[Qgis-psc] QGIS forum

[Pirmin Kalberer]

Maxim,

Am Dienstag, 12. Juli 2011, 22.57:41 schrieb Maxim Dubinin:
> I'd  argue  that  rather  then  trying to educate people using one or
> another  support  platform  we  should aim to provide all main options
> among which forum is definitely one, very viable and used almost
> everywhere.
> 
> Remember,  we're talking about user tools here, not developer ones. We
> don't want three different bug-trackers, but we do want people to use
> the  tool  they  like  (or got used too for whatever reasons) to start
> trying QGIS and asking around.


It's not about educating people, it's about giving better support and bringing 
users closer to development. This has advantages for both sides.

> 
> We    cannot    impose  overhead  of having stackexchange knowledge or
> lack of anonymity on the mailing list on a user to
> get  QGIS+support, while he probably spent months on different forums,
> and he will grasp it immediately.

There is absolutely no overhead of stackexchange compared to a forum.
And as stated in the original discussion, we would give users a link to the 
nabble forum view of the mailing list.

> 
> My  midnight  rant  was just to say lets show user all support options
> and let user  decide,  which one he prefers. I'm afraid message like that
> might leave user thinking that he is not welcome on the forum, I would
> avoid that.

We should give users the best possible support. Too many choices can also 
confuse them.

Pirmin

> 
> Вы писали 13 июля 2011 г., 0:30:59:
> 
> PK> Hi Maxim,
> 
> PK> Am Dienstag, 12. Juli 2011, 19.23:02 schrieb Maxim Dubinin:
> >> Hi,
> >> 
> >>  Sorry for intruding PSC list, still unsure what are the rules for
> >>  posting
> >> 
> >> for non-PSC people.
> >> 
> >>  I think closing forum might be rather irritating thing to do from the
> >> 
> >> point of view of people who ARE frequent there and provide/obtain
> >> support or just read often.
> >> 
> >>  Sorry, but I find reasons not enough convincing for closing and largely
> >> 
> >> fixable.
> >> 
> >>  You shouldn't just shut the door for over 5000 members (I know some of
> >> 
> >> them are bots, but still). Maillists and Stackexchange aren't for
> >> everyone and forums have their audience that prefers them over other
> >> means.
> >> 
> >>  To be constructive, (we) NextGIS can offer hosting and maintenance for
> >> 
> >> QGIS forum. This hopefully will solve spam and slowness, we can't
> >> guarantee devs, but one of our developers is already "master" member on
> >> the forum. We support phpBB forum successfully over 7-8 years
> >> at http://gis-lab.info/forum so we know the tool.
> 
> PK> IMHO forum users will be greatful when we guide them to a better
> platform. The PK> major advantage of gis.stackexchange is the finer
> granulation of questions. So PK> gdal and postgis questions are
> categorized properly and users will get more PK> accurate answers.
> PK> It would be great, if you take over the phpBB forum, but I would still
> include PK> a bold message, that new question should be asked in
> gis.stackexchange or the PK> mailing list.
> 
> PK> Pirmin
> 
> >>    Hi PSC,
> >>  
> >>  It has already been discussed on developer mailing list: Some action
> >>  has
> >> 
> >> to be taken concerning QGIS forums.
> >> 
> >>  The current situation looks like this:
> >>  - The forum attracts a lot of spam every day.
> >>  - The forum is often down or slow to respond. (Therefor it takes a lot
> >>  of
> >> 
> >> time to remove spam and ban spammers.) - Developers don't frequent the
> >> forums so we have to forward people to the mailing list anyway.
> >> 
> >>  My suggested alternative would be to redirect developer questions to
> >>  the
> >> 
> >> mailing list and user questions to gis.stackexchange.org. This would
> >> reduce web infrastructure complexity for us while at the same time
> >> increase our visibility on the platform-independent stackexchange site.
> >> 
> >>  Since we are on our way to the next big release, updating our web
> >> 
> >> infrastructure and other aspects of the QGIS project, I feel it's
> >> necessary to address this topic.
> >> 
> >>  Best wishes,


-- 
Pirmin Kalberer
Sourcepole  -  Linux & Open Source Solutions
http://www.sourcepole.com