[Brainstorm 2010] Talk and mailing lists

[dneary]

This thread is part of the Maemo Brainstorm 2010

Can we improve the quality, the organisation, the behaviour, the guidelines for talk.maemo.org and the Maemo mailing lists?

Propose your ideas and suggestions here, let's talk about it, and summarise the best ideas and conclusions in the Brainstorm 2010/Talk and mailing lists wiki page

[silvermountain]

1) Restructure the forums so that it is possible to read 'by platform/OS'
(example: right now the 'Applications' forum doesn't have any device-subforum which makes it often very confusing if a discussed app is for Diabo, Fremantle, etc) - and for people who is just interested in say OS2008 it is hard to filter out the other posts.

2) SSO
Make 2010 'the year when Single System Sign-on was finally implemented'

3) Simple way to file bugs
Bugzilla is anything but user friendly. Maybe develop an optional 'end-user' front-end with a simpler i/f feeding bugzilla

4) Implement Andrew Black's Moderator structure suggestion
(posted elsewhere)

5) Swap the default Seach-tool to Advanced Search

6) Retire the Karma system
People are 'thanking' way too much because they like the person or agree with the positive/negative spirit of a post - not because the post is particularly useful.

7) Implement 'thumbs-down' for posts
Implement a way to rate a post 'thumbs-down' and an option to read the forum 'community-moderated' where posts with X thumbs-down would be auto-suppressed.

8) Public/better site change tracker
Post a much more publicly visible page showing what site-changes are being worked on, their status and ETC - and with more meaningful status-updates (read: no more "did some work on it", 'should be ready soon", etc).

9) Allow thread-creators to change their thread's subject lines
Allow for people to change the subject line of their own posts - and display a change log in the first post of what the subject line has been changed from

[nicola.mfb]

Add an option to filter specific threads, this is a huge community, I'd like to have boring filtered when click on "new posts".

Niko

[rmerren]

Provide rss feeds. Give a feed for each thread, and a feed for the thread topics (including allowing only the most recent X therad entries/topics). Or provide some other api for accessing it. That will allow you or someone in the community to make a dedicated reader that runs in maemo.

Alternatively, provide an interface that works on the devices that run Maemo, or that is just more finger friendly for any mobile device.

[qgil]

Do we want an agreed neighbourhood boundary between the Maemo and MeeGo forums?

As MeeGo gets more concrete and user/media friendly, we will probably get more overlap between http://talk.maemo.org/forumdisplay.php?f=45 and http://forum.meego.com

I have personally no strong opinion and I can see the benefits and concerns on both approaches. It would be good to have one default approach agreed for reference, though.

[Texrat]

Originally Posted by qgil

Do we want an agreed neighbourhood boundary between the Maemo and MeeGo forums?

EDIT: sorry, I misunderstood the scope of Quim's question-- prior rambling deleted.

I think the forum boundaries will be largely defined by purpose, which will likely change a bit as the nature of maemo.org changes. We seem to have a natural boundary between the two forums already, though, with a wide stretch of limbo in between...

[bergie]

Originally Posted by silvermountain

Make 2010 'the year when Single System Sign-on was finally implemented'

From Monday's Sprint meeting it seems there is the consensus to make this happen. So I hope Daniel and Alexey can focus on it pretty soon...

[Jaffa]

Originally Posted by bergie

From Monday's Sprint meeting it seems there is the consensus to make this happen. So I hope Daniel and Alexey can focus on it pretty soon...

Originally, the scope of SSO was defined by the people working on it as excluding Talk; as it was too hard. However, the task for SSO must now include the challenges of tmo/garage account merging and single-sign on.

Given the thought which has been spent on thinking about the general SSO solution, this should be straightfoward (although will require the collaboration of Daniel/Alexey and Reggie).

The process doesn't have to be entirely automatic either. As Reggie, Dave and I did for the council election before last, you can match up a lot of accounts automatically. Where there's many-to-one or one-to-many, these can result in emails to the affected users, a web-interface allowing them to choose one before a certain time and archiving any old accounts which can't be migrated.

[buurmas]

Originally Posted by rmerren

Provide rss feeds. Give a feed for each thread, and a feed for the thread topics (including allowing only the most recent X therad entries/topics).

Note that it is currently possible to subscribe to a subforum (e.g. "Community") via RSS. Re: threads, you can click "Thread Tools" and "Subscribe to Thread" and then visit your Control Panel to see when these threads are updated. Not quite the same as RSS to a thread, but better in some respects as you can reasonably subscribe to dozens or even hundreds of threads.

Originally Posted by rmerren

Or provide some other api for accessing it. That will allow you or someone in the community to make a dedicated reader that runs in maemo.

Alternatively, provide an interface that works on the devices that run Maemo, or that is just more finger friendly for any mobile device.

I don't have much of a compliant here, personally. Re: finger-friendliness, does the zoom feature in Opera Mobile and Fennec help with this?

[buurmas]

Originally Posted by silvermountain

1) Restructure the forums so that it is possible to read 'by platform/OS'
(example: right now the 'Applications' forum doesn't have any device-subforum which makes it often very confusing if a discussed app is for Diabo, Fremantle, etc) - and for people who is just interested in say OS2008 it is hard to filter out the other posts.

SOME kind of filtering mechanism is needing, I think. I think the patience of pre-N900 owners is being overtaxed here. There was a lot of discussion about exactly what kind here.

BTW, I certainly hope the MeeGo folks find some way to deal with this problem. From day one, they could have people reading their site interested in the NetBook UX or the Handheld UX or the base MeeGo or base MeeGo on the N900 or base MeeGo on the N810 or MeeGo in my BMW. Going forward, if MeeGo gets on as many devices as they'd like, cutting through the noise to find what is relevant to you will only get worse.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

6) Retire the Karma system
People are 'thanking' way too much because they like the person or agree with the positive/negative spirit of a post - not because the post is particularly useful.

Or split the "Thanks" button into "Like" and "Useful". Allow the ability to search based on usefulness.

Originally Posted by silvermountain

7) Implement 'thumbs-down' for posts
Implement a way to rate a post 'thumbs-down' and an option to read the forum 'community-moderated' where posts with X thumbs-down would be auto-suppressed.

Is the goal here to deal with trolls or improve moderation or something? Because this could be used far beyond those purposes. I worry that a 'thumbs-down' could breed ill will among community members. I agree with Facebook -- "Like" needs no explanation, but if you dislike something you should explain why.