A proposal to improve the current way of commenting in maemo.org by using the excellent Talk infrastructure.

Task:Comments2Talk

No less important, also a way to increase the awareness and participation among the post-ITt users in what is cool and fresh in maemo.org.

Interesting idea.

First off, if implemented, I would say have a new thread created automatically for new applications. This could be done with some kind of "DownloadsBot" account, and all new threads would go in the Applications forum, I assume. The new thread should contain all information the downloads page does, including a link to the downloads page.

As for major version releases... I think it's a simple matter of comparing version numbers. All applications should be required to follow the versioning scheme (major).(minor).(bugfix)-(package revision), as is stated by the packaging guidelines. Then, we just check if the major version number has changed. If it has, start a new thread, because old comments probably don't apply anymore. For minor versions that fix a bug someone commented about, people can edit their posts.

The next question is: do we want to use these threads only for review, or also for general discussion about the application? If only for review, a new forum specifically for these threads should be created. I would recommend this case, because I imagine the last five or so comments being embedded on the application's page.

Of course, all these comments assume that this system will actually be implemented. Is there a reason for moving over? Is there a specific problem with the current system that we want to fix by doing this? If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I see the "bridging the community" point, but is this really better?

I am interested in working on this task, not sure how, but ideas and grunt work, count me in.

This goes for http://wiki.maemo.org/Talk:Task:Maemo_brainstorm also
pb

Thanks!

There has been a first round of internal testing to polish the roughest edges before calling it an alpha and publish the super-secret URL here for wider feedback. You can ping Henri and Oskari in the maemo-community lists or here (Henri = bergie here and in #maemo) for more information.

I'm only a messenger and a fan of this feature.

I think this is similar to what I suggested a while ago for raising wareness about and commenting on the maemo community council's blog posts...

We use a combined forum/comments system on All About Symbian and it works very well.

Many people follow our content through the website, many follow it through our forums, and combining the systems allows these two groups to talk to each other seamlessly.

It also makes it much easier for the people posting content on AAS, because it gets their content noticed by all of the site's readers.

Ooops, actually all this comment was about the Brainstorm, not about the bridge betwen Talk and those maemo.org sections with comments. There is nothing done in this respect that I know. We will discuss it in the June sprint meeting, probably.

I created a plug-in to bridge the forums (vBulletin) and itT's blog system (Wordpress). I'm sure the same script can be adapted to any maemo.org system. I just need to give access to maemo.org's server to Talk's database so this can be done.

Another option is, we can run some parts of maemo.org on a blog engine like Wordpress (maybe the council's blog, news, etc) directly on Talk's server. I can just then run my plug-in to link the blog to the forums. I can take ownership of that project if needed.

What's good with Wordpress is, it has downloadable lightweight clients on most mobile devices, so it's easy to post an entry anywhere you are.

While it is easy to dream up this idea, implementing this isn't. Just because the sites look the same, doesn't mean they will automatically interface correctly!

There are lots of technical reasons why this is not easy.
- SSO needs to be in place, no matter what.
- 2 completely different systems need to know of each other. A news item for instance needs to know how many comments there are.
- Some kind of mapping needs to be done between topics on maemo.org and threads on talk.
- database on the other side of the world is slow at best. (A lot of round trips are needed)
- posting comments to talk while browsing on maemo.org can't be done with ajax. (cross domain/host posts aren't allowed)

So there would need to be some kind of replication or server side communication in the background. A lot of details to think of....

Doable? Yes
Easy? No

I don't think it's as complicated as you might think, Niels.

• I will give access to maemo.org's server (IP) to Talk's MySQL database.
• PHP will handle connection direct to Talk's database
• Create a 'threadid' column for article and app tables to store the newly created thread id in Talk
• Comment count can all be queried directly from the database via the threadid
• Thread creator can be a special forum user like 'NewsBot', 'AppBot', or 'BlogBot', to bypass SSO requirement

If this is a problem on your side, I can create something on my side. All you need to do is call a hidden page when a new item is created in maemo.org, passing the id of an XML/JSON feed containing details of the new item -- like type (news, app, blog, etc), title, description, unique ID, etc., and I will create the new thread in Talk. You still need to connect to Talk's database though to query for the total comments, unless you prefer that I pass it via XML/JSON back to you.

No ajax needed if you have direct access to the database via PHP. You can use ajax though to get the current number of comments from a script that I can gladly create for you.