dhis2-devs-core team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

I have something of an aversion to forums for all things, but I can see
they might have their place.  Many of the questions raised on the users
list (some of which filter into the developers list) as well as the even
more common private mail requests might well lend itself to this sort of
format.  Whether we have sufficient traffic to drive some of these social
engineering engines in a meaningful way or not I am not sure, but perhaps
no harm in trying.  One of the potential issues with forums is how to get
back off again (with the data) if we decide it wasn't such a good idea at
all.  Perhaps this should also be a factor to consider when selecting a
forum platform.

Having said that, there is still a place for mailing lists for discussion
(rather than Q&A).  For example, the sysadmin list suggested by Steven, and
which seems to have attracted some interest, I think would work better in a
list format, at least at formative stage.  Over time there will be nuggets
mined from the list which can form the basis of a more dynamic faq/forum
type thing.

As a minor aside, there is perhaps an interesting gender perspective to
this (and I believe possibly also age).  In some research that was done
some years back (to which I have no reference but I remember well!) the
problem of women's participation in free/open source projects was
examined.  The level of women's participation was known then (and probably
still is) to be substantially less in FOSS than in the industry at large.
Interestingly, one of the findings was that women apparently had a greater
preference to use web forums than email lists.  Moreso than men.  So
there's another dimension for mobilars to explore in his discourse analysis
:-)

Bob

On 10 October 2014 12:36, Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Also, be sure to communicate to everyone that they need to "upvote" the
> questions, after they have been created. Each person gets 5 upvotes it
> seems, perhaps depending on reputation or something similar.
>
> See here for some more metrics on another topic
>
> http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/55053/data-science
>
> Not so sure we could generate 5 questions per day?
>
> Regards,
> Jason
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 1:12 PM, Jason Pickering <
> jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>
>> Hi Matthieu,
>> Sounds good to me. The process to get it setup seems rather involved but
>> given the supposed number of people out there , we should have little
>> problem gathering enough supoort.
>>
>> Regards,
>> Jason
>> On Oct 10, 2014 6:59 AM, "Matthieu Pinard (UiO)" <matthiep@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> Hi guys,
>>>
>>> after discussing with web Lars and with the enlightenment of Mark we
>>> came up with the following consensus after going back to the initial needs
>>> to be addressed in this thread:
>>>
>>> *How to make it easier for the users, developers and implementers to
>>> look for an answer for a given question?*
>>>
>>> For that matter *Stackexchange* seems to be a very good option.
>>> Paraphrasing Ubuntu we can say that Stackexchange should become the site
>>> for DHIS2 users, implementers and developers can collaboratively edit
>>> question and answer them.
>>> "Instead of posting a mailing list, this site would work by you
>>> repeatedly editing your question with what you've learned about your
>>> problem, and then users can rate the quality of the questions and answers
>>> by voting" (Source:
>>> http://community.ubuntu.com/help-information/finding-help/support/).
>>>
>>> *Discourse* serves another purpose, which will be very useful for the
>>> DHIS2 Community as well: a place where to discuss about the latest news of
>>> DHIS2, discuss ideas etc. We will put that in place later on.
>>>
>>> So in a step-by-step approach, let's start with *Stackexchange* to
>>> serve the most urgent need. Once the community has adopted it we can
>>> continue providing new tools, namely *Discourse*, for our community to
>>> grow and engage (and vice versa).
>>>
>>> So let's back Jason's initiative and *start posting* on
>>> http://area51.stackexchange.com/proposals/77757/dhis2/
>>>
>>> *NEXT STEP:* Diffuse this initiative to the info mailing list
>>> explaining the goals and steps to make this initiative a success.
>>> If you agree, Jason, web Lars and me could be assigned to this task.
>>>
>>> *Question: Do you agree?*
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Matthieu
>>>
>>> PS: Interesting link that we will proudly imitate:
>>> http://community.ubuntu.com/help-information/finding-help/support/
>>>
>>> Matthieu Pinard
>>> DHIS 2 Academy & Community Coordinator | University of Oslo
>>>
>>> On 10 October 2014 12:25, Halvdan Grelland <halvdanhg@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> Discourse seems to strike a great balance between power and user
>>>> friendliness. +1
>>>>
>>>> 2014-10-10 11:20 GMT+02:00 Lars Kristian Roland <lars@xxxxxxxxx>:
>>>>
>>>>> Here's another one I like:
>>>>>
>>>>> http://www.invisionpower.com/features/
>>>>>
>>>>> (not that I don't like the ones Matthieu mentioned)
>>>>>
>>>>> Lars
>>>>>
>>>>> 2014-10-10 11:07 GMT+02:00 Matthieu Pinard (UiO) <matthiep@xxxxxxxxxx>
>>>>> :
>>>>>
>>>>>> Hi guys,
>>>>>>
>>>>>> I'm glad to read that people with technical know-how are on this
>>>>>> topic as well :).
>>>>>> Forums being a fundamental building block of our (web) community
>>>>>> choosing the right tool is key:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The right tool for me means a tool that:
>>>>>> - is easy to use for non-techies, as the community grows fast behind
>>>>>> it's early adopters
>>>>>> - encourages interaction though a good UX
>>>>>> - helps the community to highlight what are the current hottest topics
>>>>>> - enables "easy" moderation
>>>>>> - can be used on different screens
>>>>>> - ...and well... are open source ;)
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So far I see two tools:
>>>>>> - the Ubuntu Discourse http://www.discourse.org/
>>>>>> - as we are using the CMS Drupal for our website, we can simply
>>>>>> activate the forum (limited)  or better probably go the the Harmony
>>>>>> Core <https://www.drupal.org/project/harmony_core> that is part of
>>>>>> the Commons distribution <https://www.drupal.org/project/commons>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> So far from a user perspective I favor Discourse
>>>>>> <http://www.discourse.org/>. BTW Ubuntu is using it. I can only
>>>>>> encourage you to give it a try <http://try.discourse.org/> and tell
>>>>>> me.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Cheers,
>>>>>> Matthieu
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Matthieu Pinard
>>>>>> DHIS 2 Academy & Community Coordinator | University of Oslo
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 9 October 2014 22:39, Lars Helge Øverland <larshelge@xxxxxxxxx>
>>>>>> wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Does anyone know about any other existing forums that could be
>>>>>>> potentially more suitable?
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> If not I'm all for giving this a try. I think going for a forum that
>>>>>>> is well-known has more legs than starting our own.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> Lars
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Lars Kristian Roland
>>>>> Research Fellow, Department of Informatics, University of Oslo
>>>>> Email: lars@xxxxxxxxx - roland@xxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> Phone: +47 90733036
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs-core
>>>>> Post to     : dhis2-devs-core@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>>>>> Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~dhis2-devs-core
>>>>> More help   : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>
>>>
>
>
> --
> Jason P. Pickering
> email: jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx
> tel:+46764147049
>
> --
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