Re: [Vala] Forum for Vala/Genie

["Michael B. Trausch" <mbt zest trausch us>]

On Wed, 2009-09-30 at 19:25 +0200, Jan Hudec wrote:
> 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.

+1: While I cannot speak for everyone, I know that I don't have the time
nor the desire to visit a Web-based forum.  I have had to use such
things in the past, and I absolutely loathe them (mostly for the reason
that they are simply not as flexible as mailing lists or newsgroups).  I
want things pushed at me, I don't want to go to a list of sites to have
to pull them.

That said, if the "forum" were nothing but a wrapper around the mailing
list or its Usenet interface provided by GMANE, then it'd just be
another front-end for the same thing and I don't care about that.  But
splitting the support out from the mailing list and into a forum---well,
who has time to keep up with both?  I don't.  I suspect that many others
here do not, either.

> 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.

This is one major peeve I have with forums.  Most of them actually don't
even retain information on who replied to what, when, so threading is
impossible.  I have heard that forum software has gotten better in this
regard since I was last forced to use it, but my mailer software does
the job just fine.

>  - 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.

Exactly.

> > 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.

I don't think that even then there should be forums, unless they're
wrappers around the current (or maybe to-be-grown) setups.  For now, we
do fine with a single mailing list.  Eventually, if Vala is adopted into
the mainstream, we (e.g., the community) might think about splitting the
mailing list into multiple mailing lists to manage traffic by category,
so that people don't have to see the noise that they are not interested
in.  Perhaps after things become stable and traffic increases, there can
be vala-help, vala-devel, and vala-discuss lists or whatever.

But to duplicate resources is, I think, a very large mistake.

        --- Mike

-- 
Blog:  http://mike.trausch.us/blog/
Misc. Software:  http://mike.trausch.us/software/

“The greater danger for most of us lies not in setting our aim too
high and falling short; but in setting our aim too low, and achieving
our mark.” —Michelangelo