[impdev] What to do with the forums?

[Morgaine]

When evolving resources online, always add, don't modify or it breaks
things.

If any of the current forums are archived other than by simply making them
read-only, all links to past content will break.  The forums are a good
resource going way back, and inevitably bookmarks to informative posts have
accumulated for many users over the years.

Linden Lab made that mistake too.  Half a decade's worth of great material
totally lost as their "archived forums" have broken all past content links.
We sort of expect Lindens not to think ahead and so to break stuff, but we
shouldn't repeat their mistakes.


Morgaine.



===================

On Tue, Apr 12, 2011 at 10:28 AM, Armin Weatherwax <
armin.weatherwax at googlemail.com> wrote:

> tl;dr: rename "Viewer" to "Feature Ideas", archieve "Development"
> and "Project", keep the rest for now; think about making the forums
> user self-organized in the long run.
>
> My experience with forums and related media in general is that there are
> some that work and others that don't.
>
> Of the variety of those that don't one sub category is developer driven
> forums - not specific for Imprudence, not even specific for open source
> software, and not even specific for software. As soon as THEY show up
> on a regular basis there are several admirers and a few revolutionists
> but the direction is always the same: top-down. Anyone waits  that THEY
> say a word to their topic.
>
> About forums that work: there is always a group of people on the same
> level of power, interested in something they have in common.
> No matter if collectors of old tube radios, or cactus growers, or the
> ubuntu-users forums. Yes there are also some forum gods, but those are
> rather forum gods because of the quality of their posts, or because
> they are voted by forum users as moderators. Still no one of them is a
> cactus herself, the communication is on eye level. Might be and
> probably ubuntu devs read through the ubuntu users forums, and might be
> or probably they give also support there, but thats nothing anyone
> expects. Usually you get an answer from just another user - and thats
> exactly why it works. No waiting that THEY show up.
>
> So my thought about the forums: Provide the technical infrastructure
> and let the users organize them. Users vote for their gods which are
> responsible for forum-technical things, moderation, despamming,
> creating new and archieving old sub forums, *but not for fixing viewer
> bugs or having a new viewer feature implemented*. Developers are just
> users in that picture. This has only upsides: no more waiting that THEY
> say a word about where to rebake textures, no more claims that a topic
> was censored to hide a negative feedback, no more -not asked for- self
> censoring by not saying $VOLDEMORT.
>
> But well, probably takes some time to get there ... lol.
> My proposal as the future just another forum user for a new structure:
> * The forum "Viewer" could be renamed to "Feature Ideas"
> * "Problems & Troubleshooting"- well, lets see how the troubleshooter
> works.
> * new forum about trouble with servers for the kind of "hey is it just
> me, or is $GRID down without saying in the grid status page?" things.
> * "Development" could be archieved holding a sticky topic pointing to
> irc, mailing list, and dev meetings.
> * "Project" same as "Development".
> * "Forum Organizing" will be needed if/when the forums get user
> organized.
> *  "General" just keeping, if not/as long as not  the forums are user
> organized: as Boroondas proposes, and pointing to the wiki article
> which points to where to communicate best for which purpose.
> * "Off Topic" just keeping.
> * Having a look at "Off Topic" topics: some users are presenting
> creative things they do with the viewer. That feels absolutely on-topic
> for me, and could get a new forum (I have no idea for a good name for
> that though).
>
> Armin
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>
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