Re: [odf-adoption] ODF Adoption TC Call - 22 May 2007 - Minutes

[marbux <marbux@gmail.com>]

On 5/22/07, Thomas Zander <zander@kde.org> wrote:
> Marbux,
>
> I think that your idea of having the site be a meta site binding all
> others and therefor positioning itself as a hub within the existing ODF
> universe is a good one.
> Additionally allowing people to use forums (something I have not seen in
> other ODF based sites) is something I'd like to see.
>
> Having a small amount of forum topic is key, although I'd like to suggest
> we have 3. I had good experiences while I was moderating java.net forums
> with the 'announcements' section that lead application developers to the
> site. Which are really good people to have frequent the forums since they
> are very qualified to help answer user requests.

I have no problems with that, although I wonder whether the News
portion of the site might not be a better vehicle, particularly if the
syndication option were activated so that other folks could display
the news feed on their web sites, e.g., in your planet. I can't speak
for the Fellowship without running this past the members, but I
suspect that they might be persuaded to republish the news feed on the
Fellowship site, as it would give people reason to visit the site more
often.

The point being that I don't think a forum could give us the ability
to broadcast announcements via syndication without a Drupal hack. (At
least I don't ever recall seeing that capability mentioned in the
cruising of the Drupal site I've done.) But if we can meld
announcements with news, I think the announcements could get wider
distribution.

But I'm certain open to any thoughts you might have on why a forum
would be preferable. One advantage would be that it offers folks a
method to discuss announcements. One variant might be the  equivalent
of the WP Universe News & Views forum, which is one of the most
popular forums on the site. Folks post and quote linked news articles
and discuss them, with a long tradition of amateur market analysis.
:-)  It makes for pretty lively reading.

Just brainstorming, but might it be better to turn off the Drupal
forums and wrap a HTML frame around 2-3 Google Groups created for the
purpose? <http://groups.google.com/intl/en/googlegroups/overview.html>.
That would give us both web forums and integrated mailing lists so
people could choose which they want to use. Many people still have
56kb internet connections and live in places where they have to pay
the telephone tax for connecting. They tend to much prefer email
because of bandwidth costs. And even among folks who have high-speed
connections, the religious wars on the mail/forums issue continue
unabated. I think it would also help drive up search engine rankings
with the custom Google home page for the groups and Google's indexing
of the groups. I don't know but I suspect the Google Groups get a few
extra points in the page rankings. And it would let Google pay for a
lot of the bandwidth and maintenance costs.

I haven't checked on whether framing the Google groups would violate
terms of service, but Google really seems to be into mashups these
days, so I suspect there wouldn't be a problem. Just something to
think about. I haven't thought it through myself.

Best regards,

Marbux