Hi,
17.12.2008 08:06, Kevin Keane wrote:
> Arno Lehmann wrote:
>> Hi,
>>
>> 16.12.2008 18:14, Kevin Keane wrote:
>>
>>> Alex Chekholko wrote:
>>>
>>>> On Tue, 16 Dec 2008 12:05:49 +0100
>>>> Sven-Hendrik Haase <sh AT lutzhaase DOT com> wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> Other advantages I see compared to using mailing lists only:
>>>>> 1) Improved overview since it is visually more pleasing and more
>>>>> sub-categories can be used.
>>>>>
>> That is a disadvantage IMO. Whenever I have to use a forum for support
>> thingies, I find I have to navigate many subcategories - often because
>> other users seem to have difficulties placing their posts into the
>> right category, or during a conversation, the topic moves.
>>
>> Searching in the forum systems I know is usually very limited,
>> compared to what I can do with Thunderbird's search functions (and I
>> know other mail clients are much more flexible!) or, if everything
>> fails, using egrep on the mail storage itself.
>>
>> Finally, mail allows me to keep the whole history of this list on my
>> site (disk space is cheap, and Bacula can back up my mail storage). I
>> see no way to easily access a larger forum locally.
>>
> I think you are making some rather large assumptions here, namely that
> all users have the freedom you apparently enjoy.
Well, that's one of my points, really - the situations for different
people are different, too.
I don't want others to do something similar to what I do, but I
believe that the advantages you claim forums to have do not always apply.
Take the complete history of an example: In a forum, you can access
the whole history, but it's tedious work because you have to click
through many overview pages, or have to rely on a (limited) search
function.
With mail, I can access the list archives similar to a forum (in fact,
as pointed out, IN a forum). But, additionally, I can decide to keep
the whole history of the list locally and use my mail client's search
function, where I can more easily create complex queries.
> Many companies have policies against using gmail, yahoo mail etc.; all
> mail must go through their corporate mail server, which is often
> constrained by a 500 MB Exchange mailbox size.
Other companies have policies against free web access, so I don't
think we can state that one way is superior to any other. For example,
I set up a web proxy for a company to restrict access for users to the
sites they need for their work - yahoo sites are not among those.
So, I don't think comparing company policies of internet access does
help us much, unless we had a real survey done first.
> And your scheme breaks down completely when you are away from your own
> personal computer,
Let me just state that it doesn't.
> or, worse, when your hard disk crashes.
No. At least not more seriously than my web access would be affected.
>>>>> I'm not suggesting the removal of mailing lists in favor of forums, I'm
>>>>> merely suggesting the forums should be added to the main site, mainly in
>>>>> order to get support.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>> One could also view them as the same thing just with a different interface.
>>>>
>>>> Curtis Preston's site already translates this list into forum form:
>>>> http://www.backupcentral.com/phpBB2/two-way-mirrors-of-external-mailing-lists-3/bacula-25/
>>>>
>>>>
>>> Admitted, it's quite browseable as an archive. But posting from it? How
>>> many more accounts do I have to create all over the place, and how many
>>> more passwords to track? No thanks.
>>>
>> The same here... I would simply not use a forum.
>>
> ONE forum per product is no worse than subscribing to a mailing list -
> if anything, it's easier.
Well, we seem to disagree here.
But you insist on *one* user-to-user discussion interface only, and
that's not even what we have today. There are at least these mailing
lists, several list archives with posting ability, and one wiki. I'm
pretty sure there is one more wiki and I could imagine that some linux
distributions have Bacula-related discussions in their mailing lists
and forums as well.
>>> One signup per product for a mailing
>>> list or forum is acceptable. TWO for the same product? That's much.
>>>
>>> That is why any forum or the like should be ONE single message one
>>> that's easily searchable (and I agree with other posters that the SF
>>> browsing is frustrating, to term it politely). Preferably, there should
>>> be a mechanism to prevent republishing on other sites (Currently, many
>>> sites are republishing mailing lists for advertising $$$, and it makes
>>> Googling a real chore).
