Please get us a real forum

[stackm...@hotmail.com]

Hi there,

First of all, I'm sorry for posting this here, but I really have no idea where else I should put it and this is the closest to my concern.

Simply put, I'd like to have an official isocpp C++ forum. I'm talking about something where people can ask C++ programming questions, OS-specific C++ questions (like "How can I wrap the UNIX fork() system call in a C++-ish way?"), questions about a library, like Boost, or even just talk about offtopic stuff.

The reason is that Google Groups is horrible, for various reasons:
- It is slow. Probably because of all the AJAX stuff going on.
- Mailing lists are annoying as hell, I had to delete *over 400* emails until I found out that one can actually disable this. Why would I want to get emails in the first place?
- The WYSIWIG editor is just terrible, especially quotes and code. The textarea isn't resizable.
- No BB-Codes, which also allow for custom stuff.
- There are no forum accounts. I don't want Google to have my real email address.
- You can't PM other users.
- You can't get direct links to thread if you use the embedded version.

I think the C++ community profits from such a thing, as there would be a central place to ask questions. This is supposed to also replace the current forums.
I'd also help to setup or moderate, if time constraints are the problem.

Some guy on the internet whose name shall remain unnamed.

[Jeff Hardy]

On Mon, Jan 7, 2013 at 6:55 AM, <stackm...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> First of all, I'm sorry for posting this here, but I really have no idea
> where else I should put it and this is the closest to my concern.
>
> Simply put, I'd like to have an official isocpp C++ forum. I'm talking about
> something where people can ask C++ programming questions, OS-specific C++
> questions (like "How can I wrap the UNIX fork() system call in a C++-ish
> way?"), questions about a library, like Boost, or even just talk about
> offtopic stuff.

I think this is off-topic anyway, but stackoverflow (and who knows how
many other sites) already provide that. Maybe isocpp.org could add a
"Have Questions? Ask over there --> !" page to help people find the
best community to ask there question in. And I don't think anyone
wants yet another place to "talk about offtopic stuff".

>
> The reason is that Google Groups is horrible, for various reasons:
> - It is slow. Probably because of all the AJAX stuff going on.

Use you mail client of choice instead.

> - Mailing lists are annoying as hell, I had to delete *over 400* emails
> until I found out that one can actually disable this. Why would I want to
> get emails in the first place?

It's a mailing list, what did you expect?

> - The WYSIWIG editor is just terrible, especially quotes and code. The
> textarea isn't resizable.

Use you mail client of choice instead.

> - No BB-Codes, which also allow for custom stuff.

Use you mail client of choice instead.

> - There are no forum accounts. I don't want Google to have my real email
> address.

Use a phony one that hard-forwards to your real one; I'm sure someone
must offer a service like that.

> - You can't PM other users.

Email them.

> - You can't get direct links to thread if you use the embedded version.

That's an issue, but that's solved by using better list software (e.g.
mailman) instead of Google Groups.

While the google groups interface is awful, my mail client isn't. I
can decide which client I want to use - there's a million mail clients
to choose from, but only one interface to a forum. Mailing lists have
a long tradition in OSS development because they work, and this one is
no exception. And that's not even mentioning how much even the slight
barrier to entry that a mailing list provides raises the level of
discussion.

>
> I think the C++ community profits from such a thing, as there would be a
> central place to ask questions. This is supposed to also replace the current
> forums.
> I'd also help to setup or moderate, if time constraints are the problem.
>

You're proposing something that takes a lot of time and money to run,
monitor, maintain, and secure (web forums are a security nightmare)
with no added value - in fact, probably negative value on the internet
as a whole, because it creates yet another fragmented community. (See
also http://xkcd.com/927/).

So -1 from me.

- Jeff

[stackm...@hotmail.com]

You're being so ignorant, if I didn't know you were serious, i'd find it funny.

[Nicol Bolas]

On Monday, January 7, 2013 9:02:13 AM UTC-8, stackm...@hotmail.com wrote:

You're being so ignorant, if I didn't know you were serious, i'd find it funny.

You know, I would actually welcome a proper web-forum interface. But then "arguments" like this come along, and I start to wonder that maybe forcing a bad interface on people isn't a good way to weed out undesirables.

If calling someone with an opposing view "ignorant" is the sum total of your discussion ability, then maybe your not participating here is for the best.

[Lawrence Crowl]

On 1/7/13, Nicol Bolas <jmck...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You know, I would actually welcome a proper web-forum
> interface. But then "arguments" like this come along, and I start
> to wonder that maybe forcing a bad interface on people isn't a
> good way to weed out undesirables.

