-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 On 09/12/2011 05:23 AM, Ivan Shmakov wrote:
Alexandro Colorado <jza@openoffice.org> writes:
I found most of this reasons useless.
… But not invalid?
Forums is a well stablish technology as well as proven. Sites like sourceforge use forums as well as many million of users are used to it. Big projects like Audacity, OpenOffice.org and others use forums intensively.
However, during my participation (however short) in several free software development projects, I've never had to use a Web forum to communicate to the other developers.
Keyword here: *developers*
The development of such a major free software components as, e. g., Ext4, GRASS GIS, SQLite, and the Linux kernel, is centered around the respective mailing lists, not to mention the Debian project, which uses them quite extensively.
Althought I have to agree that it pulverize the communication, many users preffer forums specially for that reason.
Keyword here: *users*
I wonder, what's the reason?
Forums are also easier to browse
How is it so?
One click, zero configuration, and you decide when you get the information (unlike email which is added to your daily data).
and dont force the users to read every single message.
Neither mailing lists do. And, of course, it doesn't apply to newsgroups, either.
The assumption on mailing lists is you do read the messages, as you subscribe to them. On forums the etiquette may vary. [...]
Forums are specially important because they provide a better presence on valuable posts. having them move up by popularity or sticky notes. Indeed, it's a valid point.
Not that it's impossible to solve this problem for mailing lists or newsgroups, but I know of no well-established solution. (Although I have some ideas on the issue, but won't probably be able to get to working on them anytime soon.)
The content is there, we can make it disciverable in may other ways. RSS feeds can be reused/imported or simply mentinoning the most valuable posts every week/month, etc. Most projects folow this either informally (blogging, microblogging, interviews, radio, etc) or more formally (weekly review, reports, magazines). On of the best examnples I can cite of public outreach via a blog combining email subscriptions (which I hadn't used in a long time and did when coming across this one) is Raphael Hertzog's blog: http://raphaelhertzog.com/ - check its structure and timing for posts carefully. Other newer tools and approaches (such as rated Q&A like Shapado, which I metioned recently) establish new channels which can be combined with IRC and microblogging on even sites and communities where developers tend to hangout even less, particularly non-free, SaaS-only, etc. as per our context - such as Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. We have to think way beyond mailing lists and forums to reach as many people as possible.
Centralization of information is also imposible, Neither it's necessary. And the Internet news technology offers probably the best currently available solution to decentralization.
*Federation* on the other hand, is desirable. Perhaps a subject for another thread.
imagine saying to the users, don't blog anymore because it generates conversations under your post which are unreachable from my mailing list and duplicate the communication channels.... I doubt you will get much uptake. Now multiply this on other channels, like youtube, twitter/identica and any other publishing environments.
Honestly, I don't understand the very purpose of blogging. Moreover, having no easy way to archive the texts I've written on my own media simply makes me nervous.
*Channels* is another keyword here. Discoverability is what I aim for when posting to several channels. With platforms like Wordpress it's dead easy to export in XML or database-query formats to save your data, you should check it out. A blog post is also a good way to summarize and gather resources and ideas, opinions, and facts, which can then be re-used easily.
I am sure there are valuable comments on the SFD wall in facebook that this list will never see. That doesnt male the facebook presence a bad thing. The advantages of familiarity well outscore the annoyances.
Perhaps.
Well, it does make it a bad thing as Facebook can disappear or change (as it's happened to group pages) and if the content is *exclusively there*, it is lost. The key here is to try and not post there exclusively and share back whatever valuable unique information may be seen there. Google makes it easy for all its properties to keep your data (see http://www.dataliberation.org/) but one key component is missing: the social relationships people give to the data. This is part of the warning we need to keep in mind when using such servcies. As such, I prefer duplicating such relationships elsewhere for now. Cheers, Fabian Rodriguez Montreal, QC, Canada http://libreplanet.org/wiki/User:MagicFab ~ http://wiki.softwarefreedomday.org/2011/Canada/Montreal -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.11 (GNU/Linux) Comment: PGP/Mime available upon request Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org/ iEYEARECAAYFAk5t1ckACgkQfUcTXFrypNVLYACg2BpPflAhRognvjom5t3TtdnA VDIAoOUVxQFh5xDNgQ7ycG7HVTVgd8Ra =ShGF -----END PGP SIGNATURE-----