[Koha] Forum boards

[Christopher L Middleman]

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.