While email lists have known problems, they also have many known
accessibility solutions. So, nearly everyone can read one.

In contrast, nearly all web-forum interfaces have encountered have
poor adaptability and accessibility. And because they are often
ad hoc constructions of a small website team, they are often not
ever fixed. All of which means that some people are shut out of
web interfaces. So, I would oppose a requirement for a web-forum
interface.

--
Lawrence Crowl

[Nicol Bolas]

On Monday, January 7, 2013 8:10:52 PM UTC-8, Lawrence Crowl wrote:

On 1/7/13, Nicol Bolas <jmck...@gmail.com> wrote:
> You know, I would actually welcome a proper web-forum
> interface. But then "arguments" like this come along, and I start
> to wonder that maybe forcing a bad interface on people isn't a
> good way to weed out undesirables.

While email lists have known problems, they also have many known
accessibility solutions.  So, nearly everyone can read one.

In contrast, nearly all web-forum interfaces have encountered have
poor adaptability and accessibility.  And because they are often
ad hoc constructions of a small website team, they are often not
ever fixed.  All of which means that some people are shut out of
web interfaces.

I'm not sure what you mean by "accessibility" problems. In general, if you have a functioning web browser that was made in the last 10 years, you can access most PHP-based web forums. They rarely use JavaScript and even when they do, it's typically for superfluous stuff. So the question of being shut out seems rather moot.

If you're talking about I18n and l10n issues, I honestly have no idea how most PHP web forum software handles that sort of stuff. That being said, there are web forums in other languages. And it's not like we're getting a lot of non-English communication here. So this doesn't seem to be too big of a problem for us.

Similarly, I don't know what you mean by poor "adaptability". If you're talking about limited abilities to personalize the reading experience, I find that to be a strength of a web forum. Everyone sees the messages the same way. So you don't have to guess if someone's going to see your text properly; they very much will.

Just look around here. I'm probably the only person who consistently applies actual formatting to code blocks (or at least, Google Groups's code formatting blocks). For me, that makes the messages much easier to read and understand. But I imagine many people will be reading the non-HTML version of the message with all my hard work stripped out. Why? Because that's the standard for e-mail: plain text.

The web standard is HTML: richly formatted text.

The question really isn't whether someone can read them; it would be difficult to say that there are any significant difficulties accessing either one. And outside of personal preference, I dare say that there's no functional difference between them either. Both are equally effective methods of interpersonal communication among groups.

It's more a matter of how people want to read them. Of the form they take.

E-mail is something that is pushed on you; it's in-your-face. You open up your web client, and there's everything, from every mailing list that you're subscribed to. Yes, you'll often sort them into different folders, but the messages are still there, still saying, "You haven't read this and this and this."

A web forum is much less intrusive. If you don't visit a web forum for a week, you won't notice. You don't get these reminders that the web forum you're not visiting is still around or has X messages or whatever. Disconnecting from a community is easy; just don't go there anymore and you won't be around. Disconnecting from a mailing list requires first figuring out how to unregister yourself, then doing it. Or filter all such messages.

To put it another way, you have to want to keep participating in a web forum. Mailing lists will keep bothering you until you tell them to stop.

Web forums also have much better moderator access controls. Banning users, closing off-topic discussions, and so forth, are all vital components to maintaining a solid community. I'm not sure where Google Groups is in terms of that; I imagine the admins can ban users, but doing more fine-grained things like closing threads seems less likely. After all, a "thread" is nothing more than just a message with a subject; that's not something you can really "close". A person could put a filter on a specific subject, but that only works for them. If a mod needs to close down a topic entirely, there's no real recourse to that.

Similarly, there's no mechanism to ignore a user. Well, you could filter them in your e-mail client, but that's a very hard, binary "go away" switch. Most forums where you can ignore a user allow you to see that user's posts on a post-by-post basis, thus allowing you to confirm if you still want to ignore them or just to remind yourself why you did so. It also allows you to better track a thread of conversation.

Also, forums allow you the chance to edit your message after posting. I've gotten so used to that that it annoys me that I can't do it here. Correcting typos, fixing formatting, and all sorts of other things. For me, who has used web forums extensively for 15 years now, it really feels like I'm dealing with some archaic technology, some relic of a bygone era. I see the message right there. It's mine; I wrote it; just let me change that sentence so that it makes sense. I can do that everywhere else; why not here?

