Re: [Vala] Forum for Vala/Genie

[Jan Hudec <bulb ucw cz>]

On Wed, Sep 30, 2009 at 15:52:48 +0200, Markus Mangold wrote:
> I recently learned about the Vala Compiler and I am really amazed about
> it. Unfortunately there is no "place" where one can share questions on
> Vala or Genie but this mailing list.

And one(1) is exactly the right number of places. The more places to ask
questions, the smaller chance of getting response on any particular one.

> Of course there is nothing wrong with a mailing list but I think there are
> some people who don't like this kind of thing. They would prefer a forum
> because the information interchange would be slightly easier.

Did you know you can use gmane web interface to interact with the list?
Do so at http://dir.gmane.org/gmane.comp.programming.vala

On this page, you can choose a frame based interface that resembles mail
or news client or a flag blog-like interface that is closer to forums.
The interfaces also allow posting, without need for subscription to the list.


I can't speak for others, but I would suspect there are many more who would
say forum is totally inappropriate, for two (and maybe other) reasons:

 - No forum out there is known to support threaded discussions the way email
   does. It would be extremely hard to orient in longer discussions without
   threading.

 - Most people use email all the time, so they just do that for vala and
   whatever other free software project they are involved in too. Having to
   check various web forums is extra effort and people will quickly stop
   doing so. As a result, you are likely to soon run out of people providing
   answers on a forum.

> Since I didn't found a forum on Vala, I created one by myself and want to
> invite you to take part of it.  The forum can be found on:
> http://valac.freeforums.org/ (Yes, it's a free forum hoster but with
> moderate advertising and who knows? If the forum will be a success we can
> upgrade ...)
>
> So let me know what you think about the idea, if the boards are correct
> or if there should be anything changed.

I think the community is not large enough to keep a forum alive in addition
to a list. Most open source project only have a list too and even those who
have forums still use mailing list for the development discussion.

So when vala will have many programmers working in it, there can be a user
forum, but for the time being, I really don't think enough knowledgeable
people would go there now, because most of them are already on the list --
you know vala is still in heavy development, so even the knowledgeable people
come asking how to do stuff now an than.

(1) It's not completely true there would be just one place to ask -- there
are two places, this list and IRC (#vala on irc.gnome.org) and than there is
the wiki (yes, live.gnome.org/Vala is a wiki and even you can edit it if you
register) to put documentation to.

Regards,
Jan

-- 
                                                 Jan 'Bulb' Hudec <bulb ucw cz>