Munich Meetup Notes
Ingo Schommer
We were all looking forward to the famous "currywurst"
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Currywurst) at our meetup location
in Schwabing, but as it turns out the place had shut down since
our location scout had last been there two weeks ago!
So, we improvised some notes on a napkin and directed
people towards our fallback location nearby. Luckily enough
we gathered everybody pretty quickly, and sat down for a tasty
Weizenbier with a group of 8.
Two of the group were traveling down from the Netherlands,
we had Tim Copeland coming over from London, and Philipp
Krenn, an ex-GSOCer, visiting from Salzburg, Austria,
as well as some locals and an ex-SilverStripe employee :)
The experience level varied greatly, some just checking
out the product upon recommendation by friends, others
are working on it since the very first 2.0.0 release and using
SilverStripe as one of their main tools in an agency context.
We talked about ways to better manage the community,
particularly in the forums on silverstripe.com - and
ways to better communicate our development and patch
process.
An interesting discussion revolved around the role of a CMS
in SEO, why multilevel-urls are important, clean markup helps,
but in the end you get most of the way simply with good content -
so the technical role of a CMS is just to facilitate these factors.
We had an interesting insight in the dutch CMS-market, which
is apparently dominated by Java-based proprietary solutions - so
its good to know that we've got evangelists for SilverStripe over there!
Sigurd Magnusson
in...@lemon8.nl
I'm convinced there is a big market for Silverstripe in Holland... ;)
in...@lemon8.nl
is to create some kind of "question-valuing" system in the community.
Right now the forum is flooded by a lot of newbie questions, which is
great in itself , but it also means questions asked by more
experienced users get easily flooded or overlooked. Since these are
probably questions only more experienced users can answer I feel these
are the questions , if they have to make a choice , the Core devs
should spend their valuable time on instead of the beginner
questions.
It's hard to implement this idea , but one could for example 'appoint'
community members to act as a kind of forum-moderator (there are
always people who love to do that) so forum posts get moved to their
appropriate section ("getting started section" and "advanced
questions" for example) ....
Nicolaas Thiemen Francken - Sunny Side Up
Sigurd Magnusson
> a. first site
> b. made a few sites with some PHP work
> c. made a lot of Silverstripe sites with plenty of coding changes
Good ideas.
The forum shows number of sites/posts/etc, which helps with this
already :)
Sigurd
Michael Gall
Michael.
Checkout my new website: http://myachinghead.net
http://wakeless.net
Sam Minnee
how switching from a forum to a mailing list would change the content
of the discussion.
We're working on a revamp of the website, including a better selection
of forum groups - for example, having an "installation issues" forum.
Hopefully this will help relegate the noise to a more clearly defined
bucket.
Joe Crawford
> Wouldn't we just get the same noise in a mailing list? I fail to see
> how switching from a forum to a mailing list would change the content
> of the discussion.
The barrier to entry on the forums is that I forget to go there. It
does not integrate with email, with RSS feed readers, and the other
ways people communicate online. A mailing list further can be archived
on the web just the way forums are.
I find forums generally terrible in terms of user interface, and
archivabilty. A mailing list further gets around access restrictions
some employers have with regards to forums. On my current contract I
had to specifically ask to get access to the silverstripe sites
because they were blocked by websense.
If SilverStripe proper will not begin a mailing list, perhaps it's up
to the users to create a SilverStripe "just plain web developers"
mailing list.
I love SilverStripe -- it's helped me get things done I didn't even
know I wanted to get done -- but when I first joined asked a question
on this list (thinking that this was the place to ask) I was chastised
and told to go to the forums. Count me in on whatever mailing list
someone wants to start up to SilverStripe general usage.
A proper mailing list, properly cultivated can have quite a high
signal ratio, and is easier to use, and less cumbersome than a forum.
Sam Minnee
> to the users to create a SilverStripe "just plain web developers"
> mailing list.
list:
* Confusing people by having too many different places to get help -
the whole 'paralysis of choice' issue.
* It splits the "support community" in two, meaning that there are
half as many people to respond to any given issue, or people feel like
they need to belong to both groups to get the full picture. Neither
of these options are particularly attractive.
That said, I don't want to needlessly oppose something that the
community wants. What are other people's thoughts on this issue?
Liam
You make great points above, and I believe the majority of users prefer forums as well. Just look around at every other open source piece of software out there, and forums are pretty much the standard for support.
Just my 2 cents.
Take care,
Liam
Delphinus
>> If SilverStripe proper will not begin a mailing list, perhaps it's up
>> to the users to create a SilverStripe "just plain web developers"
>> mailing list.
>>
> community wants. What are other people's thoughts on this issue?