And then there's just personal preference. For example, I like to keep e-mail restricted to important and personal matters. When I open up my mail client, I want to see important things, not 20 messages of people arguing about some range concept I can't bring myself to care about. By separating forums and mail, you can have a place where important things go, and then a place where less important things can happen.

Some people personally don't feel comfortable throwing my e-mail address out there. And having to create spoof accounts to work around this is, well, exactly what it looks like: a hack to work around a flaw in a flawed system.

And then there's that LinkedIn present that Arthur sent the group this morning. I'm not blaming him; that was an accident. But it's the kind of accident that could never happen on a forum. A forum is a walled garden, a dedicated place focused on a community. While a mailing list is subject to the vagaries of accidental e-mail and so forth.

A lot of people of a more recent generation feel much more comfortable with browser-based communication. The browser is how they deal with 90% of their stuff anyway; why not add discussions to that? For them, web forums are what communities are built on. Email is for personal correspondence, behind the scenes. Intimate.

I think the only significant downside to a web forum is that if the server goes down, all the information is lost. Forever. The database format is usually some form of SQL, which is not easily readable or enumerable. And while backups and such will obviously be done, there's something to be said for the de-centralized nature of a mailing list that everyone involved has some part of the record of everything that was said.

[Lawrence Crowl]

On 1/7/13, Nicol Bolas <jmck...@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Monday, January 7, 2013 8:10:52 PM UTC-8, Lawrence Crowl wrote:

> > On 1/7/13, Nicol Bolas <jmck...@gmail.com <javascript:>> wrote:
> > > You know, I would actually welcome a proper web-forum
> > > interface. But then "arguments" like this come along, and I start
> > > to wonder that maybe forcing a bad interface on people isn't a
> > > good way to weed out undesirables.
> >
> > While email lists have known problems, they also have many known
> > accessibility solutions. So, nearly everyone can read one.
> >
> > In contrast, nearly all web-forum interfaces have encountered have
> > poor adaptability and accessibility. And because they are often
> > ad hoc constructions of a small website team, they are often not
> > ever fixed. All of which means that some people are shut out of
> > web interfaces.
>
> I'm not sure what you mean by "accessibility" problems. In general,
> if you have a functioning web browser that was made in the last 10
> years, you can access most PHP-based web forums. They rarely use
> JavaScript and even when they do, it's typically for superfluous
> stuff. So the question of being shut out seems rather moot.

Is the forum usable with images disabled?
Does it work with screen readers for the blind?
Does it work if the fonts are highly magnified?
Does it work if the window size is small?
Is it sensitive to various forms of color blindness?
Does it work on grey-scale screens?
Does it provide support for fonts for dyslexics?
Is it usable without a mouse?
Does it cause discomfort for the photosensitive?

Making web pages work for everyone generally means either that
they are very simple or very complicated. If the page is somewhere
inbetween, some folks will have trouble with it.

> If you're talking about I18n and l10n issues, I honestly
> have no idea how most PHP web forum software handles that
> sort of stuff. That being said, there are web forums in other
> languages. And it's not like we're getting a lot of non-English
> communication here. So this doesn't seem to be too big of a
> problem for us.

How well do the forums work for offline language translation?

> Similarly, I don't know what you mean by poor "adaptability". If
> you're talking about limited abilities to personalize the reading
> experience, I find that to be a strength of a web forum. Everyone
> sees the messages the same way. So you don't have to guess if
> someone's going to see your text properly; they very much will.

Really? Which character set? Which font? Which characters that you
are using are not represented in my font? Which font distinctions
have been lost? Which browser rendering algorithm? Sorry, but I
_rarely_ see a web page as the author expected.

> Just look around here. I'm probably the only person who
> consistently applies actual formatting to code blocks (or at least,
> Google Groups's code formatting blocks). For me, that makes the
> messages much easier to read and understand. But I imagine many
> people will be reading the non-HTML version of the message with
> all my hard work stripped out. Why? Because that's the standard
> for e-mail: plain text.

Curiously enough, the standard for C++ source files is plain text.

> The web standard is HTML: richly formatted text.

Semantic markup can be useful in making information widely
accessible, but semantic markup is not the same as formatting.
If you confuse the two, you run the risk of shutting out some people.

> The question really isn't whether someone *can* read them; it would

> be difficult to say that there are any significant difficulties
> accessing either one. And outside of personal preference, I

> dare say that there's no *functional* difference between them

> either. Both are equally effective methods of interpersonal
> communication among groups.