>>>
>>> That said, I do think that a forum format for posting would be good.
>>> Right now, I accidentally deleted one of the emails in this thread, and
>>> suddenly it is impossible for me to respond to it.
>>>
>> Seems to be a question of how you set up your mail client mostly -
>> myself, for example, I don't delete mail in the mailing list folders.
>> Even if I deleted it, I could find it in the Trash folder.
>>
> So you are saying that everybody should configure their email for the
> convenience of the bacula mailing list?
No. I just say that, what you seem to miss, can be easily handled by a
different way to use a mail client. I don't want everybody to do that,
but if they need certain features, they can have them with todays
mailing lists.
> From reading your posts, I think
> you are one of the bacula experts who spends 80% of your workday with
> it.
Well, more like 50%, but that doesn't make a difference to this
discussion... I dislike forums even for software support where I only
spend a few hours a month.
> For me, who hopefully soon spends 1% of my workday with it, quite
> frankly, I don't see why I should have to reconfigure my whole email
> system, my whole archiving system, just for this one mailing list.
You don't have to. But if you don't expect to use the mailing list
much, I don't see why you would use a forum much more.
>>> but people who have another job to complete, and bacula
>>> may be just 1% of that job. For such people, like me, an email list
>>> means that my mailbox gets filled up every day with posts from people
>>> who have questions completely unrelated to how I use bacula.
>>>
>> Easy to ignore...
>>
>> I don't see why a forum would be more useful then. Finding new,
>> interesting things only works when all the other users place their
>> postings into the right section, and use the right keywords in the
>> subjects.
>>
> Reality proves that forums work quite well in this respect. Just look at
> Open-Audit for an example.
Ok, so there are example for and against both our claims.
>> There are no sections in email lists, so this is no problem.
> Actually, there are. bacula-user vs. bacula-developer.
I don't think those would be two sections of one forum. Several reasons:
1. The target audiences for -users and -devel don't overlap much. A
"typical" user does not read -devel, and there is no reason they should.
2. While, for the -users list, this current discussion might end up
with the creation of a forum, I seriously doubt there will ever be a
-devel forum. This discussion would probably never take place there in
this form, simply because I'm pretty sure most of the regular
developers wouldn't even consider using a forum for their exchange.
3. There are even more mailing lists: -docs, -announce, -beta, -bugs,
devel-fr, -commits. Trying to get those moved to a forum is also quite
unlikely to happen as "typical" developers depend on having their
communication via email - it's easily integrated into the workflow of
incorporating, reviewing, and submitting patches.
Anyway, the only possible candidates for a forum are, in my opinion,
the user-support mailing lists.
> Most forums only
> have a few categories, too.
>> The subject problem remains, but is the same for mailing list and forum.
>>
>> But, with an email list, you automatically get everything that is
>> posted, so you don't have to search a lot remotely - you can, instead,
>> do all the necessary searching locally, which should be a lot quicker
>> and more flexible.
>>
> Again, you are assuming that everybody has that level of control over
> their email. And you are also assuming that the search in Outlook is
> superior to Google. Have you tried complex queries in Outlook? Or
> Thunderbird for that matter?
Outlook - no. When I had to use outlook I learned that, as a mail
client, it was more or less unusable for me. As a company-internal PIM
it's really good, but that's something very different to being a good
mail client.
And yes, I use more or less complex queries in Thunderbird often
enough (though I tend to fall back to using grep, because that's
easier to use in many cases...).
>>> As a matter
>>> of fact, I get more emails from the bacula mailing list every day than
>>> pass my spam filter! Once I have bacula running, hopefully I will not
>>> need this mailing list for weeks on end.
>>>
>> So you are mainly interested in replies to your own mails - that's ok,
>> and I believe with a decent mail client, you should be able to achieve
>> that easily, either using automatic filtering, or using the threaded
>> view plus setting the sort order sensibly.
