there's no decent content based indexing: if what you're searching for is not on a page title it can't be found. Fpc website usability is very poor. In those fields more modern tools, and someone willing to devote some time would help a lot.

Giuliano

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To be fair, it's probably useful to mention that the example forum prepared by Peter should be better compared to the forum we currently provide on FPC pages (community.freepascal.org) rather than NNTP newsgroups, etc., which we do not provide at the moment anyway. There _are_ issues with the existing WWW forum (e.g. the notifications work incorrectly). I do not say that it is the most important problem of our WWW site, but there is still some room for improvement there.

Nevertheless, the provided example shall be accompanied by description of the supposed transition scenario. First of all, it is important to understand whether the created example was meant to replace just the existing WWW forum or the whole site (possibly including the Wiki, bug tracker, etc.) / supporting infrastructure. If it's the former, alright, let's discuss advantages and disadvantages compared to our current one with regard to all aspects (usability, features, involved infrastructure, security, operability and support of the forum software, etc.). At the end, we can put the advantages and disadvantages on one page and then decide whether to change or not. As an example, one disadvantage I can see so far is that it lacks the benefit of very easy (and user controlled) possibility of localization to other languages. That feature is actually used right now and there are quite a few localizations available (partly created by our users) matching the possibility to discuss FPC related questions also in other languages than just English (which is important for some our users who do not speak English so well). Sacrificing that feature may be an option, but we should understand the reasons for doing so.

Another question - is the forum structure supposed to be part of the proposal? If yes, it would be useful to get some arguments why this structure fits better than the current one. In my opinion, the prepared structure focuses too much on just installing and specific architectures and too little to general cross-platform development (which is one of the FPC strengths and an important benefit of FPC).

If the proposal was meant to replace the whole FPC site (as potentially suggested e.g. by mentioning the download options on a very prominent place and not having links to the other WWW resources like the bug tracker), I have sincere doubts. I hope that it wasn't meant that way, but I'll wait for the response.

If the prepared sample forum is supposed to replace not only the existing WWW forum but also the existing mailing lists (completely)? This hasn't been stated (yet), although I suspect that it might have been meant that way based on some previous statements. If this is the case, it would be useful to provide some statements regarding different access options - even 'up to date' forum solutions like Google Groups provide options for accessing the fora via e-mail (in both directions, i.e. for both reading and responding). Is something like that supported by the created example in order to provide benefits of both approaches (again related to description of supposed transition from the current state mentioned above)?

Tomas

Tomas Hajny wrote

To be fair, it's probably useful to mention that the example forum prepared by Peter should be better compared to the forum we currently provide on FPC pages (community.freepascal.org) rather than NNTP newsgroups, etc., which we do not provide at the moment anyway.

He unsubscribed from all FPC lists immediately after he sent his last message.

Jonas

Highly regrettable, but at least it happened /before/ all of the mailing lists etc. were transitioned to a system which the core project maintainers didn't understand and might not be in control of.

That's not to say that the current system is perfect, in particular I think that everybody agrees that better integration of forums and mailing lists would be a Good Thing.

I don't think he ever insisted on that, and even if he did, that would never have happened. He was offering to help, not threatening a hostile takeover. As Tomas said, his proposal would have been a good candidate for replacing the broken community site.

Jonas

In our previous episode, Mark Morgan Lloyd said:

Personally, I think the whole discussion has to be too tools centric. Content, that matters.

That is not to say that the current website doesn't have problems (a TCL dependency to regenerate the makefiles, and the generator tool has a custom cwstring that needs regular fixing).

IIRC I can't currently run all of it on FreeBSD, so I actually update the website from a work fedora machine.

In our previous episode, Jonas Maebe said:

Why run a separate forum from Lazarus?

Marco van de Voort wrote

Why run a separate forum from Lazarus?

The current fora are already separate, so switching to better forum software would have been an improvement as far as I'm concerned. Merging the FPC and Lazarus fora has been discussed/proposed for many years already and nothing ever happened. I guess one of the reasons is the integration of the community forum account system with the bug tracker though, and that probably wouldn't have been easier to address if the community site were switched over separately.

Anyway, the point is moot now.

Jonas