MacPorts forum(s)? (was: Re: memberlist)

[Craig Treleaven]

At 5:45 PM -0500 2/10/15, Lawrence Velázquez wrote:
>Having both forums and mailing lists would be 
>harmful to the community. We'd end up with two 
>bubbles (one much smaller, probably) that don't 
>interact with each other.
>
>The only way forums would work is if we migrated *all* discussion there.

The MythTV project set up an online forum a year 
ago in addition to the mythtv-users mailing list. 
I'd say the experience there is that the two 
bubbles that don't interact much...but that is 
not a bad thing.

Mailing list volume is basically unchanged since 
the forum went live.  The forum is still growing 
every month and now gets several thousand 
visitors per month.  The biggest volume of 
MythTV-via-Macports support that I do is via the 
forum.  But I still follow the mythtv-users 
mailing list and answer questions there, as well.

As I see it, there are folks who ONLY do mailing 
lists and folks who ONLY do forums.  (And a few 
of us gluttons that do both.)  I suspect that a 
MacPorts forum would be viable if a few of the 
usual suspects would answer questions on it.  A 
forum would provide a venue for folks that are 
not comfortable with subscribing to a mailing 
list.

Forums do offer a couple of advantages over 
mailing lists.  The key one is: images inline 
with text.  A user can post screen shots together 
with a description of their issue.  Obviously 
there are ways to achieve much the same result 
with mailing lists but the integration on a forum 
thread is very nice.

OTOH, a forum takes work to set up and maintain. 
I'm not volunteering to do it.    But if a forum 
is created, I'll add it to the list that I check 
and probably answer questions when I can.

Overall, the MythTV experience shows a forum 
would not be harmful to the community NOR that 
we'd have to migrate all discussion there.

Craig
PS Some forums can be set up to send you an email 
when a sub-forum or topic is updated (after your 
last visit).  I don't know of any that allow you 
to send an email that becomes a posting, however.

PPS One could argue that IRC and mailing lists 
serve basically the same purpose and it is 
redundant to have both!