Something I have found very annoying with linux apps is their use of mailing lists for user support. I know there are different opinions on this but I strongly believe that forums are much more convenient and user-friendly for most people than mailing lists. There are many good forums for linux distros but many apps don't have them. Many linux apps are now large complex programs and having a good, easy to use source of help to actually using them is essential.

I can understand that forums require more resources than a mailing list but forums offer so much more functionality.

I think it would be great if these forums open sub forums for kde apps, as has been done for kmymoney, and become the official place to come for users looking for help. It would be great to have one place with one login to access forums on all kde apps.

Any thoughts on this?

bailout wrote:I strongly believe that forums are much more convenient and user-friendly for most people than mailing lists.

This is exactly why we launched the KDE forums.

bailout wrote:I think it would be great if these forums open sub forums for kde apps, as has been done for kmymoney, and become the official place to come for users looking for help. It would be great to have one place with one login to access forums on all kde apps.

Any thoughts on this?

If development teams would like their forums to be hosted here, we will be happy to consider their requests (as we did for KMyMoney, KBarcode and KRename). There are a few terms to consider, though:

• We expect the development team to bring in their own moderator(s).
  Of course we respect the fact that developers cannot be present at the forums 24/7, so our moderators will be happy to keep an eye on those forums as well, but we want experts to be present in application specific forums. This will, of course, also bring users and developers closer together, which is one of the goals of this forum.
• If we create an application specific subforum, the development team will get 1 month to prove their users make use of it. This is not because we want to be bullies, but because we do not want to end up with a forest of subforums where nobody ever goes.
• If the new subforum survives this 1-month trial period, it will get another 2 months to prove it can continue to draw traffic.

The decision to create, continue or remove a subforum is, of course, always up to the forum.kde.org administrators.

So, if you are a development team and would like to host your forum here, post your request in the [forum=9]Feedback[/forum] forum and you will be contacted.

Yes, forums are better. Much better.

stoked wrote:Yes, forums are better. Much better.

It depends on the point of view. It is much easier for some people to follow discussions on a mailing list. It's a matter of taste, I think

Regarding this, is there a way that we could setup our subforum so that every post there gets forwarded to a mail address (a read-only mailing list)
The way I thought this could be done is by creating a dummy user and then subscribing that user to the subforum. Can that be done?

Hei Ku wrote:Regarding this, is there a way that we could setup our subforum so that every post there gets forwarded to a mail address (a read-only mailing list)
The way I thought this could be done is by creating a dummy user and then subscribing that user to the subforum. Can that be done?

Although this is a bit off-topic, a quick reply: I answered part of this question in [post=9734]the KMyMoney forum[/post]. Obviously we can't stop you from registering dummy accounts (although we'd like to, to keep the figures correct), but please be aware of the fact that password reminders and similar mails may be sent to a public address; we will not accept any responsibility for your account being hacked, and will block it as soon as we think it is.

Hei Ku wrote:It depends on the point of view. It is much easier for some people to follow discussions on a mailing list. It's a matter of taste, I think

I am genuinely interested to hear exactly why you find mailing lists easier to use? I have only ever bothered to join one (digikam) and find it very inconvenient compared to a forum and cannot see any benefit to the list. With the list I have to download all the emails whether I am interested or not, I then have to put time into managing those emails, there is no search and access old discussions, replies tend to include previous emails so they soon involve scanning through previous quoted messages to get to the newly written message etc etc

The only people I have ever seen expressing a preference for mailing lists over forums have been linux developers:undecided:

I think it is important to remember what we are talking about is user forums not developers chatting to each other. I think they are two very different things and probably need different mediums. Although developer input can be useful to users, most user support on a forum will come from other users not developers.

bailout wrote:I am genuinely interested to hear exactly why you find mailing lists easier to use?

Why?
Why not just accept that tastes differ. Some people like forums more, others like mailing lists more... I see many names here I know from the mailing lists, so many may even like both...

Comparing forums to mailing lists is like comparing telephone to instant messaging. It's personal taste, probably influenced by experience (I've been using mailing lists for the past 12 years, am I supposed to ditch them just because there's a forum now?).

There is no competition: mailing lists, UserBase, forum; all you need to know...

OhReally wrote:Why?

Because I know some people say they prefer them and having used both I cannot see any reason why myself so I am interested to understand what it is about lists that people who do prefer them like. Why are you so defensive about the question?

OhReally wrote:
am I supposed to ditch them just because there's a forum now?

Where did I say you or anyone else had to stop using mailing lists???????

OhReally wrote:There is no competition: mailing lists, UserBase, forum; all you need to know...

The point is that many major apps don't have forums but only lists. Setting up forums doesn't mean mailing lists have to be shut down.

bailout wrote:

OhReally wrote:Why?

Because I know some people say they prefer them and having used both I cannot see any reason why myself so I am interested to understand what it is about lists that people who do prefer them like. Why are you so defensive about the question?

Well, you answered it yourself already, developers tend to use mailinglists more. And let's not forget, mails are only text (mostly), no images to load, whatever. I can understand why someone prefers mailinglists. And with todays email clients it is really not hard to follow or reply to a thread.
Short answer.

OhReally wrote:
am I supposed to ditch them just because there's a forum now?

Where did I say you or anyone else had to stop using mailing lists???????

OhReally wrote:There is no competition: mailing lists, UserBase, forum; all you need to know...

The point is that many major apps don't have forums but only lists. Setting up forums doesn't mean mailing lists have to be shut down.

Now, actually there is no more need to be sorry for that. EVERY kde app will have the possibility for help here, every developer team will get it's own subforum if it asks.
Nothing to say more about.
But i am personally happy with all the solutions around, and that is what OhReally meant, too.

I support the idea of forum. Forums are much more popular among "common people", and they are the main "target" of this project, yes? Much easier to communicate this way.
But, I think that mailing lists are very important for developers and contributors. I would miss many things if there were not all those e-mails stuck at my own PC as a kind of reminder

Thanks for forum and keep up with the good work!
Renato

For me two advantages of mailing lists over a forum are:
1. No thread view in the forum, just a two-dimensional list
2. Perhaps I have not found the option, but if I took a look at "View New Posts" I have to look through all posts of all subforums. I"d like to have the option to choose favourite subforums which appear there.

I also heard about synchronizing forum and mailing lists. But I am not sure whether it conflicts with point 1.

Cheers, m.

I used to hate mailing lists, but then I realized how easy they are to use with the Gmail web-interface.

1) Related E-mails are automatically grouped and displayed all at once linearly (Like these forums)
2) I don't need to download everything, I can just view what I want and mark the rest as read
3) Automatic sorting of lists and topics based on Gmail filters. If it contains the word "KWin" star it, if it's from the Plasma lists add the "Plasma" label, etc.
4) Google's search algorithms are 120% better and faster than any forum guaranteed
5) Built-in PM system that has unlimited storage space and directly interfacable with other programs without the need for bots

Could go on but that's all I can think of off the top of my head. =)

msoeken wrote:2. Perhaps I have not found the option, but if I took a look at "View New Posts" I have to look through all posts of all subforums. I"d like to have the option to choose favourite subforums which appear there.

+1 to that.

msoeken wrote:For me two advantages of mailing lists over a forum are:
1. No thread view in the forum, just a two-dimensional list

Actually there is: Just look on top of the thread, there you can choose between Threaded Mode and Linear Mode. The default is linear.

By the way: who translated "linear mode" to the German word "Brettstrukturmodus"? Asking google, I would say there are actually 190.000 German MyBB forums in the web... ,-)