Open Stack

OK, I am going to re-reply to the same message, top post, leave all the
relevant (and irrelevant) info below, reiterate my opinion, and expand.

phpBB is a poor choice of forum software, IMO.  As was mentioned by
others, it has a terrible security record, but that is not entirely my
point, relative to the conversation I replied to.  I think most web
forum software packages, in whatever language and state of security
maintenance suffer from an overall design problem.

*Typical* forums are a horrible conversation format, IMO, however people
seem to love them for some reason (see the current first post - what's
important seems to be my avatar, skype#...).  Every, and I mean *every*
single busy forum site that I have encountered, has some FAQ posted
somewhere and exceedingly repetitive replies to posts about "Search the
Forums before posting" blah, blah..  There are a very few exceptions to
this common web forum format failure.  The fact that they need human
intervention to "sticky" commonly asked posts and keep new users
directed to read and search and post intelligently.. at that point, why
not just use wikis more - people can ask questions and get answers on a
wiki.

One exception to the typical web forum, StackExchange (and all related),
is an interesting suggestion.  It does happen to be one of the forum-ish
sites that I think solves some of the common format issues of typical
web forums.  Unlike most other forum posts, which are arrived at by
keyword searches, I can imagine people actually checking the site for
new "interesting" posts and following along the "hot" conversations,
etc., which do not require human intervention to bubble to the top.  The
minimalization of avatar pictures, lack of silly user taglines, and
other *content* distractions put the focus where it belongs.

There - hopefully a more wordy reply gets people back on track and
thinking about what they might want to look for in a web-based
conversation area.

--
Michael
(please, don't reply-all, I read the mailing list..)


On 05/03/2011 02:49 PM, Jordan Rinke wrote:
> Ladies and Gentlemen... welcome to the official OpenStack Forums!
> 
> http://forums.openstack.org
> 
> Work in progress so feel free to join and post up any comments about the forum etc.
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: "Everett Toews" <everett.toews at cybera.ca>
> Sent: Tuesday, May 3, 2011 1:22pm
> To: "Anne Gentle" <anne at openstack.org>
> Cc: "Jordan Rinke" <jordan at openstack.org>, openstack at lists.launchpad.net
> Subject: Re: [Openstack] Creating a forum
> 
> Regarding your StackExchange questions Anne.
> 
> For an Open Source StackExchange-like site OSQA (http://www.osqa.net/) could
> be used.
> 
> For StackExchange itself it's free as in beer (
> http://area51.stackexchange.com/faq).
> 
> "How much does Stack Exchange cost?
> 
> Creating a Stack Exchange site is free. Using a Stack Exchange site is
> free. The Creative Commons licenseguarantees that questions and answers are
> free to access, free to use and re-use (with attribution), and free to
> share… forever."
> 
> Everett
> 
> On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 10:48 AM, Anne Gentle <anne at openstack.org> wrote:
> 
>> Hey all, thanks for asking for my input. :)
>>
>> A few months ago, I said it's too early. This month, I do sense a need for
>> community support, based on questions I see on the docs site and the types
>> of questions in Launchpad Answers.
>>
>> I think we're getting to a real user community and it would be good timing
>> to start a forum, so I say yes, with the request that we have strong guides.
>> Jordan and Ron can be our one-percenter guys, the ones who are helpful and
>> responsive. We'll need other one-percenters. Vish has done a _great_ job
>> responding to Launchpad Answers. It's getting to be really helpful. But it's
>> not quite a forum. And it's not about the tool, it's about being responsive,
>> right?
>>
>> I don't want to weigh in too heavily on a tools discussion, because it's
>> more about the community and people than a tool. The responses here seem to
>> indicate that sys admins would lean towards forums. I personally like the
>> Stack Exchange style sites for building a reputation which motivates
>> participation if done well. However, OpenStack is not a big enough draw for
>> them to be a "Top Network Site" like Ubuntu. And the tool is certainly not
>> open source. I don't honestly know pricing or licensing or availability of a
>> standalone Stack Exchange site. Does anyone have details there? That info
>> might help with the tools discussion.
>>
>> My main point is that I'd like to ensure responsiveness, so we don't have
>> empty restaurant syndrome in a forum-like support site. The people who will
>> be most responsive to users and adopters should probably weigh in on the
>> tools discussion. Devs won't need to monitor the admin community support
>> site once we get a core group of admins running OpenStack and helping
>> others.
>>
>> So that's my current thinking.
>> Anne
>>
>>
>>
>> On Tue, May 3, 2011 at 9:36 AM, Jordan Rinke <jordan at openstack.org> wrote:
>>
>>> Interesting because Ron very specifically mentioned being able to find
>>> useful and relevant information on the Ubuntu forums without bothering
>>> devs
>>> at the beginning of this discussion (which Soren then noted as an
>>> excellent
>>> point).
>>>
>>> We don't have an extended answer from Anne yet, but she did vote Yes on
>>> the
>>> survey (unless someone else used her name since there is no real auth).
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>> From: Thierry Carrez [mailto:thierry at openstack.org]
>>> Sent: Tuesday, May 03, 2011 9:27 AM
>>> To: Jordan Rinke
>>> Cc: openstack at lists.launchpad.net
>>> Subject: Re: [Openstack] Creating a forum
>>>
>>> Jordan Rinke wrote:
>>>> I think a purely QnA site misses the mark a little, that style is
>>>> great for a very specific question (And the OSQnA stuff Everett linked
>>>> looks great) but I think a lot of users are lacking the knowledge to
>>>> ask a very specific question just yet. So maybe it is that we need a
>>>> place for random discussion, but that can also specifically answer a
>>> question as well.
>>>
>>> If you take Ubuntu (arguably one of the largest software-related forums in
>>> the world), the forums are completely ignored by developers, so it relies
>>> on
>>> a completely separate user community. It is a source for wrong (or
>>> outdated)
>>> technical answers and user frustration.
>>>
>>> They recently set up a stackexchange site at ask.ubuntu.com, and it is a
>>> huge success. Developers and users contribute to it, and it's a valuable
>>> and
>>> continuously-updated source of information.
>>>
>>> I don't want us to run into the same failure before realizing there is a
>>> better and more targeted tool available... Personally I would ignore
>>> forums
>>> (since they are a waste of time), but contribute to the stackexchange site
>>> (since they are an easy way to contribute reference information).
>>>
>>>> 77.8% voting for a forum at this point (out of 18 responses)
>>>
>>> I would wait on Anne's answer before taking any hasty decision based on a
>>> binary poll.
>>>
>>> --
>>> Thierry Carrez (ttx)
>>> Release Manager, OpenStack