[OpenLayers-Users] Web Forum for OpenLayers

[Christopher Schmidt]

In comments to the OpenLayers Blog, a user requested:

"
I would like to see a web based forum for OpenLayers, such as phpBB, and
not just the Nabble version."
--
http://openlayers.org/blog/2007/03/26/welcome-to-the-openlayers-blog/#comment-4

There are many reasons why I'm not in favor of this: the most important
being that I've never found a piece of forum software that I felt didn't
suck to either use or maintain :) 

However, I'm not one to limit discussion based on my personal
preferences. I'd like to get an idea of whether a web-based forum would
be a good thing for OpenLayers.

The reasons I'm against it:
 * Forums are (for me) difficult to use, and I would probably never look
   at it. This applies in a larger sense of,
 * It fractures the community. If we have two excellent contributors on
   the mailing list, and two excellent contributors on the forum, then
   the users don't get the full range of possible assistance from either.
 * Additional adminstration headache. But this is personal, since most
   of the  user community doesn't have to maintain the forum, obviously.
  
So I think the most important thing to me is the fracturing of the
community.

On the other hand, there is probably a (reasonable) argument that some
users won't bother with the mailing list at all, and those users are
simply lost to us. I don't have enough information to determine if this
is important enough to the project at this point to fracture the
community.

Thoughts?

Regards,
-- 
Christopher Schmidt
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