Hi folks, the volunteer admins for forum.winehq.org have been deleting an increasing amount of spam lately, and it seems clear that we need to update the forum software to a new release with better antispam features. The catch is, the mailing list gateway plugin is not compatible with the new version of the forum. It looks like the users are split about 90% on the forum and about 10% on the mailing list, so while this would not affect a lot of people, it would affect those 10% a lot. So we're kind of stuck between a rock and a hard place. Thoughts, anyone?
DanKegel wrote:> > Thoughts, anyone?Split them. The link between the forum and the mailing list was broken for four months last year, and nobody from either side noticed until a new user happened to check Gmane and realized that there were replies in his thread there that weren't on the forum.
>> Thoughts, anyone? > > Split them.I guess I will be spilled then. However I certainly do not participate that much lately. Too busy in the day job. John
On Fri, Sep 2, 2011 at 2:58 PM, John Drescher <drescherjm at gmail.com> wrote:>>> Thoughts, anyone? >> >> Split them. > > I guess I will be spilled then.Oops. He said split.. Sorry. -- John M. Drescher
I'm still a fairly clueless/casual wine/linux user. I've been at it long enough to have had people answer several of the routine newbie questions for me. About my only value to the list/forum is that I try to pass those answers on to the newer crop of newbies as they post hoping it will help free up the more experienced users and programmers for the trickier stuff. I am guessing that most of those newbie posts are on the forum not the email list, so I would not be seeing any of those, but I don't know that that would be any loss to the group overall since I have so much left to learn myself. Do whatever is best for the project, whatever solution makes best use of the volunteered time of those working on it.
>?Do whatever is best for the project, whatever solution makes best > use of the volunteered time of those working on it.I second that. John
Just kill the mailing list. It's not manageable. All spam can easily be removed from forum. But stays forever in mailing archives. And the whopping 10 users who still do genuinely use mailing list are welcome into 21st century and forum interface. It really does not take any longer to read every single post through forum interface then via mailing list.
> A forum is much nicer and handier than a mailing list anyday, upgrade the forum!The huge negative for a forum to me is that I am signed up to 20 to 30 mailing lists. All of which are delivered to google my email account. For most of these I have a 3+ year history of every single non spam post. When more of these become forums I will spend less time reading posts and participating. I simply I do not have time to go to 20 different forum pages login, open and read messages ... Although like I said in my first reply I do not participate much anymore since I work 80+ hours a week on the day job just about every week so the loss would not be that big.. John
Everyone, Please do not turn this thread into a debate over the merits of the forum vs. the mailing list. That's about as fruitful as trying to convince a chocolate lover that strawberry is the superior flavor. We each have our preferences, and need to respect the others. The question at hand is whether the forum should be held back because of the belief that there should only be one support channel. I say no; the "unity" is an illusion to begin with. I do not, however, believe the mailing list should be killed off. I say split them, and see what happens. If its members are sufficiently interested, it will keep going. Perhaps it will even thrive if its members don't have to contend with the forum. If not, it will die a natural death. Whatever happens, so be it.
jjmckenzie wrote:> DimensioAre you ever going to learn to spell my name correctly?> > 2. Split the mailing list away from the forums. This was originally > debated and several Wine supporters left because 'we know the spam storm > is coming and I don't want to deal with this.' This option is dead and > was rejected by the majority (at that time) of the mailing list and > forum users. >I'm well aware of the long history of mailing list users' animosity towards the forum, which is precisely why I noted that if the two were split the mailing might actually thrive once again. IMO, the fact that that option was not the one selected initially is no reason not to ever reconsider it in the light of changed circumstances.> I would implore the site administrators to investigate and quickly > update the Forum software so that we can rid ourselves of the now daily > spam runs for all sorts of items like DVDs and Coach purses and > electronic components. I want this area to stay focused on the Wine > project and very, very little else.This is one thing on which we can agree completely.
madewokherd wrote:> (or keeping the mailing list at all; if > everyone important is on the forum then why have it?).All our users are important.
Lets look at some numbers shell we? Since forum introduction we've seen a 10 fold increase in number of posts: Average number of posts per month in 2007: 164 Average number of posts per month in 2008: 1700 Clearly no one can argue that ML list was as active as forum. And that forum was and still is a hit with Wine user base. Now, looking at the last 6 months: On average 83% of all posts coming from forum. Remaining 17% that came from ML are split between 8% James, 5% top 5 posters and 4% everyone else. What does that mean? It means that most people do indeed use forum and not the mailing list. In fact number of posts that came from ML, not counting James', dropped to 1/2 of what it was before forum introduction. Since development on forum2mail interface is dead and never gotten out of alpha anyway (for phpbb 3.x) it will most likely stay that way. There are some alternatives to reading forum via e-mail (digest), rss. But they will have same issues with spam as we do now. To sum it up. Regardless what we decide to do, we have to consider forum first then ML. If we can work with top ML posters and persuade them to use forum we can have 95% of all users in one place.
What version is the forum software? I believe the latest is 3.0.9. Jim
Jim Hall wrote:> What version is the forum software? I believe the latest is 3.0.9.Currently we are using PHPbb 2.0.x. Very old to say the least. I plan to upgrade to the latest stable PHPbb 3.x. (3.0.9) The whole current problem is the mailing list gateway. mail2Forum (or m2f). There is a version for PHP3.x, but it is very unstable and not recommended for production use. I did give it a whirl and tried to install it. I had no luck getting it to even install properly. From the looks of the SVN, there has not been much activity on the project to get it to a stable state. This leaves us with two options, 1.) remain on the status quo and live with the spam. 2.) Drop the mailing list gateway, so we can have PHPbb 3.x. Someone earlier asked why we do not delete spam from the mailing list archives. Yes, we can simply remove the .html files from the mailman archives, but this leaves us with 404s. The proper way to do it is have a script remove the spam emails from the mailman list mbox file, and then re-run the archive regeneration routine. I have yet to find said script, perhaps someone can suggest one. If we drop the gateway, we could possibly switch to another forum software, even a commercial one. I like IP.Board for example. But, that would require a conversion. Not sure if IP.Board has a clean conversion from PHPbb 2.x. -Newman
Martin Gregorie wrote:> However, because scanning down a list of forum > topics and then paging along a thread to see what, if anything, is new > on it is much slower than clicking through mail messagesThis already been addressed by forum software. If you register and login it will remember which threads you read. Also next to each topic with updates it will put a link going to the newest message you haven't read.