[oslc] OSLC website now has a forum! (Among other additions)

[Lee J Reamsnyder]

Hello Olivier,

Your preference for mailing lists is certainly valid. There's a lot of
appeal in managing your involvement in a variety of workgroups (and other
communities) automatically through your email inbox.

However, forums do have some advantages of their own for some people:

+ Forums, in general, are easier to browse and search than mailing list
archives
+ We can organize topics in other ways than by mailing list, where messages
are "organized" by workgroup/specification (or the catch-all Community
mailing list) -- which can be both good and bad
+ A forum thread leaves a public place to reference information. This will
be especially useful for frequently asked questions, as we can direct
people to a forum thread that already has the answer. (Or someone can find
the answer to their question on their own)
+ You can subscribe to an individual thread of interest, so you can be
notified of activity at a very granular level of your choosing
+ Newcomers can ask a question on a forum without subscribing themselves to
a mailing list, an option that gives them a smaller commitment and a lower
barrier to entry.

So forums have their charms, and I think they'll be especially appealing to
newcomers.

But, yes, building a forum is not a passive activity, and to make (and
keep) it useful we'll have to have some people committed to posting,
responding, and generally involving themselves. But I think it's a
worthwhile endeavor.

Thanks,
Lee


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  |Olivier Berger <olivier.berger at it-sudparis.eu>                                                                                                    |
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  |Lee J Reamsnyder/Durham/IBM at IBMUS, community at open-services.net                                                                                    |
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  |12/14/2011 05:23 PM                                                                                                                               |
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  |Re: [oslc] OSLC website now has a forum! (Among other additions)                                                                                  |
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Hi.

On Wed, 7 Dec 2011 13:36:27 -0500, Lee J Reamsnyder
<leereamsnyder at us.ibm.com> wrote:
>
> I rolled out a lot of additions to the OSLC site last night.
>
> First, I've set up a discussion forum (http://open-services.net/forums/).
> This should make it easier to get public discussions going. I'm looking
> forward to seeing what people post. You can sign up here:
> http://open-services.net/forums/member/register/ (Yes, unfortunately it's
> another login for the site.)
>

I'm quite dubious about the use of fora for such communities... is there
some common expectation for OSLC participants to subscribe and
participate to these, in addition to mailing lists ?

I'm more inclined personaly to push mode communication channels (like
mail) rather than pull-mode ones (like fora)... but that's just my own
taste.

Of course, fora can be good tools, as you don't need to add another
"spam source" (a new mailing list) to your subscriptions, just to be
able to post a question... but I'm afraid users may then be expecting
some response, even though it's yet not clear if much OSLC people will
be there to respond.

Hope this helps.

Best regards,
--
Olivier BERGER
http://www-public.it-sudparis.eu/~berger_o/ - OpenPGP-Id: 2048R/5819D7E8
Ingenieur Recherche - Dept INF
Institut TELECOM, SudParis (http://www.it-sudparis.eu/), Evry (France)