Re: browser interface to forums please?

On 04/05/2017 07:14 AM, vinny wrote:
> On 2017-04-05 15:11, Vincent Veyron wrote:
>> On Tue, 04 Apr 2017 12:01:24 +0200
>> vinny <vinny@xs4all.nl> wrote:
>>>
>>> Every time I tell someone about the mailinglists I then have to explain
>>> how they can subscribe, how to create folders, filters etc. And more
>>> often than not
>>> they just say forget it and go to some forum.
>>
>> On forums, all you see is the header for the discussion, and the
>> number of messages attached to it.
>>
>> It makes it much more difficult to follow discussions, because you
>> don't know if there are new messages or not, unless you memorized how
>> many were there the last time you looked at it. And even then, you
>> can't tell whether you even read them previously or not, which a
>> mailing list will tell you, because the messages are marked.
>
> It depends entirely on which forum software you use.
> If keeping track of read messages is a requirement then you would obviously
> use a forum that does that for you.
>
> But again, I'm not saying the mailinglist should be replaced by a forum.
> What I'm saying is that many users find forums a lot easier to use and
> give the choice,
> they will opt for the forum. Hence it makes sense to provide something
> for those users,
> if there is the manpower to do so.
>
>>> Can you expect Joe
>>> Average to do something like that
>>> if they want to get more involved in PgSQL?
>>>
>>
>> How hard is it to subscribe, create a folder and a filter? If that is
>> too involved, I don't see how they can get involved in postgres
>> anyway.
>
> That might be true if you are talking about contributors, sure, but
> we're not.
> Or at least, I'm not, and I guess that's where I'm mistaking. Perhaps
> the mailinglists
> are the way they are to encourage the more serious users to use them,
> and keep everyday questions out a little.

Everyday questions appear here all the time, so that is not the 
motivation. It is more that Postgres is a complex piece of software and 
questions/answers work better in the mailing list work flow then a 
forum. The added benefit is that the list is a tremendous resource and 
you will find many of your questions answered by just monitoring the 
list. There are days that the --general is really busy, but most times 
it very manageable, especially if you apply the eyeball filter to 
topics:) If someone wants to just drop in for a single question there is 
the IRC channel:

https://www.postgresql.org/community/irc/

or Stackoverflow:

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/postgresql

>
> That would be fine too, but don't put it like "if you this is too much
> work, you shouldn't be using postgresql".
>
>


-- 
Adrian Klaver
adrian.klaver@aklaver.com