[Koha] Forum boards

[MJ Ray]

Christopher L Middleman <cmiddleman at stcames.com> wrote: [...]
> 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.  [...]

I pointed to the current web forum, but I got an MAILER-DAEMON error
message back from the stcames.com mailserver saying that some server I
don't know (not one of my usuals) is banned for abuse.

I'm not against the web forum interface.  I'm against splitting the
koha user community into very small pieces.

> 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. [...]

The current web forum groups all the responses into one place (and
threads them) and allows easy searching.

Is there any evidence that "forum boards are strong for the general
person"?

The best evidence I've seen about forum boards so far has been from
e-democracy.org, who advocate forum interfaces to mailing lists as the
best solution, which is what koha has now.

> 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.

Some of us have been weighing in, but it seems like we're being
ignored.  Over 90% of forums are ghost towns, often because they've
been forked over too much.  Please don't make the same mistake for koha.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
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