[TYPO3-UG US] Re: Support forum discussion

[Vincent Stemen]

On 2005-11-12, JoH <info at cybercraft.de> wrote:
>>> And BTW: You don't have to subscribe to any mailinglist if you
>>> switch to a tool that almost every IT professional I know of is
>>> using: It's called a "newsreader".
>>
>> Newsreaders are great too and compliment a forum nicely... maybe we
>> need a forum/newsreader :)
>
> Could be a great extension. Instead of having the list archives like on
> typo3 we could transform the whole stuff into a forum just to keep the
> illusion for those who prefer to go where the information is instead of
> having the information coming to their PC.
> Every posting from the newsgroup would be inserted into the forum thread and
> vice versa.
>
> Any volunteers?
>
> Joey

I am an American developer that is new to typo3 and still working on
learning enough to setup our first web site.

I just thought I would throw in my 2 cents worth.  I have agreed with
Joey (JoH) on most of this discussion.  As I commented on this group
back in October, I much prefer to use the news groups.  There are just
so many things you can do in your own news or mail reader that you
cannot (or not quickly and easily) do through a web interface.  For
example, I marked this posting and read the rest of the thread and
a bunch of other articles, then hit a key which instantly took me back
to the marked posting so I could write a follow up to it.  

I also asked back in October if it is possible to have the forum just be
an interface to the mailing list like the newsgroups.  I am happy that
I am beginning to see others discuss that possibility also.  If you want
to use a web interface, I find the _google_ interface to _newsgroups_
a better interface than any of the forums I have seen so far but
_without the isolation_.  I'm not sure if googles is all developed in
house or if there are any free, open source web to newsgroups interfaces
available, but as Joey commented, a typo3 extension for such an
interface would be nice.

Also, if you want to search the bodies of postings in the archives
without archiving them all locally, the typo3 site (like most sites that
have mailing lists) already has the ability to search the archives from
the web site.

One of the problems with having forums that have their own separate
archive, not tied to the mailing lists/news groups, is that we have to
start searching multiple sources for discussion and information.  Also,
your postings only end up being seen by a fraction of the intended
audience because it is fragmented.  This can only lessen the chance of
questions getting seen by the right people who can answer them.

All this recent trend toward isolated forums reminds me of back when
companies such as prodigy, AOL, and Compuserv tried the network
isolation method and refused to even have mail gateways to the Internet.
It didn't work.  I and most people I know didn't use them (at least not
for very long) because they could not communicate with anybody who was
not on the same network.

News groups and mailing lists have been the standard means of group
communication since the dawning of the Internet.  I started seeing all
this movement toward isolated web forums when we started getting the
flood of new users to the net that didn't know anything about the power
of the existing Usenet infrastructure. 

I have always found posting to forums very inconvenient.  I end up
having to edit a temporary file with my external editor, usually
manually quoting the text I am responding to, and then having to cut
and past my text into a web form, then preview it.  If it does not look
right or I decide to make other changes, mark all the text in the web
form, delete it, re-edit with my external editor, mark all the text
again and re-paste into the web form and preview again.  This sometimes
goes on several times before I actually post it.  *Yuck!*


-- 
Vincent Stemen
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