[mythtv] MythTV Forums

[Stuart Morgan]

On Monday 10 Feb 2014 10:13:49 Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> On Mon, 2014-02-10 at 10:05 -0500, Brian J. Murrell wrote:
> > I wonder if whoever is driving the mythtv community forums wants to
> > explain why setting up forums is a good idea.  Just curious, though.
> > Because I really don't see how/why it's a good thing.
> 
> And to be clear, I mean "explain" in the context of it's meaning "make
> clear to someone", not "account for".  Nothing needs accounting for.
> I'm just curious and want to be enlightened.


Firstly, a lot of people here seem to be making an assumption that the forums 
will replace the mailing lists. That's not the case. We've discussed a 
'bridge' so that mailing lists posts appear in the forums and vice-versa, but 
there is some working needed to permit that so it's not yet clear whether it 
will happen.

We've been constantly nagged for years to provide forums by people who prefer 
them over mailing lists. The forums were created because, whether you or I 
agree, they are much more popular with people than mailing lists. If I were to 
guess why, it's because it's much easier to sub-divide discussion by topic and 
to ignore the subjects that don't interest you. They allow images to be posted 
inline with discussions so you no longer need to upload screenshots to dodgy 
image upload sites. Forums don't fill your inbox with dozens of emails a day, 
you can dip in and out as your time allows.

BTW I note that although we're being asked to explain why we've introduced 
forums, no-one has yet voiced a single argument against them except to refer 
to "disadvantages". Now I'm not saying there aren't some valid ticks in the 
'cons' column, but if my experience is anything to go by, at least some of the 
objections will be based invalid assumptions.

FWIW, there are advantages too, some of which I've mentioned above. Others 
include the possibility to properly moderate postings, removing spam and 
moving threads to their correct forums. No wading through endless off-topic 
threads as they'll be moved to the 'Off-topic' forum. No more double posting, 
mis-formatted html emails or extremely long emails where no-one has bothered 
to crop the previous email(s) to just the bits they are responding too.
-- 
Stuart Morgan