Re: Octave should create a forum

[Mike Miller]

On Tue, Dec 31, 2019 at 11:02:54 -0600, GoSim wrote:
> Evidently it was not enough to post in the help section so I also post it
> here.

Thank you. For everyone else, I asked GoSim to propose this on the
maintainers list after first asking on help-octave.

> A real forum, not like nabble which is more like a backup for a mailing list
> and with a horrible user interface. I think it would be good for your
> community and would increase activity with more questions and answers and
> info in general.

I agree that nabble is just a shoddy front end for the mailing list and
I can't recommend anyone use it. I also agree that a modern discussion
forum might lower the barrier to entry for new users to participate in
the community. I am a seasoned free software participant, and even I
find mailing lists tedious and a little arcane.

I think the technical aspects are solved. This is not the kind of change
where we can say "if you are interested, go ahead and do the work, and
show us the result when it's ready".

The social aspects would need some discussion and buy in from the
community before something like this can be tested. For example, who
will administer the forum, who will moderate, who will participate, what
discussions will be in scope, what will be out of scope, how and when
will we encourage use of the forum instead of the mailing lists or IRC,
how will we evaluate success, and so on.

I would personally be happy to have a Discourse instance for Octave help
and development discussions at https://discourse.octave.org.

-- 
mike

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