2003-01-12 22:23:42

by Andrew Walrond

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

Forgive if this has been discussed before, but has anyone considered
hosting the linux-kernel on a web-based forum as used extensively elsewhere?

I can think of advantages;

Better Thread organisation and seperate topic areas for drivers,
patches, ide, ...
Being able to cheery pick threads of interest, and completely ignore others
Not having to dump your inbox after a week away just to catch up
Moderated forums (Off-topic threads policed and deleted)
Read only forums (write for registered/invited members)

I'm sure somebody will enlighten me regarding the disadvantages. :)

Andrew


2003-01-12 22:31:27

by Russell King

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 10:31:30PM +0000, Andrew Walrond wrote:
> Forgive if this has been discussed before, but has anyone considered
> hosting the linux-kernel on a web-based forum as used extensively elsewhere?

Web-based - pain in the ass to use. Especially for people who are not
on-line all the time.

Moderated linux-kernel - lots of traffic, too much to be individually
moderated.

Certainly the second has been discussed before many many many times.

People, please, if you think you have an damned obvious answer to a
problem, at least check the many archives before posting it.

Let us *ALL* try to avoid linux-kernel turning into tens of trolling
flamewars.

--
Russell King ([email protected]) The developer of ARM Linux
http://www.arm.linux.org.uk/personal/aboutme.html

2003-01-12 22:37:04

by David Truog

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

Andrew Walrond wrote:
>Forgive if this has been discussed before, but
>has anyone considered hosting the linux-kernel
>on a web-based forum as used extensively elsewhere?
>
>I can think of advantages;
>
>Better Thread organisation and seperate topic
>areas for drivers, patches, ide, ... Being able
>to cheery pick threads of interest, and completely
>ignore othersNot having to dump your inbox after
>a week away just to catch up Moderated forums
>(Off-topic threads policed and deleted) Read only
>forums (write for registered/invited members)
>
>I'm sure somebody will enlighten me regarding the
>disadvantages. :)

large posts (patches) and exporting data would be the
two biggest i personnaly see. also, some of us (I)
use various methods to sort/search posts.

>Andrew

David

2003-01-12 22:39:24

by Oliver Neukum

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel


> I'm sure somebody will enlighten me regarding the disadvantages. :)

Sure. How many full time moderators are you willing to employ?

Regards
Oliver

2003-01-12 22:40:52

by Olivier Galibert

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

On Sun, Jan 12, 2003 at 10:31:30PM +0000, Andrew Walrond wrote:
> Forgive if this has been discussed before, but has anyone considered
> hosting the linux-kernel on a web-based forum as used extensively elsewhere?
>
> I can think of advantages;
>
> Better Thread organisation and seperate topic areas for drivers,
> patches, ide, ...

Any decent mail client will give you quality threads, much better than
any current web forum software (because you get a tree instead of the
flat crap they give you). And separate topic areas already exist,
they're called multiple mailing-lists.


> Being able to cheery pick threads of interest, and completely ignore others

Get a decent mail client.


> Not having to dump your inbox after a week away just to catch up

Get a decent mail client.


> Moderated forums (Off-topic threads policed and deleted)

Post-moderation sucks, and opens some interesting legal issues.
Pre-moderation is way too slow and labor intensive.


> Read only forums (write for registered/invited members)

You can have that with mailing-lists. Cf linux-announce. Not very
useful in practice.


> I'm sure somebody will enlighten me regarding the disadvantages. :)

Much slower than a local mailbox.
No filtering.
No choice of presentation (or not enough).
No scoring.
Much higher bandwidth needs.
Hard to archive.
Can't forward posts.
Can't grep posts.
Can't save some posts in a contiguous mailbox and patch -p1 them.

And the most annoying part, people feel anonymous on web forums and as
a result post any crap just because they can, while most of tend to
take having to put their email address with usually they real name in
it more seriously.

OG.

2003-01-12 23:06:26

by Andrew Walrond

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

That'll be a no then :) Ok I'm convinced. Please - no more replys!

I am interested what constitues a 'better mail client though'. I've been
using mozilla mail, though laziness more than anything else. It gets the
threads sorted *mostly*, but lots of loose ends seem to end up their own
parents for some reason, and I haven't found a way of deleting a whole
thread. Which mail client are the people in the know using?

2003-01-12 22:55:27

by Axel Siebenwirth

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

Hi Andrew!

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Andrew Walrond wrote:

> Better Thread organisation and seperate topic areas for drivers,
> patches, ide, ...

Doesnt a good mail client manage this well. I'm using procmail to filter
certain patterns in lkml subjects into different mailboxes.

> Moderated forums (Off-topic threads policed and deleted)

I guess this is just way too much work for the moderator ;)
You know how much mail traffic this list produces. Someone, most of the
people here do all the work past their real job, I guess.

> Read only forums (write for registered/invited members)

The linux kernel development relies on the work and efforts of all the
diligent people here. What if there is an important topic on this read-only
list and there are people who have some useful information to contribute?


Best regards,
Axel Siebenwirth

2003-01-12 23:25:54

by Axel Siebenwirth

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

Hi Andrew!

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003, Andrew Walrond wrote:

> thread. Which mail client are the people in the know using?

Mutt 1.4i (2002-05-29)

http://www.mutt.org

Regards,
Axel Siebenwirth

2003-01-12 23:49:32

by Andrew Walrond

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

Thanks for all replies,and for keeping them off-list :)

Andrew Walrond

2003-01-13 00:12:58

by Diego Calleja

[permalink] [raw]
Subject: Re: Moderated forum for linux-kernel

On Sun, 12 Jan 2003 22:31:30 +0000
Andrew Walrond <[email protected]> wrote:

<Just my opinion; because as the Hell.surfers troll treads, it's free>

> I can think of advantages;
>
> Better Thread organisation and seperate topic areas for drivers,
> patches, ide, ...
> Being able to cheery pick threads of interest, and completely ignore others
> Not having to dump your inbox after a week away just to catch up
> Moderated forums (Off-topic threads policed and deleted)

Not posible. You can't firewall all the mail ; and you can't delete
it after (There's always someone reading a post sec after it's sent to people)

> Read only forums (write for registered/invited members)
marc.theaimsgroup.com

Better thread organization is indeed something good. Linux has like
?&$%=%)=& differents mailing lists. It'd be much nicer to have
[email protected], [email protected]...
A project could ask a mailing list (even space for web and patches;
if someone plans to support it). Just because one can imagine a
[email protected] list. But whatever the alsa mailing list is;
it's harder to remember. You can forward [email protected] to
the true malinign list if you want.

Mixing always 2.4 and 2.5 stuff it isn't a good idea either

The [email protected] just doesn't work as well as
one would want. Yes, you've [RFC], [PATCHES], [BENCHMARK] to filter.
But what the hell is the [RFC] mail about? net? vm?

*nobody* reads all the mails (well, there's Alan Cox, but he isn't human)
Some good posts indeed are lost between the noise. We have marc.theaimsgroup.com.
But do you really think it's enought? BK has given us some degree of
organization (you can search who and when touched something, what files were
touched in the patch, etc). The bugzilla database tries to give us
some degree of organization in the bugs field, just because the
[email protected] approach is a *true hell* in that sense.

What we need to address that? Resources. No, that's not the first thing. We need
that people think that we need it, and we need that people *wants* it.

After that we need resources: Which is a difficult point. But it's more
important that some of the nice features that have been merged in 2.5 IMHO
(as it's a long-term benefit)

Diego Calleja.