>
the community needs. As in the SS community is large enough that it
needs a discussion medium big enough to separate the "noise" from the
questions to more advanced discussion.
Due to the fact it has a limited number of sections, the search is
frustrating, etc hence the suggestion to an alternative - mailing list -
was born.
Would a "powerful" forum like phpbb or whatever help this? I think so.
PS The above intends to be constructive criticism, the forum in its
current form is not bad for a certain use, but not the best fit for what
we need IMHO.
Also, will raise my hand for helping setup/moderate a phpbb/other forum.
Cheers,
Jack
Aaron Cooper
Sam Minnee
> Due to the fact it has a limited number of sections, the search is
> frustrating, etc hence the suggestion to an alternative - mailing list -
> was born.
the website redevelopment currenlty in progress. For example, we're
going to have a forum just for installation problems. ;-)
Hamish Campbell
'listy' and it's a real pain finding info/getting help. There is
already a wiki, forum and IRC channel - a mailing list might just
dilute things further.
On Oct 31, 10:16 am, "Aaron Cooper" <supp...@zanzomedia.com> wrote:
> I agree.
>
> The masses prefer forum structures IMHO (opposed to mailing lists) although Google Groups is not far off that sort of structure and people are becoming more and more particular.
>
> But I think being able to colate topics into categories makes sense (and the SS forums probably need to be recategorized anyway IMO)
>
> The pros of a mailing list is I get to see all threads that come in. But I can do the same with my iGoogle widget in the SS forums RSS. And lets be honest, the SS community is only going to grow, making the forum a more attractive option over everyone having to configure their Google Groups digests.
>
> I've actually NOT looked any further into an entire open source project becuase the only support was on list mechanism like Nabble. I just find them too time consuming and unstructured to bother with. Newbs often put a first impression on post count in the forums too.
>
> A
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Liam
> To: silverst...@googlegroups.com
> Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 9:36 AM
> Subject: [silverstripe-dev] Re: A SilverStripe users mailing list in addition to the forum?
>
> I wouldn't use the mailing list. I prefer forums.
>
> You make great points above, and I believe the majority of users prefer forums as well. Just look around at every other open source piece of software out there, and forums are pretty much the standard for support.
>
> Just my 2 cents.
>
Will Rossiter
> the community needs. As in the SS community is large enough that it
> needs a discussion medium big enough to separate the "noise" from the
> questions to more advanced discussion.
>
> Due to the fact it has a limited number of sections, the search is
> frustrating, etc hence the suggestion to an alternative - mailing
> list -
> was born.
As sam said we have rethought the categories for the forum which
should make it easier to find relative content also on trunk there is
some improvements to the search engine so it supports boolean logic -
see http://open.silverstripe.com/ticket/2654. Same with new admin
tools like moving threads to correct topics etc.
Also before 0.2 is released I would like to fix the search results so
it groups posts from threads (so you dont get all 10 posts in the
search results). This should hopefully make the search alot more
usable. If you have any other suggestions for the SS forum module feel
free to request them on open.silverstripe.com.
--
Will Rossiter | Developer
SilverStripe
http://www.silverstripe.com
Office: +64 978 7330 ext 47
Skype: will.rossi
Level 5, 97-99 Courtenay Place
Wellington, New Zealand
Sigurd Magnusson
solve short terms needs;
1. re-organisation of the forum
2. adding some small simple things to the forum that ought to be done
as part of it's general development
Once we see the effect of those changes we can revisit this.
Will -- have we got sticky posts coming? :)
Sig
Will Rossiter
Its on my todo list for next week. If anyone else in the community
wants to help out with the forum development talk to me or sean. We
always welcome peoples help / ideas.
Aaron Cooper
Stickies are one of the 5 last tickets in 0.2, which will be handy for the
usual FAQ's.
http://open.silverstripe.com/query?status=assigned&status=new&status=reopened&group=status&milestone=Forum+0.2
A bit of the frustration in the forum has already been mentioned in this
thread here. And this is the search quality there. Part of this will be
addressed by the thread grouping fix.
But, and I could be missing something, but search support for "quoted
phrases" doesn't seem to work.(this may be for a reason). This would be a
nice fix, as I think the first port of call for many people is to search on
a portion of an outputted error string in the forum. If I am wrong on this,
then the rather random results I tend to see have something to do with
relevance positioning instead (which is alot more difficult to deal with).
Having the thread topic in the <title> in 0.2 is going to be great, as this
will go a way towards people finding solutions to these sort of errors in
good old Google instead.
Cheers
Aaron Cooper
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sigurd Magnusson" <sig...@silverstripe.com>
To: <silverst...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 2:34 PM
Subject: [silverstripe-dev] Re: A SilverStripe users mailing list in
addition to the forum?
