Community Feedback

[pstout]

An aspect of the community that has not been highlighted yet is the handling of polls. While we've always had the capability to run polls they rarely got any visibility. Now, the most current poll is featured on the Community Portal.

To start, we'd like to get some feedback about the updates to the community site. Please don't just consider the design and layout but also the many integration points and features listed in our community release announcement. If you don't like something please pot a note about it in this thread so that we can work to give you a better community experience!

[kschendel]

The site looks nice, and it's great to have c.d.i hooked to the forums. However I'm not sure that creating a separate topic was ideal, might have been better to hook it to the DBA forum (which is really "general ingres stuff". )

I'm not sure I have all the funny little forum thread icons figured out yet either...

[miket]

I want to second both of Karl's main points ... to paraphrase: (1) nice work on the site, looks great, works great, less filling (2) it would be good if the c.d.i integration could further correct the community fragmentation issue. And I do think that simply having a main "DBA" or "database" forum and then linking that with c.d.i would do the trick. It's not clear now that folks are asking their questions in the "correct" community forums; we get lots of dbms technical questions in the forums that are meant for discussion of the community infrastructure itself. I'll bet that that's a combination of (1) those forums being at the top of the screen and (2) usage by non-native English speakers.

So I'd propose: (1) make it clear that the "DBA" (maybe rename as "Database") forum is the default one for database questions, (2) make that forum conspicuous by screen position or any other effective graphical technique, and (3) make it the one and only forum that is cross-linked with c.d.i (IMHO a many-forum to one c.d.i link would be overly complex and unworkable).

The only misgiving I have against this sort of transparent c.d.i integration is
<tinder-for-flame-war>
that the tone of c.d.i posts can be a bit raw and heavy on the inside jokes, which might not play well to a larger and not necessarily natively English-speaking group.
</tinder-for-flame-war>

MikeT

[pstout]

Thanks to everyone for the feedback we've received so far.

The call to separate the c.d.i forum from existing forums was made for two reasons. First, we are looking to integrate other groups or mailing lists in the future so it made sense to have them all in one location. We'd have to do heavy modification to the forum behavior to enable all forums to act as sync points. Second, I didn't know how the plugin would react to using an existing forum; the documentation stated not to do this and to use a new forum. As I didn't write this plugin myself I thought it wise to RT_M and do what it says =]

Mike made a good point about the "tone" of c.d.i - this was also a determining factor in my decision to leave it in its own separate forum. I wanted to minimize any static that may arise from the integration on both ends. Also, because of the way info-ingres breaks threading from time to time, a user could (in theory) post a question to the forum, have it answered in c.d.i, and the answer be in a completely separate thread. The user may think his/her question was never answered because they are not expecting this behavior.

[rhann]

Originally Posted by miket

The only misgiving I have against this sort of transparent c.d.i integration is
<tinder-for-flame-war>
that the tone of c.d.i posts can be a bit raw and heavy on the inside jokes, which might not play well to a larger and not necessarily natively English-speaking group.
</tinder-for-flame-war>

None of this is incorrect nor even mildly incendiary. However there is nothing about the delivery format that gives rise to either inside jokes or rawness. We get inside jokes precisely because there is a community. And although some of the content might be a bit raw at times, I have been following c.d.i. for close to 20 years and it has always been the most courteous Usenet group I know. Sure, passions get aroused sometimes, but I don't ever recall the kind of invective, ad hominem abuse, and naked ill-will you see on a lot of other newsgroups and forums.

I completely endorse your implied suggestion of collapsing the forums down to just a couple. Until traffic volumes warrant it, I suggest one forum for OpenROAD and one for everything else related to Ingres (including c.d.i./info-ingres). I think Mike Sale (or whoever it was) created a rod for everyone's back by initiating so many forums when he set it up. It is counter-productive both for the reason you mention (no one knows where to post or where to look), and worse, the ones that get only infrequent postings really stand out and create totally the wrong impression: as I write there is one with no posting more recent than three weeks ago, another at two weeks, and another with nothing since March. Your idea solves all the problems at a stroke IMO, and now that Paul has vBulletin talking to Usenet that removes the obstacles to doing it.

As I have said many times before in this context, less is more.

[kschendel]

Originally Posted by pstout

The call to separate the c.d.i forum from existing forums was made for two reasons. First, we are looking to integrate other groups or mailing lists in the future.... Second, I didn't know how the plugin would react to using an existing forum...

I have lots of sympathy for reason #2, and I'm perfectly happy to see this stuff evolve incrementally.

Reason #1 I am perhaps less impressed by, mostly because c.d.i has traditionally been *the* forum for Ingres people; it seems quite reasonable to me that it should integrate itself to the primary forum topic in the new-style forums. I'm not sure what other mailing lists might be integrated, but I suspect they'll be
relatively newly invented themselves.

I don't want anyone to feel beat about the head and shoulders on this, because the site is clearly moving in the proper direction. But I'm on Roy's side of "less is more".

[pstout]

We've looked at forum organization and I'm completely open to any organization that makes sense. If anyone has a suggestion on a more effective organization please feel free to drop me a note - paul [dot] stout [at] ingres [dot] com - and I'll give it a look.

[pstout]

Hey guys,

We appreciate all feedback but I've noticed we have two votes for "bad" and no associated comments. If it's truly that bad please let us know what you think; we want to do everything possible to make the community website useful for everyone.

[rhann]

FWIW I voted "Good. Major steps were taken in the right direction but there's still a long way to go". I won't repeat my earlier observations, but I'll write up some notes on what I think would be nice to have. I think most of my suggestions will boil down to simplifications--though I don't know if something that is simple use will be simple to build.