[Koha] Forum boards

[MJ Ray]

Christopher L Middleman <cmiddleman at stcames.com> wrote:
> MJ Ray <mjr at phonecoop.coop> wrote:
> > The current web forum groups all the responses into one place (and
> > threads them) and allows easy searching.
>
> My current experience with this is that it is a mess.  I have a hard 
> time finding the information I need.  It takes to long to get a proper 
> response.  The history of a thread is right in front of me and I can see 
> how an idea is developed.  The current format does not and I often waste 
> lots of time trying to run through and entire thread not knowing where 
> at in the thread may be my answer.

To be honest, part of what's messing it up is that some people reply
to old threads when they should start a new one, or start new threads
(like you keep doing) instead of continuing them.  I don't know
whether your email client is really that buggy, if you are not using
it correctly or you are deliberately trying to screw up the forum by
using the equivalent of "New Topic" instead of "Reply".  That would
also mess up a web forum.  Web forums are a little easier to
post-moderate, but I suspect we could put up a more post-moderateable
interface to the current system if people wanted. Would you be willing
to help manage it?

I don't see how the history of a thread could be right in front of
anyone more clearly than "Why No Discussion Forum?" is in
http://comments.gmane.org/gmane.comp.misc.koha/7752
Can you explain?

> > Is there any evidence that "forum boards are strong for the general
> > person"?
>
> The three forums I visit are very strong.  [...]

OK, but in general?  Of course, people tend to visit strong forums
more - the forums are strong because people are visiting them, so it's
a bit tautological.

> > 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.
>
> Well I will let you know that if the support set up for koha does not 
> change into something more coherent it will continued to be ignored at 
> large.  This group needs to change something to make it work better and 
> for the knowledge that group has be accessed in a better way.  Could you 
> imagine a library organized this way?

No, but that sounds like an argument for better cataloguing rather
than replacing the whole shebang.  Can you imagine a library requiring
that all authors fill out their own MARC records?

[Aside:]
> > 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.
>
> Unsure why this happened but if our ISP bans you there is usually a good 
> reason.  No saying you but maybe somebody else has abused your telco.  

I work for ISPs, among other things, and I co-own my telco.  There's
no abuse report open against it and the IP your server rejected was
nothing to do with my telco.  I think it was your primary MX deploying
countermeasures against one of your secondary MXes [216.251.32.72].
I'll send a copy of this directly and see if it repeats.

Regards,
-- 
MJ Ray http://mjr.towers.org.uk/email.html tel:+44-844-4437-237 -
Webmaster-developer, statistician, sysadmin, online shop builder,
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