[Koha] Forum boards

[COURYHOUSE at aol.com]

in theory what is best is a forum that also mails all  posts to  subscribers 
if they wish . then if they want to post they can go to forum to  post 
.....but  they get all posts without have to check forum several times  a day 
which,,,, is a pain in the ass.
 
my opinion... but I am usually right.  ed sharpe archivist for  smecc
 
In a message dated 3/6/2008 9:23:17 A.M. US Mountain Standard Time,  
cmiddleman at stcames.com writes:

So I  started a good discussion about starting a forum board and I have 
been  reading the responses.  I want those who are against the forum 
board  idea to think of what is the purpose of a mailing list and how 
well does  serve all members.  The mailing list is great for developers.   
It allows them to exchange ideas about how the content they are working  
on will work.  They have a good un derstanding of the beast they are  
creating so looking at the history of a question that has been  asked.

Forum boards are strong for the general person.  If I have  a question I 
have all the responses grouped into one place where I can see  how 
something is refined.  I can easily search the entire discussion  for my 
answer or limit it to one section to get a really refined set of  
answers.  They also have good post stuck to the top defining what  this 
section is about and FAQ's.

I read two forum boards  regularely.  The first one I read every day 
several times a  day.  It is http://www.bikeforums.net/ .  Look at the 
structure  of board.  I ride a mountain bike and currently I am building 
a road  bike.  I am what is called Clydesdale.  At a minimum 3 of the  
sections I delve into daily.  I use the bicycle mechanics section to  get 
answers on my build.  I needed help attaching a carbon fiber  chain stay 
protector and had my first response within 12 minutes.   I had 12 
within 12 hours.  All nicely bundled under one topic  idea and without 
being interspersed among other content questions.   But I am also a 
clydesdale so I need to know things like what re good  wheels for a 
clyde.  The mechanics section is ok for that but in the  clyde section I 
can search for an easy answer, and I found what rim and  spoke count I 
can go with on this build, or if that does not yield clues I  can post on 
a specialty wheel with a low spoke count and see if anyone  else has had 
experience with them.

The second forum I read is  http://forums.majorgeeks.com/ for computer 
help.  Notice again how it  is broken up.  How quickly questions are 
answered and how the answers  are grouped together so you can see the 
refinement of ideas the sometimes  lead to the strongest answer.

So how do I envision a forum working for  me on koha?  Well I work at a 
school the has a Windows 2000/XP setup  for the teachers and the 
students.  The main server is an Ubuntu 6.06  file server and right now I 
am woring on getting koha 3.0 alpha running on  debian etch.  You can see 
that I would need right now to look at an  install section of the forum 
for debian pertaining to getting the alpha  done.  I was going through 
the INSTALL.debian file and things went  along pretty smooth but I have 
hit a bump in the road.  Let say that  30% of the people installing this 
hit the same point as I do.  Now if  I have a forum board I have a sticky 
at the top that says something like  Installing of debian /version/.  I 
read along with that and do my  install my problem may be solved because 
of refinements to the document by  post.  If the install section does not 
answer that I post my question  and I may have a response to that 
question withing minutes instead of  having to wait for the mailing list 
to go out, someone one read my  question, and then me either receive the 
answer directly from them or from  the next mailing list that gets sent 
out.  But what if that does not  solve my problems.  How long would using 
the mailing list take to  possibly solve it.  I had one questions that 
took 6 months for  someone to finally send me an answer. 

Someone borught up the idea of a  wiki and I think for the installs that 
is a possible route to take but we  need to find a place to put them 
all.  We can no longer have them  seperated out and possibly not being 
there.  Yesterday I was looking  for the ubuntu install one for an idea 
about modifying a file and it was  either down or gone.  We also need to 
end the practice of not showing  every package that needs to be 
installed.  It should not no longer  say in the how to if you get errors 
then install those packages.  I  should be able to run through the 
instuctions just like I do for stuff  posted on howtoforge.com.

No matter what the mailing list will be  needed but the forum board will 
bring a broader sense of community to the  koha project.  Forum boards 
are lively neighborhoods.  They add  to body of knowledge in a group.  I 
would like to see this discussion  continue and maybe some of the 
development team weigh in on what they  think.
_______________________________________________
Koha mailing  list
Koha at lists.katipo.co.nz
http://lists.katipo.co.nz/mailman/listinfo/koha


 



**************It's Tax Time! Get tips, forms, and advice on AOL Money & 
Finance.      (http://money.aol.com/tax?NCID=aolprf00030000000001)
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.katipo.co.nz/pipermail/koha/attachments/20080306/8b6039af/attachment-0001.htm