I disagree.

> It's more a matter of how people *want* to read them. Of the form
> they take.

I am all in favor of letting people read stuff how they want, but
in the web's current state, that mostly isn't true.

> E-mail is something that is pushed on you; it's in-your-face. You

> open up your web client, and there's everything, from *every*

> mailing list that you're subscribed to. Yes, you'll often sort
> them into different folders, but the messages are still there,
> still saying, "You haven't read this and this and this."

So attach a news reader to your mail feed and read it that way.

> A web forum is much less intrusive. If you don't visit a web
> forum for a week, you won't notice. You don't get these reminders
> that the web forum you're not visiting is still around or has X
> messages or whatever. Disconnecting from a community is easy;
> just don't go there anymore and you won't be around. Disconnecting
> from a mailing list requires first figuring out how to unregister
> yourself, then doing it. Or filter all such messages.

True.

> To put it another way, you have to *want* to keep participating

> in a web forum. Mailing lists will keep bothering you until you
> tell them to stop.

To be honest, I see no reason to make it easier for the unengaged.

> Web forums also have much better moderator access controls. Banning
> users, closing off-topic discussions, and so forth, are all vital
> components to maintaining a solid community. I'm not sure where
> Google Groups is in terms of that; I imagine the admins can ban
> users, but doing more fine-grained things like closing threads
> seems less likely. After all, a "thread" is nothing more than just
> a message with a subject; that's not something you can really
> "close". A person could put a filter on a specific subject, but
> that only works for them. If a mod needs to close down a topic
> entirely, there's no real recourse to that.

There are moderated mailing lists, but the committee has not needed
one yet.

> Similarly, there's no mechanism to ignore a user. Well, you
> could filter them in your e-mail client, but that's a very hard,
> binary "go away" switch. Most forums where you can ignore a user
> allow you to see that user's posts on a post-by-post basis, thus
> allowing you to confirm if you still want to ignore them or just
> to remind yourself why you did so. It also allows you to better
> track a thread of conversation.

Okay.

> Also, forums allow you the chance to edit your message after
> posting. I've gotten so used to that that it annoys me that I can't
> do it here. Correcting typos, fixing formatting, and all sorts
> of other things. For me, who has used web forums extensively for
> 15 years now, it really feels like I'm dealing with some archaic
> technology, some relic of a bygone era. I see the message right

> there. It's *mine*; I wrote it; just let me change that sentence so

> that it makes sense. I can do that everywhere else; why not here?

There is value in a write-only message system, as it preserves
the histor. Being able to edit messages after they have been sent
means that history can be revised. I hope we don't go there.

> And then there's just personal preference. For example, I like to

> keep e-mail restricted to *important* and *personal* matters. When

> I open up my mail client, I want to see important things, not 20
> messages of people arguing about some range concept I can't bring
> myself to care about. By separating forums and mail, you can have
> a place where important things go, and then a place where less
> important things can happen.

Well, I make that separation all the time in Gmail.

> Some people personally don't feel comfortable throwing my e-mail
> address out there. And having to create spoof accounts to work

> around this is, well, exactly what it looks like: a *hack* to

> work around a flaw in a flawed system.

Okay.

> And then there's that LinkedIn present

> <https://groups.google.com/a/isocpp.org/d/topic/std-proposals/A8SnBVHwUqU/discussion>

> that Arthur sent the group this morning. I'm not blaming him;
> that was an accident. But it's the kind of accident that could
> never happen on a forum.

Perhaps.

> A forum is a walled garden, a dedicated place focused on a
> community. While a mailing list is subject to the vagaries of
> accidental e-mail and so forth.

With email, I can keep a personal archive. That is much harder to
do with a forum.

> A lot of people of a more recent generation feel much more
> comfortable with browser-based communication. The browser
> is how they deal with 90% of their stuff anyway; why not add
> discussions to that? For them, web forums are what communities
> are built on. Email is for personal correspondence, behind the
> scenes. Intimate.

If you want a web interface, fine. All I'm saying is that only
going that way is going to be a problem for some people.

> I think the only significant downside to a web forum is that if
> the server goes down, all the information is lost. Forever. The
> database format is usually some form of SQL, which is not easily
> readable or enumerable. And while backups and such will obviously
> be done, there's something to be said for the de-centralized
> nature of a mailing list that everyone involved has some part of
> the record of everything that was said.

> > So, I would oppose a requirement for a web-forum interface.