>
Aaron Cooper
missed you answering that.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Will Rossiter" <wi...@silverstripe.com>
To: <silverst...@googlegroups.com>
Sent: Friday, October 31, 2008 2:42 PM
Subject: [silverstripe-dev] Re: A SilverStripe users mailing list in
addition to the forum?
>
in...@lemon8.nl
- changing the structure of the forum into more specialized
subsections (which is going to happen according to Sam)
- maybe a bit of active moderation (to prevent "relevant" posts from
dropping too quickly)..... Maybe the community is already mature
enough to do that themselves (the moderation bit I mean) .... We could
ask ? I wouldn't be surprised if there are some guys that would like
to contribute that way....
- fixing the search
Don't see the point of opening up more channels (mailing-lists
etc.)...
Jamie Neil
> The barrier to entry on the forums is that I forget to go there. It
> does not integrate with email, with RSS feed readers, and the other
> ways people communicate online. A mailing list further can be archived
> on the web just the way forums are.
+1
My biggest gripe with forums is that I don't want to have to use 10
different methods to communicate with 10 different communities. Mailing
lists all use email and I can read them using the same interface.
The only real advantages that I can see with a forum is that it provides
an online searchable archive of threads and it provides a community
"feel" to a project, although Google groups pretty much covers these
issues AFAICS.
If (as I suspect will happen) the forums carry on as the primary
SilverStripe discussion area and are simply revamped, then I will
probably carry on dealing with them as I do now:
1) Only posting when I have a question that I've not been able to get
answered through the IRC channel
2) Only reading them when I've recently posted a question and I'm
waiting for a response.
3) Searching them using Google because it doesn't matter how good a
forum's built in search is...
Of all the technical communities that I participate in, every single one
uses a mailing list as it's primary form of communication. Forums are
fine for "the masses", but frankly they suck when you're a busy
developer who wants to help out a community but doesn't have the time to
fiddle around with yet another web interface.
</flame>
Jamie
Ingo Schommer
which means I can still use the interface I perfer.
This might be an RSS-enabled email-client as well. In my opinion,
this form of "pull" is superior to getting 100s of emails that
tend to clog your email folders or need filtering (which e.g. I can't do
on lightweight email-clients like iPhone Mail.app). Personally, I find
most
of the webbased mailinglist interfaces out there heavily confusing.
In terms of dealing with "yet another interface" for posting,
c'mon, its a textfield with a "post" button, can't be that hard :)
But apart from the flamewars which technology is better,
the main part (as Sam noted) is that we don't want to fragment
the community - which is now nearly exclusively on our forums,
so the first instinct is to keep the momentum going there.
-------
Ingo Schommer | Senior Developer
SilverStripe
http://silverstripe.com
Phone: +64 4 978 7330 ext 42
Skype: chillu23
Jamie Neil
> My 2 cents: I primarily monitor the forums through RSS,
> which means I can still use the interface I perfer.
> This might be an RSS-enabled email-client as well. In my opinion,
> this form of "pull" is superior to getting 100s of emails that
I have actually tried the RSS approach, and if the forums continue to be
the main community focus then it would be a good compromise at least for
reading. The main problems I had were:
1) The RSS feed was only 10 items long so unless you pull regularly then
stuff gets missed.
2) The text formatting sucks.
3) It's not threaded (at least it didn't seem to be when I was testing it).
> tend to clog your email folders or need filtering (which e.g. I can't do
> on lightweight email-clients like iPhone Mail.app). Personally, I find
> most
> of the webbased mailinglist interfaces out there heavily confusing.
I can imagine that subscribing to lots of mailing lists with the same
email account and no filtering must be painful, but isn't that the
advantage of more up to date mailing list implementations like Google
groups?
> In terms of dealing with "yet another interface" for posting,
> c'mon, its a textfield with a "post" button, can't be that hard :)
Of course it's not that hard, but it's inconvenient enough that I often
can't be bothered (I guess I'm lazy). A link in the RSS feed to exactly
the right page would help a lot though...
> But apart from the flamewars which technology is better,
> the main part (as Sam noted) is that we don't want to fragment
> the community - which is now nearly exclusively on our forums,
> so the first instinct is to keep the momentum going there.
Can I ask then why this mailing list is running on groups and not
another forum on the SilverStripe site?
I can see the sense in not wanting to fragment the community, but
there's always the possibility that a mailing list will actually
encourage more involvement rather than cannibalising the forums,
especially if the mailing list was aimed more at people who use
SilverStripe as a platform rather than an out of the box product.
Jamie
Nicolaas Thiemen Francken - Sunny Side Up
Sam Minnee
community to have a mailing list.
