Does OpenSCAD deserve a modern Forum platform?
I have no idea how many members the mailing list and its associated forum have (Michael?), but it
seems clear that it's far more active than either of the others.
Mailing-list 830 subscribers, the hard-core ;)
Forum 1785 Members (tho since a Nabble change ~2y ago, those not on the Mailing-list can't post)
and 2448 Registered users (confirmed emails), and 'all users' 2907.
I doubt many people bother to remove their accounts on the Forum.
I see intermittent Mailing-list unsubscribes.
Mailing-list posts:
Dec 561
Nov 365
Oct 340
Sep 98
Aug 228
Jul 260
Avg 309 ~10/d
Forum, started 20091201, 4072 days, 3806 topics (no easy way to count posts), 597427 views (avg 146
views/d)
From: Discuss [mailto:discuss-bounces@lists.openscad.org] On Behalf Of Jordan Brown
Sent: Sun, 24 Jan 2021 04:46
To: OpenSCAD general discussion; Vigardo
Subject: Re: [OpenSCAD] Does OpenSCAD deserve a modern Forum platform?
On the IRC chat, user ali1234 notes that the OpenSCAD forum on Thingiverse has over 6000 members
and the subreddit has 1500.
The Thingiverse group has about 30 posts in 2021. (That's across three topics.)
It's harder to measure the reddit traffic (because it doesn't say at the top level when the most
recent comment on a thread was), but it looks like there's in the neighborhood of 100 there.
My mailbox says that this mailing list has had 305 messages.
I have no idea how many members the mailing list and its associated forum have (Michael?), but it
seems clear that it's far more active than either of the others.
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Another possibility is to use something like Groups.IO.
I have a Sparrow EV group there: https://groups.io/g/SparrowEV/topics
Most members use it as a Email list, but some use the web interface.
--
Bobcats and Cougars, oh my! http://john.casadelgato.com/Pets
The problem with Groups.IO is the cost. Michael said 3000 users.
At the Premium tier (30GB storage), that is $150/month.
At the Enterprise tier (1TB storage), that is $600/month.
Reference: https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/27191
On Sat, Jan 23, 2021, at 6:42 PM, John Lussmyer wrote:
Another possibility is to use something like Groups.IO.
I have a Sparrow EV group there: https://groups.io/g/SparrowEV/topics
Most members use it as a Email list, but some use the web interface.
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On Sat Jan 23 17:04:21 PST 2021 doug@moens.org said:
The problem with Groups.IO is the cost. Michael said 3000 users.
At the Premium tier (30GB storage), that is $150/month.
At the Enterprise tier (1TB storage), that is $600/month.
Reference: https://beta.groups.io/g/main/message/27191
On Sat, Jan 23, 2021, at 6:42 PM, John Lussmyer wrote:
Another possibility is to use something like Groups.IO.
I have a Sparrow EV group there: https://groups.io/g/SparrowEV/topics
Most members use it as a Email list, but some use the web interface.
Admittedly, SparrowEV is small, and I paid for 1 year to get it transfered from Yahoo.
Now running on the Free offering.
--
Tigers prowl and Dragons soar in my dreams...
That was an interesting graph. I suspect it is probably roughly in
parallel with the rise and fall of numbers of 3-D printing machines
leaving China. In other words the decline in OpenSCAD queries or
searches may be because the number of naive users are declining and
other alternative software emerges.
However the the other point that Vigardo makes was about revitalising
the interest in OpenSCAD and is quite relevant from my point of view.
The big question is "why look for a modern interface?" in the first
place. Are there any huge advantages we may have overlooked?
Let me preface my comments below with a thank you to all the people who
have worked so hard to make openSCAD what it is. I appreciate it greatly
and do not want to offend people with might seem like an opportunistic
and off-topic comment, but my cynical mind works like this.
