On Fri, Nov 4, 2011 at 10:27 PM, Dennis E.
Hamilton<dennis.hamilton@acm.org
wrote:
It is the case that Stack Exchange is a challenge, although I
don't recall
having all that much difficulty with it.
I concur completely about the desire for forums and the phpBB
forums seem
to
work quite well (at least based on the experience with the
OpenOffice.org
Community Forums). It does indeed depend on the vigilance of
volunteers,
moderators, and administrators. But Forum governance can work very
smoothly
and it is a great outlet for peer support and the satisfaction of
peer
supporters who advance into volunteer and other categories.
There is one value to Stack Exchange. It is possible to set a
search on
Stack
Exchange questions and watch for ones that are relevant to OO.o
and LO. I
have done so and I see about one per day. (I have probably
responded to at
most two of them.)
I suspect it is possible to also create a search that also finds
asked and
answered or still unanswered questions about OO.o and LO.
More eyes on those, especially for those who are enamored of Stock
Exchange,
would be valuable.
I think the big benefit for StackExchange is the built-in
mechanism for
rewarding contributors with points.
See for example http://askubuntu.com/ (the Ubuntu StackExchange).
1. As you help out people, your readers can upvote your answers
and you
earn badges.
2. There are bronze and silver and possibly gold badges.
3. You also earn privileges as you get more points. For example,
you can
earn the privilege to modify/fix the questions of users if you
feel they
can become better.
4. The design of StackExchange is to move much of the moderation work
towards the users themselves, and get them trained to produce better
answers.
5. AFAIK, there are dedicated people who perform general
moderation for
issues that are missed by the volunteers. This helps tremendously
to create
a nice and cooperative environment on AskUbuntu.
StackExchange is complementary to a forum.
There is Shapado and there is StackExchange. Which to choose if we
ever go
for such a service? I would prefer StackExchange as it is bigger
and hosts
already many heavy sites such as StackOverflow.
I fear that Shapado does not have a big consumer yet.
To get a LibreOffice StackExchange, there is a process where
StackExchange
users need to vote in favor of the proposed site.
Regarding the forum, I think it will need to have the karma
feature, a way
to reward users who post often.
In addition to this, it would be good to have an option to Thank
the author
of a specific post.
See for example
http://forum.xda-developers.com/showthread.php?t=755389 (at
end of post, 3 people thanked the author).
Both http://forum.xda-developers.com/ (4m members) and
http://ubuntuforums.org/ (1.5m members) are based on vBulletin, a
proprietary forum software.
If phpBB can perform similar functionality to vBulletin, it should
be fine.
phpBB supports mods (addons), so it's an issue to search and test the
appropriate addons that they work reliably.
Simos
- Dennis E. Hamilton
tools for document interoperability,<http://nfoWorks.org/>
dennis.hamilton@acm.org gsm: +1-206-779-9430 @orcmid
-----Original Message-----
From: Italo Vignoli [mailto:italo.vignoli@gmail.com]
Sent: Friday, November 04, 2011 13:19
To: discuss@documentfoundation.org
Subject: Re: [tdf-discuss] phpbb for the official LO forums
On 11/4/11 7:56 PM, Florian Effenberger wrote:
many users have made *very* clear to me several times that they
want a
"real" forum they know, like phpBB. Otherwise, I would have
simply gone
with Nabble, so I'm a bit hesitant...
I agree with Florian. Users want a forum, and this has been made
very
clear by many people. After having been accused of ignoring user
needs
because we didn't have a real forum, any other solution, at this
stage,
would be perceived in a negative way.
Please remember that users are different from developers. As a
user, I
find stackexchange simply unacceptable (would really like to know
who
has had the idea).
Users do not want to study the solution. They want to write a
question,
and get an answer. Simple problem, with a simple answer.
Stackexchange makes it complex, in a useless way. I have been on the
site for ten minutes, and I haven't been able to understand what
I was
supposed to do. I am usually considered a power user (sometimes,
even a
geek, at least in the marketing environment), and I don't see how
something like stackexchange can be considered a better
alternative to
mailing lists and forums.
Best, Italo
--
Italo Vignoli
italo.vignoli@gmail.com
mobile +39.348.5653829
VoIP +39.02.320621813
skype italovignoli
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