Here's what I propose:
* I'll set up silverstripe-...@groups.google.com.
* Anyone who wishes to use it can do so.
* But the forum will still be pitched as the first port of call for
new users wanting support.
I think that silverstripe-web-developers is better than silverstripe-
users because silverstripe-users might be taken to mean people who are
just using the CMS to edit content.
Any objections / suggestions for refinement?
Sigurd Magnusson
divide the conservations into two rooms.
We need to be careful we are not doing the same by adding a
silverstripe web developers list.
Whether this problem occurs is highly dependent on the new categories
of the forums so I strongly suggest we delay setting up a silverstripe-
web-dev list until the new categories are decided on.
I don't mind heavily on the technological choice between forum and
mailing list, but rather that people know confidently and clearly
where to ask and answer questions.
Nicolaas Thiemen Francken - Sunny Side Up
--
Nicolaas Thiemen Francken
Director - Sunny Side Up Ltd
skype: nicolaasthiemen
within NZ phone 0800 771 777
overseas call +64 274 771 777
n...@sunnysideup.co.nz
http://www.sunnysideup.co.nz
- client login: http://www.rakau.com/
- new quotes: http://www.sunnysideup.co.nz/services
- please support: http://www.localorganics.net/
- newsletter: http://www.sunnysideup.co.nz/contact
Sam Minnee
> mailing list, but rather that people know confidently and clearly
> where to ask and answer questions.
choice. The mailing list would be for those people. The forum would
remain the primary, "official" support channel.
So my question was more targeted at the people who have indicated that
they want a mailing list.
Aaron Cooper
I agree also. Different community members will have different preferences on where to post questions and monitor discussions.
Just putting forward some suggestions for forum category topics:
Installation Issues
Announcements
Introductions
General Discussion (not really necessary, but seems to be a staple of most communities – fosters a bit of “off the ball” chatter amongst members)
Contributed Modules
Contributed Themes
Contributed Widgets
Extending and Customizing (there is a lot of ambiguity between “Site Builders” and “Extending and hacking” at the moment – you never really know which to look in)
Tips, Tricks and Code Snippets
Layout and Design
Documentation
Content Management/Authoring
Showcase
Perhaps at a later date, add separate categories for popular native language based on community usage. (e.g. Spanish Discussions, German Discussions etc). We have already seen a fair bit of broken English on the forums, so it would be good to allow these users to discuss SS in their native tongue. Particularly so as the community grows.
The most important part IMO is to clearly state in the category description what each topic is for, and in some cases what it isn’t for.
Obviously, the more categories the forums goes with, the more thread movement will be needed. I volunteer to help with the cleanup there (if the mechanism is in place for movement)
Cheers
Aaron
Jamie Neil
> The problem is that some people *do* mind heavily on the technological
> choice. The mailing list would be for those people. The forum would
> remain the primary, "official" support channel.
Although my personal preference is a mailing list, I would still like to
be able to monitor the forums and answer more questions where I can.
Would it be possible to make the RSS feeds for the forums more
accessible? The main issues as I mentioned before are:
1) Limiting feed to the 10 most recent items means posts are missed if
you don't check the feed regularly enough.
2) BB Code tags are not parsed so formatting is often hard to read.
3) Posting a reply takes two clicks (I know it's a minor thing) - a
shortcut "post" link would be helpful.
I'd have a go at providing patches for these myself if I knew which
version of the forum code you are running :)
Jamie
Sam Minnee
> be able to monitor the forums and answer more questions where I can.
> Would it be possible to make the RSS feeds for the forums more
> accessible?
http://open.silverstripe.com/ticket/2999
Michael Gall
I think the aim should be to get a bit more involvement from more developers and I'm sure there are some developers lurking on this list that are more than capable of helping out. (Mat Weir)
Cheers,
Michael
Checkout my new website: http://myachinghead.net
http://wakeless.net
Hamish Campbell
solved the forum vs mailing list problem. If mailing list
functionality could be built into the forum, then there wouldn't be a
split in the community.
I have a whole lot of thoughts about where the community is headed -
but I'm curious to see what the silverstripe.com revamp will look like
first.
On Nov 3, 11:45 am, "Michael Gall" <mich...@wakeless.net> wrote:
> Part of the problem is that this list is targeted only at the core of SS,
> and people who have problems are promptly told to go to the forum. Why not
> just use this list for Q&A as well and then if the noise gets too much move
> it into another mailing list.
>
> I think the aim should be to get a bit more involvement from more developers
> and I'm sure there are some developers lurking on this list that are more
> than capable of helping out. (Mat Weir)
>
> Cheers,
>
> Michael
>