Open Source Ecology Forums

elifarley

For mailing-list-like discussions, some people prefer using Google Groups forums while others prefer Vanilla Forums (see Vanilla email integration and Migrating from Google Groups to Vanilla Forum: Google Groups / Vanilla).

The OSE Europe discussion group chose Google Groups over Vanilla, and I wanted to have the reasons publicly documented.

elifarley

@Nikolayhg said:

Google Groups are like Mailinglists - much more dynamic for quick communication than forums. You need to register and then you receive every time an email.

elifarley

But "[...] to register and then you receive every time an email" is just what happens when you are using the forum: you 'register' to a category and then you receive an email every time someone posts to that 'mailing list' (in other words, to that forum category) - see our forum tips page for more info.

One problem is that you can't send an email to the forum category (because currently, a forum category does not have an email address). Instead, you have to visit the discussion on the forum and post your reply.

If all that is true, then if I find a plugin that enables people to send emails to a forum category in order to reply, there would be no important difference between a Google group and a forum category ?

elifarley

@Nikolayhg said:

Better said:

In our forum the user has to follow the following steps:
1) Register
2) Wait until application is approved
3) Find out how to subscribe to 1 specific forum category (not sure whether you can subscribe to all) and then receive emails (haven't tested receiving email for 2 cases: new entry, comment).
4) In order to post information you have to open a the website of the forum and THEN write and publish

With Google Group or other Mailinglists you have the following steps:
1) Register + (optionally Confirm your email)
2) Post by emailing and receive everything on your email.

If all that is true, then if I find a plugin that enables people to send emails to a forum category in order to reply, there would be no important difference between a Google group and a forum category ?

This would cover step 4)
It would be great if we had a better opportunity for step 3) like default subscription?

elifarley

2) Waiting for the user application to be approved is optional. We can configure the forum so that new users simply type a captcha text and they have access to the forum, without the need to confirm their email nor to wait for an approval.

3) People can choose to receive an email every time there's a new discussion or a new comment on any discussion (on any category). Our forum can also be configured to automatically subscribe all new users to ALL categories.

elifarley

Here's a list of features to compare between Google Groups and Vanilla Forums:

Features that are cool, better, or new:

- Thread voting ala Stack Overflow. The best answers bubble to the top.
- Moderators - I'll be tapping some shoulders soon into the migration.
- Code syntax highlighting. We're using the same syntax highlighter found on Three20.info. Earlier today I pushed a change to the syntax highlighter that makes it possible to view API docs for any TT* object presented in source without any additional markup.
See a demo here:
http://forums.three20.info/discussion/9/read-before-posting-a-discussion
- Post styling with Markdown.
- Customization with Github. So far I've made it possible to specify your Github handle in your profile. In the future, I want to be able to autolink to issues and commits with SHA1s on Github.
- Discussion tagging.
- User accounts: signatures, avatars, post counts, and all that good stuff.
- Much better moderation tools.
- Structured categories. Places for people to rant or laugh.

Features that we already had:

- Email notifications when new posts are made. This is for those who still prefer an email digest of the community's activities.

Features we're going to lose:

- Being able to ask questions by simply sending an email. This is a tough one because I know some people prefer this method. Perhaps in the future we could write a mod for Vanilla that would allow us to send an email to for...@three20.info and have it post to the discussions.

Nikolayhg

Eli, how can I quote you? I don't find the functionality.

3) I still find it hard to subscribe! For example I go to http://forum.opensourceecology.org/categories/energy and I don't see any button for subscription. I read the http://opensourceecology.org/wiki/Vanilla_Forums#Email_Notifications but there is no Visual Info either, also no concrete text for subscription.

Automatic Subscription to All Topics would be good, but maybe not everyone would like it. Is it possible to CHOOSE to what you would like to subscribe (with check boxes or other simple way) during the registration or after that in some way?

Nikolay

elifarley

I'll try to add some screenshots to make the process easier.

Howdy, Stranger!

Categories

In this Discussion

Tagged

Open Source Ecology Forums