[webteam] forum?

[Jesus Cea]

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Susan wrote:
> I think someone mentioned forums for end-users and mailing lists for
> techies.  This would be a lovely compromise.  I realize the need for
> forums, but they get annoying when, like most techies, you follow a
> number of projects.

I personally hate forums: you must register (OpenID support is very
sparse), you must read them in a separate routine for your "normal"
workflow, and learn its usage. I don't want to learn a new interface.
Please, give me a mailing list...

But forums are here to stay, and newbies don't know better, so we must
live with them.

That insatisfactory situation has forced me to start a forum project.
The basic idea is that the classical web forum is only a "view" of
message repository. Other possible views are NNTP or SMTP. Maybe even
XMPP. So you can choose your poison. You can integrate it with your
workflow, not the way around.

Another thing I hate of forums is that your contributions are not
yours... if you wrote a lot of smart and useful messages, and the admin
gets bored and close the forum, you lose your own contributions. This
software, nevertheless, will allow any registered user to download a
full snapshot of the forum, to execute in your own local computer. You
could even reply threads while commuting, offline. Remember
Fidonet/Bluewave!.

The project is still pre-alpha, but it progressing. Hope Alpha in late
October.

> Please, please, no phpBB.  No offense to you, Bart, but I really
> can't see anything good coming from using phpBB.

Own forum proyect is a direct response to bugs and demands of phpBB
(2.x, no experience with 3.x). You don't need an external database;
goodbye MySQL. Each user can can have real timezones, with real and
locally valid DST. Threads are marked as "read" WHEN they are ACTUALLY read.

And I don't like PHP.

> That said, I'm curious to hear what features you feel are missing from
> Drupal's forums.  I readily admit that the forums are a bit anemic in
> Drupal 5.x and prior (expect some improvements in 6.x), and we Drupal
> folks have been talking a lot about the direction that forum
> development should go in.

/me interested in reading new ideas to "adopt" :-p

- --
Jesus Cea Avion                         _/_/      _/_/_/        _/_/_/
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"El amor es poner tu felicidad en la felicidad de otro" - Leibniz
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