[impdev] What to do with the forums?

[Jacek Antonelli]

On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 3:48 PM, Jacek Antonelli <jacek at kokuaviewer.org> wrote:
> As you know, I've been working on redefining and documenting our
> communications policy, including the purposes of our many
> communications channels (issue tracker, wiki, etc.). Now I'm
> contemplating the forums, and trying to decide what their purpose is
> (or should be), and what to do with them. I would very much appreciate
> your thoughts and feedback about this topic.
>
> [snip]
>
> So, my question is: do the forums provide any real use or value in the
> new organization? Should we keep them, or archive them completely? If
> keep them, for what purpose(s)? What sections should there be?
>
> - Jacek

Okay, incorporating the feedback from Boroondas and Armin, here's my
proposed forum layout:

* General: Catch-all forum for anything related to Kokua/Imprudence
that doesn't fit into another section. We would have a sticky post
with an overview of the other communication channels available, so
people are aware of them and (hopefully) more likely to use the best
channels.

* Troubleshooting: The purpose here is for users to post any problem
they have that might be a bug, or could be user error, or bad drivers,
or anything else (they're not sure what). Other community members
would provide assistance to help identify (and possibly fix) the
problem. If it turns out to be a bug, someone (the original poster or
a helpful community member) would then post a bug report on the issue
tracker. Or if it turns out to be a good Q&A-type question, they would
post it to the Q&A (hopefully with an answer too) so other people are
more likely to find it in the future. We would have a sticky post
explaining this, and encouraging definite bugs to be reported directly
to the issue tracker.

* Idea Nursery (previously Viewer): The purpose here is to discuss
ideas that are still "young", to get feedback and polish the idea.
Once the idea is "mature", someone would post a feature proposal on
the issue tracker. We would have a sticky post explaining this, and
encouraging already-mature feature proposals to be posted directly to
the issue tracker.

* Off Topic: Anything not directly related to Kokua/Imprudence, but
probably interesting to the community.

* Developer and Project sections would be archived (still visible, but
no new posts allowed), with sticky posts to tell people where they
should now go to discuss those things.

I'll look around to see if there are any phpBB mods that (for example)
allow users to give each other "points" for being helpful, and perhaps
have special badges or titles for users with a certain number of
helpfulness points. (Or some other system for somewhat-subtly
encouraging users to help each other out. Any ideas?)

How does that sound to you guys? I'll also start a discussion in the
forums to get feedback directly from forum users.

- Jacek