>>
> Point is, why should 90% of the users of the mailing lists have to jump
> through hoops to begin with?
Well, I don't think it's that bad. For me (and others as well) using
some filtering on incoming mail is something I don't consider a
"jumping through a hoop". Actually, I can more easily hide mail I'm
not interested in than with a forum.
I'm pretty sure your view is different on that matter, but I just
don't see why you can be so sure of the 90% of the Bacula users (and
we're talking about those here, right?) seeing things the same way you do.
What you could do, though, is just starting a poll and see what the
users actually prefer.
>>> With all that said, I think there already is an excellent solution
>>> available that solved all these problems: Yahoo Groups. OK, Open-Source
>>> purists probably don't like it because it's proprietary. Quite frankly,
>>> though, I have to say: "so what?"
>>>
>> Quite frankly - feel free to create such a group :-)
>>
> I'd be delighted to, as long as you shut down this mailing list and
> point everybody there. Otherwise, all that would do is create yet more
> fragmentation.
That's not something I can do as I don't own the list... I wouldn't
mind anybody pointing people to a newly created forum, but - and that
might indeed be a serious problem to a newly created forum - I would
probably not spend as much time with a forum than I do with my mail
client. Unfortunately, I suppose some others of the more active users
of this list would be in a similar situation.
So I can really only recommend to just create a forum, announce it,
and hope users switch to it. That seems to be the only way to get a
forum if you want one. The mailing list will stay in existence, though
- I don't think it's very likely Kern would shut down the list first...
>> - You can post by email or on the Web.
>>
>>
>> Actually, I don't even want to post by web. I prefer a plain text
>> display, where I can navigate in and among mails by keystrokes, don't
>> have any advertisements displayed, and can rely on most other users
>> sensibly quouting and trimming - something that, in my experience,
>> requires quite a bit of mouse-shuffling with a web-based interface.
>>
> No problem - that's the whole point.
>
> But why should everybody else HAVE to adhere to your preferences?
Nobody has. Everybody is free to use whatever they like. My comments
are just my view on these options, and if they help others making up
their minds I'm satisfied. I don't write this to force anyone to doing
things the same way I do them.
>>> - It preserves threading properly (unless somebody using email breaks it
>>>
>> No problem with any decent mail reader.
>>
> That's assuming you want to see all your mail threaded. 90% of my email
> is better read in an unthreaded format. It goes back to: why should I
> have to adjust my whole email system just for the bacula mailing list?
Again - you don't have to.I'm just explaining the options I know
about. If you dislike them - good enough.
>>> - Nearly everybody already has a Yahoo account anyway - and tied to an
>>> email address.
>>>
>> Now that's a big claim. For example, I don't have a yahoo account, and
>> I'm pretty sure I never will.
>>
> That's why I said "Nearly" ;-)
>>> - You can turn off email delivery, and still participate in the group.
>>>
>> Actually, I think we've got a nice group of very active users here who
>> probably don't even *want* to turn off mail delivery, but instead
>> wouldn't show much activity if they had to use a web-based interface.
>>
>> People searching for help can easily unsubscribe from the mailing list
>> after their questions are answered.
>>
> But see, the point is that then they have to re-subscribe the next time
> they have a question. Signing up for a mailing list is just as tedious
> as signing up for a forum, and far more tedious than simply turning
> email on or off.
You can turn mail deliver on and off, too, for the mailing list. That
can be done by the web interface to list management, or by mail.
Well, I guess we disagree on the most of these points. If you really
want a forum, it's up to you - create one, announce it, and see if
it's used. I'm pretty sure you might even get a DNS record pointing to
forums.bacula.org, similar as it's done for bugs, wiki, and regress.
But requesting the mailing list to be turned off won't work.
Arno
--
Arno Lehmann
IT-Service Lehmann
Sandstr. 6, 49080 Osnabrück
www.its-lehmann.de
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