For a language that can't do X=X+1, and remains in the mind-set of
functional languages, then I would suggest an old fashioned email based
communication is quite appropriate. I have seen many times people asking
the experts if there is a command that can find a bounding box for an
object they have designed, and requesting other features that require
almost a total rewrite of OpenSCAD's underlying code and structure to
achieve those features (especially how it handles variables). I don't
think that is likely to be forthcoming soon as the people who are
currently working on it have probably already expired their enormous
energies required to take on such a huge task, just to get us where we
are now. Plus the people who know OpenSCAD best will also be the ones
that have invested the most time in its current form and would not want
to break a lot of their code and designs.
Where is this energy to redesign the OpenSCAD engine going to come from?
Most likely from new recruits who could take OpenSCAD through a major
Python style redesign from 2.X to 3.X. Will an email platform attract
these people (I find it much more convenient myself than the Forum
(being a grumpy old man, though this is not an essential trait))?
If we are interested in keeping OpenSCAD a vital, evolving language,
then taking note and listening to the younger contributors should be
given more weight. being able to transfer their skills directly to a
Discorse style forum may just help them constructively join in. (Who'd
have thought thumb typing would have ever become mainstream?).
Accommodating their interests is in our best interest in the long run. A
modern interface to this extremely valuable resource could be a major
upgrade, and lead to others later on eg major revisions.
Cheers, Rob
On 24/1/21 9:38 am, Vigardo wrote:
Troberg wrote
Face it, mailing lists, while they do work, they aren't really modern,
and,
most importantly, they don't feel modern. I can promise you that if I
asked
my kids (26 and 24) what a mailing list is, they wouldn't know. When a new
potential user pops in to see what OpenSCAD is, if he/she doesn't
understand
what a mailing list is, chances are that we've lost him/her before even
trying the program.
This perfectly illustrates why I decided to post this thread. In my opinion,
OpenSCAD needs to capture the attention of new users... which would mainly
be "millennials" or even younger. I´m pretty sure they would identify this
forum as old. For example, there may be tons of young people (students of
engineering, applied sciences, informatics, etc) that buy their new 3D
printers and want to create new stuff. OpenSCAD should be as amenable to
them as possible, don´t you think?
In addition, there may be many users that do not interact just because of
the more than 10 steps one has to follow to configure current mailing list
and forum. Also they may think this would become soon obsolete in favor of
other non-coding approaches to create parametric objects.
doug.moen wrote
This discussion thread, and the "modern forum" discussion thread from
December, both began with a request to switch to Discourse. Some OpenSCAD
users want a forum that "looks and feels modern", and while I don't know
what that means, it seems that Discourse satisfies the requirement. So
let's consider Discourse.
You´re right... what is modern forum? This is not a very clear concept :-)
Perhaps this example would help to illustrate what it looks like:
https://discourse.mcneel.com/t/angular-cross-sections-in-karamba/102476/2 As
you can see, images are seamlessly integrated within the posts and shared
links have a counter that indicates how many times it has been accessed, and
some other fancy things that facilitate the communication (which as you know
it is not that easy using plain email text).
In this respect, I think that McNeel company has taken their time to
carefully select Discourse as their Forums platform. Note that thousands of
users of Rhinoceros, Grasshopper, and many FEA and CAD plugins for
parametric engineering and architecture actively contribute via such forum
platform. I think this is a quite clear indicative about where to go next.
But of course, this is just my minority opinion.
But please, do not misunderstand me. I fully respect the preferences and
opinion of the majority, which undoubtedly prefers a mailing list
https://www.surveymonkey.com/results/SM-LK6WQBX57/ (thanks
a lot JordanBrown!). However, these results may be biased by the fact that
only votes who reads this mailing list and forum. We do not know what
potential and long-term users would prefer. Only a detailed survey, that it
is out of our scope, would adequately answer this question.
An important thing to take into account in this discussion are OpenSCAD
alternatives. The competence interest, for example in FreeCAD is raising
compared to OpenSCAD, at least as judged by Google Trends:
http://forum.openscad.org/file/t3088/Interest_Trends_in_OpenSCAD_vs_FreeCAD.png
Are the OpenSCAD number of downloads and/or the number of new
forum/mail-list users also decreasing? If so, improving community
interaction would contribute favorably to increase usage and participation.