--
Lawrence Crowl

[Arthur Tchaikovsky]

Hi to everyone,

Guys, I want to really apologize for the unfortunate LinkedIn post. As Nicol rightly observed that was pure accident, I simply didn't realize that this address was checked when I was sending those invitations. Please accept my sincerest apologies. 

[Roman Perepelitsa]

2013/1/7 <stackm...@hotmail.com>

Hi there,

First of all, I'm sorry for posting this here, but I really have no idea where else I should put it and this is the closest to my concern.

Simply put, I'd like to have an official isocpp C++ forum. I'm talking about something where people can ask C++ programming questions, OS-specific C++ questions (like "How can I wrap the UNIX fork() system call in a C++-ish way?"), questions about a library, like Boost, or even just talk about offtopic stuff.

StackOverflow is great for these kinds of questions (http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/c%2b%2b). I believe it satisfies all the requirements you listed for the forum. Give it a try.

Roman Perepelitsa.

[Beman Dawes]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 2:10 AM, Lawrence Crowl <cr...@googlers.com> wrote:

> Is the forum usable with images disabled?
> Does it work with screen readers for the blind?
> Does it work if the fonts are highly magnified?
> Does it work if the window size is small?
> Is it sensitive to various forms of color blindness?
> Does it work on grey-scale screens?
> Does it provide support for fonts for dyslexics?
> Is it usable without a mouse?
> Does it cause discomfort for the photosensitive?

And these are very real problems that several committee members must
cope with every day of their lives.

--Beman

[Martinho Fernandes]

Should this discussion be here? Maybe the std-discussions list is more
appropriate? If it isn't, just ignore me.

[Klaim - Joël Lamotte]

On Tue, Jan 8, 2013 at 1:57 PM, Martinho Fernandes <martinho....@gmail.com> wrote:

Should this discussion be here? Maybe the std-discussions list is more appropriate? If it isn't, just ignore me.

I'm not for or against having a forum application instead of a mailing list (I have tons of filters in my gmail account to make sure I'm seeing

what I want only if I want to, like on a forum)
, but just wanted to point that moving a topic is one of the moderation tools not possible with mailing lists. (if needed)


By the way, the D community built it's own tool in D to display a forum that is under-the-hood a mailing list, so both works (almost like the google one but . 

One of the advantage is that you can host it yourself instead of relying on google for example.

One of the disadvantage is that you have to host it yourself instead of relying on google for example.

I believe it shares the same disadvantages on moderation than any mailing list based system.

Whatever people here prefere, I think this discussion will not be followed by any act and there will be the status quo on using this system.

Joel Lamotte

[Beman Dawes]

To the extent that the original posting was on topic at all,
std-discussions might have been more appropriate. Running these
unmoderated lists is a bit of an experiment.

It might be helpful if we had a written discussion policy, perhaps
along the lines of http://www.boost.org/community/policy.html. Any
volunteers?

--Beman

[Joshua Boyce]

I'd like to add that I often go on trips where I'm without internet access for a couple of days (I don't even get mobile coverage), and being able to sync my email to my phone and then read the mailing lists I'm subscribed to offline is a great perk for me. Much more difficult to do with a forum.

[Nikolay Ivchenkov]

On Tuesday, January 8, 2013 9:14:01 AM UTC+4, Nicol Bolas wrote:

I'm probably the only person who consistently applies actual formatting to code blocks (or at least, Google Groups's code formatting blocks).

Probably, that's because Google Groups's code formatting is terribly implemented. The last time I tried to use it here, the editor worked very slowly and the resulting message was truncated. I prefer to use suitable formatting on forums with clever implementation, but I definitely don't want to deal with that Google's pornography anymore.

[Bb Hh]

Personally I don't think a web-based forum instead of a mailing list would make help for most people, though I'm not against it.
My Galaxy Note II is strong enough as a mail client or browser:)
My true problem is, Google service might be GFWed someday in China mainland(depend on ISP). It used to be always banned without https/VPN, and is utterly slow now.

2013/1/13 Nikolay Ivchenkov <ts...@mail.ru>

On Tuesday, January 8, 2013 9:14:01 AM UTC+4, Nicol Bolas wrote:

I'm probably the only person who consistently applies actual formatting to code blocks (or at least, Google Groups's code formatting blocks).

Probably, that's because Google Groups's code formatting is terribly implemented. The last time I tried to use it here, the editor worked very slowly and the resulting message was truncated. I prefer to use suitable formatting on forums with clever implementation, but I definitely don't want to deal with that Google's pornography anymore.

--