Moving the forum to something more modern
I guess this has been discussed before but has anyone thought about moving
the forums (possibly just archiving the Nabble one) to something like
https://www.discourse.org/features ?
It can be hosted on a 5$ a month Droplet at Digital Ocean. I don't think
anything will be missing from what you have now but it's so so so much
easier to get an account and ask questions.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
On 12/4/2020 11:12 AM, xgarb wrote:
I guess this has been discussed before but has anyone thought about moving
the forums (possibly just archiving the Nabble one) to something like
https://www.discourse.org/features ?
It can be hosted on a 5$ a month Droplet at Digital Ocean. I don't think
anything will be missing from what you have now but it's so so so much
easier to get an account and ask questions.
A quick scan suggests that at least 2/3 of the participants use e-mail
rather than the forum.
(Based on the presence or absence of the "Sent from:
http://forum.openscad.org" trailer.)
This is very easy for me. I just get emails and read them. I don't see
any need for a change.
Jon
On 12/4/2020 2:12 PM, xgarb wrote:
I guess this has been discussed before but has anyone thought about moving
the forums (possibly just archiving the Nabble one) to something like
https://www.discourse.org/features ?
It can be hosted on a 5$ a month Droplet at Digital Ocean. I don't think
anything will be missing from what you have now but it's so so so much
easier to get an account and ask questions.
If it ain't broke, don't fix it until it is. As others have said before me,
most read this community via email, some forum it. I scan the emails to see
if there's a response I can make, and use the forum to answer when I can,
cause I'm just a "forum whore" from the 90s ;-) (I started on USENET, in
fact, then discovered forums :D )
We all have email, we all have the web. The forum/list combo isn't broken.
Most days, I do my contribution via Safari on my iPhone.
Make things, travel and tell stories.
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
The two main problems I see with the forum are the signup process is at least
4 steps that have to be done in order with one of them relying on manual
activation. It's not hard but it doesn't encourage people to join.
The second is it's all so ugly to look at and use which again might put
people off getting involved in the project.
Try the demo and see the difference - https://try.discourse.org/
It does all the email stuff you have now but it's more configurable.
Personally I don't want to get emails for threads I'm not involved with.
Look at this from the point of a new user and attracting people to the
project.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
I would prefer a forum - I have received so many emails the last few day, I
am thinking of opting out because of the volume of emails which is a shame.
Its great that others want to discuss languages for scad but its not a topic
I was interested in as I find the current situation perfect - I would have
looked at the first few posts on that topic on a web based forum and decided
it was not for me.
The advantages of forums is that you do not receive everything - you have to
click to engage in a thread that interests you and you do so at a time that
suits you.
There is so much information flying around these days - we need filters -
that is what a forum gives and it is passive whereas email throws everything
at you.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/
On Fri Dec 04 13:25:54 PST 2020 jon@buymydreamhotel.com said:
I would prefer a forum - I have received so many emails the last few day, I
am thinking of opting out because of the volume of emails which is a shame.
That's what your email filters are for. Put all the OpenSCAD stuff in one folder, automatically ignore certain threads.
The advantages of forums is that you do not receive everything - you have to
click to engage in a thread that interests you and you do so at a time that
suits you.
The disadvantage is that you need to explicitly go to the web page and check each new thread to see if it's interesting.
If that is the ONLY forum you belong to, only mildly annoying. When you are following 20 - a royal PITA.
Much easier to setup email filters.
--
Tigers prowl and Dragons soar in my dreams...
I would prefer a forum - I have received so many emails the last few day, I
am thinking of opting out because of the volume of emails which is a shame.
...
The advantages of forums is that you do not receive everything - you have to
click to engage in a thread that interests you and you do so at a time that
suits you.
There is so much information flying around these days - we need filters -
that is what a forum gives and it is passive whereas email throws everything
at you.
Forum posts rely on the Mailing-list, so you must stay subscribed for it to work.
You can change your Mailing-list settings here:
http://lists.openscad.org/mailman/options/discuss_lists.openscad.org
If you just like browsing the Forum, you can disable Mailing-list delivery; another option is a
daily(ish) email digest of the days messages.
Discourse is used on Shapeways, personally I find it finicky.
Nabble is slowly dying, so we will have to move on, but ATM it is not broken, much.
It used to be easy to join, then spammers worked out how to get around the checks,
so manual intervention is required. I still regularly get access requests from spammers.
--
This email has been checked for viruses by AVG.
https://www.avg.com
On Fri, Dec 4, 2020, at 4:13 PM, xgarb wrote:
[discourse] does all the email stuff you have now but it's more configurable.
The Discourse documentation claims they support email, but it isn't actually true.
I tried mailing list mode in Discourse once, and found it unusable, or at least a degraded experience from what Nabble sends out.
Even Jeff Atwood, creator of Discourse, says: mailing list mode is “nightmare difficulty”, or “the nuclear option”.
https://meta.discourse.org/t/apply-mailing-list-mode-per-category/47772/16
This thread explains why Discourse is not suitable for migrating from a mailman instance. It's not designed to support mailing lists. And the maintainers of Discourse are not interested in fixing the problems.
Shapeways use https://xenforo.com/ which would be another suggestion for a
more traditional forum.
I don't think you'd need mailing list mode in Discourse. You just have one
category (as now with Nabble) and set the notifications for either all new
topics or all new posts if you want emails every time one of those events
occurs. You could also set up further categories as developer only etc etc.
I've not tested 'reply to post via email' but I'm sure that would work.
You could filter incoming emails but it seems like the wrong way round. Also
if you are getting a filtered mail box full of mostly irrelevant emails,
you'll stop checking it.
My experience of joining this forum went something like this:
- Read notice about joining three times
- Sign up to forum
- Confirm
- Sign up to Mail list
- Confirm
- Read notice about joining again
- Send manual request
- Go to bed
- Wake up to 10 emails I'm not interested in
- See accepted message
- Work
- Get more emails
- Write my question
- See my question showing but with just urls for the images
Discourse would be
- Create account or use social login
- Confirm
- Write question (including pasting screen captures directly)
However if it's not 10 minutes work to set up Discourse and if the majority
are happy with the current system maybe now is not the time to move.
Possibly having a forum that's hard to join is an advantage for users
because the low level of activity means the experience users have more time
to help others. I see the topics get answered quickly and I have two helpful
answers to look over already.
--
Sent from: http://forum.openscad.org/