Perhaps some monthly or yearly figures about this would shed some light to
select the best way to go.
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Ubuntu Mate - A great OS https://ubuntu-mate.org/
Troberg wrote
Also, realistically, who many active users do we have on the mailing list?
20? 50? We may very well be looking at survivor bias, ie a skewed result
because we are only asking the people who bothered to stay. Kind of like
how
they in WW2 checked where the bullet holes were in aircraft after missions
to see which parts to harden with more armor, which, oddly enough were
non-vital parts, because they were checking the aircraft that got home,
not
the ones that didn't make it home.
Just for to test this hypothesis, I'll ask people on the OpenSCAD why they
are there instead of the mailing list. It would be interesting to hear their
opinion.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
Troberg wrote
Also, realistically, who many active users do we have on the mailing list?
20? 50? We may very well be looking at survivor bias, ie a skewed result
because we are only asking the people who bothered to stay. Kind of like
how
they in WW2 checked where the bullet holes were in aircraft after missions
to see which parts to harden with more armor, which, oddly enough were
non-vital parts, because they were checking the aircraft that got home,
not
the ones that didn't make it home.
Just for to test this hypothesis, I'll ask people on the OpenSCAD subreddit
why they are there instead of the mailing list. It would be interesting to
hear their opinion.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
So to be clear.
Somebody put your hand up to:
a. Find the alternate design.
b. Setup a prototype
c. Unit test
d. Invite a test subset of users to test
e. Some form of transition planning
f. Find Admins if necessary, train them
g. If appropriate transfer history.
h. that is my 23:30 red wine brain dump
i. ...
Any one??? If not it is just venting...
OpenSCAD Admin - email* me if you need anything, or if I've done something stupid...
- on the Forum, click on my MichaelAtOz label, there is a link to email me.
Unless specifically shown otherwise above, my contribution is in the Public Domain; to the extent possible under law, I have waived all copyright and related or neighbouring rights to this work. Obviously inclusion of works of previous authors is not included in the above.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
I'm not sure a to e are necessary.
It would be something like:
A) Get $5 droplet at Digital Ocean
B) Click button to install Discourse
https://marketplace.digitalocean.com/apps/discourse
C) Complete install for SSL and your SMTP server
D) Create 2 admins
E) Copy someone else's forum structure (ie
https://discourse.threejs.org/categories)
F) Set up incoming 'mailing list' functionality
https://meta.discourse.org/t/straightforward-direct-delivery-incoming-mail/49487
G) Throw open to the community to test
H) Check server stats to see if $10 droplet needed.
Take a look here at the advantages of the system:
https://www.discourse.org/features It has in-built moderation so could be
mostly self-administrating.
Also see this for a list of possible plugins:
https://www.literatecomputing.com/discourse-installation-packages/
You might be able to get a sponsor to cover costs if the forum proves to be
popular.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
On 1/23/2021 2:38 PM, Vigardo wrote:
In addition, there may be many users that do not interact just because
of the more than 10 steps one has to follow to configure current
mailing list and forum.
That postulates that it's necessary to "configure the forum". As far as
I know, I've never touched the forum. (Well, until today :-)
Subscribing to the mailing list is (from openscad.org) three clicks,
typing your e-mail address, and another click. Then click on the link
in the registration message.
Also they may think this would become soon obsolete in favor of other
non-coding approaches to create parametric objects.
A very real possibility. (But not this thread.)
As you can see, images are seamlessly integrated within the posts
I believe that for most mail users, images are seamlessly integrated.
What doesn't end up seamlessly integrated in the e-mail feed is, I
believe, the images that originate at the forum software. (I just
checked, and one of the messages I recently sent with an image in it is
shown properly on the forum.)
So I have a different-ish question. There are at least three
alternative OpenSCAD fora: the Thingiverse group, the subreddit, and
the Facebook page. Why do forum-lovers not find those to be acceptable?