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Community and *.tiki.org site organization

Community and *.tiki.org site organization


New forum idea

posts: 3665 United States

What do ya'll think of this idea...

Now that Tiki is on a regular release schedule, new versions are continuously being released. As a result, there are lots of folks on lots of different versions. For example 3.x is LTS, so it will continue to be in high use for quite a while, and yet 5.x is just a few months ahead.

Currently the forums have 1,000s of posts — it is difficult for a newbie to wade through all the posts to find specific information. As a result, the same questions get asked over and over.

My idea is to categorize the forums (i.e., subforums) by Tiki release.

For example:

  • Features/Usability
    • 2.x
    • 3.x
    • 4.x


etc.

Comments?

-R

posts: 4656 Japan

At least there could be a standard response to every post in the 2.x forum: 'upgrade'. wink.

My first thought was that having version-specific forums might not really help much, or might even be counterproductive, since issues often transcend versions, and people might limit where they check for answers, etc. In the past, I generally didn't think subdividing the forums would be a good idea.

But since 3.3 (long-term support version) and the current release version will increasingly diverge, the issues will probably become more and more distinct. In this context, having separate forums makes more sense.

It might also give us a methodical way to cull the forums of ancient posts; I imagine a "Features/Usability 1.9" forum could be dropped by now, for example, or made read-only for historical purposes.

Implementation detail: since technically Tiki doesn't support subforums, how would you arrange these in the forum list?

In practice, people might not pay attention to what version-forum they are posting in, if they do a search and then reply in response to whatever post comes up, for example, but moderators could move posts around more actively.

-- Gary

posts: 3665 United States

>
>It might also give us a methodical way to cull the forums of
>ancient posts; I imagine a "Features/Usability 1.9" forum could
>be dropped by now, for example, or made read-only for
>historical purposes.
>

I'm sure there are quite a few folks still running 1.9.x (in the forums and on IRC I've seen several folks migrating from 1.9.x -> 4.x). So, I think it should still be "live" — but with the understanding that it is no longer "supported."

>
>Implementation detail: since technically Tiki doesn't
>support subforums, how would you arrange these in the forum
>list?
>

I meant "subforums" only in terms of the display. I would propose replacing the existing Development, Support, and Worldwide groupings as follows:

Tiki Community

  • About the *.tikiwiki.org sites (infrastructure and organization)
  • Tiki Foundation


Development

  • Development


Documentation

  • Documentation


Feature Support

  • 4.x
  • 3.x
  • 2.x
  • 1.x


Installation Support

  • 4.x
  • 3.x
  • 2.x
  • 1.x


Theme Support

  • 4.x
  • 3.x
  • 2.x
  • 1.x


I would eliminate the feature-specific forums (multilingual, LDAP, etc.) and instead let folks post questions in the Feature Support forum.

I would also love to see a way to "tie" the wishlist/buglist trackers with the forums — I see a lot of overlap.

Also, I wonder if SUMO is planning to upstream some of their forum enhancements. It would be especially helpful if there were "templates" for forum posts, so we could capture all of the necessary information up-front (such as Tiki version, browser type, OS platform, etc.)... especially for the support forums.

I'm not entirely sure how to handle the non-English forms though...

>
>In practice, people might not pay attention to what
>version-forum they are posting in, if they do a search and
>then reply in response to whatever post comes up, for
>example, but moderators could move posts around more actively.
>

Since Tiki displays the full forum path in search results, I think it would be very helpful. Folks would instantly know which Tiki version a specific post refers to...


As I said... just an idea....

-R


posts: 3665 United States

I would like to revist/reopen this thread....

With the impending Tiki 5.0 release, there will be 3 different Tiki releeases considered "live" at the same time.

Does anyone have an opinion (yeah or nay or otherwise) about re-organizing the forum structures?


HTH,

- Rick | My Tiki Blog | My Tiki UserPage
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