dhis2-devs-core team mailing list archive

[Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>]

On 10 October 2014 14:46, Jason Pickering <jason.p.pickering@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:

> Not to throw out too many ideas, but before you send out the email, I
> thought we should also consider potentially using discourse. It seems like
> a good tool, and I managed to get a demo setup here.
>
> http://dhis2.info
>

That looks nice.

>
> An obvious advantage here is that we would have a lot more control over
> the entire process, rather than being subject to StackExchange's rather
> arcane rules. I think we could rather easily achieve a good Q&A site with
> this as well. Downside of course is that this server is being managed by us
> at the moment, and one more thing which we would need to take care of,
> although something we could likely push off to our friends a BAO Systems.
>
>
> Thoughts?
>
> Best regards,
> Jason
>
> P.S. On a totally unrelated note, I came across https://mandrillapp.com
> which is described in the Discourse setup, and it also seems like a very
> good alternative for sending emails, without having to worry about getting
> an SMTP server setup.
>

I have tried mandrillap with dhis2 before (not in production).  It works
well and is certainly a good replacement for "spamming" through a gmail
account.  Not that it replaces the utility of running a local MTA - but
that too can be configured to hand off to a smarthost. Useful if the
machine does not have a fqdn.  But we drift off topic ... maybe this is all
good content for a mail-related meta-topic in discourse/tutorials or what
have you.

Bob

>
>
> On Fri, Oct 10, 2014 at 2:37 PM, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
>
>> Matthieu I am always enthusiastic :-)  And of course I will participate
>> ...
>>
>> On 10 October 2014 13:18, Matthieu Pinard (UiO) <matthiep@xxxxxxxxxx>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> *Jason*,
>>> yeah, I'm reading through the FAQ etc and I'll suggest a phasing to make
>>> our best to reach each of the stages.
>>>
>>> Here is the rough plan: Once the mailing list info@ is informed I will
>>> publish on FB. Then I suggest that you or webLars (we need someone with
>>> enough legitimacy) will announce that on our mailing lists. Then we need to
>>> monitor and encourage ;).
>>>
>>> *Bob*,
>>> I love your enthusiasm :P. I will not try too hard to convince you and
>>> hope that you will join the effort ;). Just a couple of things:
>>> - yes mailing lists will still be part of the our community support tools
>>> - on the bright side, this forum, if we succeed to make it a true and
>>> sustainable DHIS2 Expert Q&A site will have a great and positive impact on
>>> knowledge sharing among the community member (beautiful).
>>>
>>> Cheers,
>>> Matthieu
>>>
>>>
>>> Matthieu Pinard
>>> DHIS 2 Academy & Community Coordinator | University of Oslo
>>>
>>> On 10 October 2014 13:54, Bob Jolliffe <bobjolliffe@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>>> 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
>>>>>
>>>>> --
>>>>> 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
>