Re: [orca-list] Our list will be moving to Discourse

[Jace Kattalakkis <khalfang1366 gmail com>]

Kyle...

Look at what forum software your link uses. Look at the lack of 
features, the broken features that pun/panbb cannot address due to it 
being insanely old and, frankly, insanely bare bones. I can spin up the 
same code and get just a forum. No PM, no shoutbox, nothing but a basic 
forum.

On your linked audiogames.net forum, users (me inclued) have actually 
been calling for that forum to move to something more modern and ditch 
the outdated, too basic and barebones code. I mean, on your link, you 
don't have PM notifications, or working email systems, it errors out 
when you send one and you don't get confirmation if it sent or not. You 
don't have a way to track edits of posts, so I could post something, you 
respond and I edit my post to say pineapple belongs on pizza, then edit 
it again to something completely off topic, and unless someone got the 
original post before I edited it, everyone's SOL on what I originally 
put. That's been an issue with trolls doing that exact thing recently 
over there.

I mean, I can spin up a Discourse forum docker instance and have things 
Pun/PanBB can only dream of. Sure, there's a lot about Discourse I'm up 
here on the fence about. And I don't like the tagging system IMO, if 
you're putting a topic in a category, and, yes, this may well be 
possible with digging around the user preferences, please tell me if 
this can be done, but say I want to subscribe to an entire category, 
let's say for argument's sake Orca got its own category on Gnome's 
Discourse.


I'd want to subscribe to only that category to get emails and respond to 
it that way. Not every tiny thing. yes. I know about the user 
preferences, but I don't feel like I should have to log in and go 
through a web forum to change what does or doesn't get sent to my inbox 
or folders.


I'm still maintaining, as well, it's a lot simpler and quicker, to ire 
up Mutt/Thunderbird/webmail/etc and just fire off a quick reply, rather 
than log into a forum, find the topic, start making a reply. Yes. I 
know, I can just click the link in the email and it takes me there. But 
what I don't know....is does that automatically log me in or not?I

On 9/13/22 17:36, Kyle via orca-list wrote:
> According to Christian Schoepplein:
> > moving the list to a webbased service will be the most inaccessible 
> > and most complicated solution, especialy if it is a discussion 
> > plattform for and with blind users :-(. Allthough I know the 
> > advantages of those webforums my expirence is that many blind people 
> > will not longer use those plattforms because they are to complicated, 
> > timeintensive and many unecessary content is presented on those 
> > sites. We tried to move mailinglists for blind people to webbased 
> > solutions years ago and they are dead now, the people do not longer 
> > use them :-(.
>
>
> Just to play devil's advocate for a minute ...
>
> https://forum.audiogames.net/
>
> has been online for many years, and many blind people use it. I don't 
> think they have an email list.
>
>
> I do have my reasons for preferring email lists over web-based forums 
> which I have mentioned, most notably the fact that they are easier to 
> keep track of and easier to follow, but accessibility isn't the make 
> or break issue, as accessibility of web-based applications has greatly 
> improved over the years, and forum software is no exception.
>
>
> > I'll try Discurse ofcourse, but I feel this is the wrong plattform 
> > for us :-(. The people that made this decission did not have 
> > accessiblity and inclusion in mind :-(.
>
>
> Interestingly, Discourse has been touted as a highly accessible option 
> as web forum software goes, right up until yesterday. Actually, I can 
> see where a web forum could be a much better platform for discussing a 
> screen reader than email. Consider the email options available to us 
> if something goes wrong with Orca and Thunderbird or Evolution. Maybe 
> it's only my opinion, but I find it much easier to sign into a web 
> forum via w3m in a terminal or text-only console than trying to set up 
> the likes of Mutt or even Alpine. Of course the forum software would 
> need to be able to take text-based browsing into account, just like 
> wiki software for displaying documentation,i.e. to install Arch Linux 
> just as an example, but if done right, it definitely works in those 
> emergency cases. Of course for something like that, Matrix, IRC or 
> some other form of real-time chat may be the best of all options, but 
> I can certainly see the benefit of having a web-based solution as well.
>
>
> I haven't tried this in pure text mode, but it does seem that 
> something that works very similar to groups.io is the gold standard 
> here. If Discourse can do this, then it is obviously the best option, 
> since it is fully free and open source, and is self-hosted rather than 
> running on a specific company's website. The major advantage to 
> groups.io is that it is fully web-based and fully email-based at the 
> same time. I can join and leave groups via the web and email, and I 
> can read every list I'm subscribed to and post on them both ways 
> interchangeably. In fact, everything they do is fully usable both ways 
> as far as I know. So if something goes horribly wrong with Orca, and I 
> find myself in a terminal shell only, as long as I have access to w3m 
> and either Speakup or Fenrir, I should be able to sign into the 
> website and post to the list. Perhaps this web and email-based type of 
> solution is what the GNOME folks are going for here, and if so, this 
> could actually be a good thing. The email features of Discourse do 
> look a little clunky to me from what I've been reading, but we'll have 
> to see how things go I guess. For now, I'll probably play a little 
> with it on one of my servers just to see how things work. The good 
> news is that accessibility isn't the biggest problem here, just some 
> ease of use considerations, especially as it relates to the ability to 
> track discussions.
>
> ~Kyle
>
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