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Date: Sun, 20 Nov 2011 19:56:11 -0500
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 <CAP-ksogUKEv-8zmk3wM8ZD_irudMnTjshasBvkQARfgUU8ecVg@mail.gmail.com>
Subject: Re: oooforum.org
From: Rob Weir <robweir@apache.org>
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org
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On Sun, Nov 20, 2011 at 7:26 PM, Louis Su=C3=A1rez-Potts
<lsuarezpotts@gmail.com> wrote:
> On 20 November 2011 15:48, Peter Roelofsen <p_roelofsen@tele2.nl> wrote:
>> The situation at oooforum.org is highly problematic. On the one hand it
>> still has a large collection of very valuable posts, I believe largely i=
n
>> the Code snippets and Macros and API forums (the main reason why some pe=
ople
>> still bother to fight a losing battle against the spammers). On the othe=
r
>> hand, spammers have free rein there, as moderators and active admins don=
't
>> have sufficient powers to stop a spammer dead in their tracks. The only
>> active admins at the moment are Andrew Pitonyak and JohnV - and they can=
't
>> decently ban a spammer, they can only delete their account - so that the=
y
>> can make a new one with the same e-mail address. Moderators (I'm one) ca=
n
>> only delete posts and threads, and lock, move and split threads, they ca=
n't
>> stop a spammer.
>>
>> In my view the best thing to do would be to have a script download all
>> topics that are worth saving,m and after that inform the modes and lower
>> admins to stop moderating the forum, so that the site admin, one Ed, wil=
l
>> after a while close the place.
>
> As with any value judgement=E2=80=A6
>
> How difficult would it be simply to port the entirety of the content
> to a static site, close it to comments, point to it as needed, and
> start fresh with a 1) server for user-contributor-developer forums and
> b) policy enabling federation by domain (or so) inclusion of
> sympathetic sites?
>

So, we have Apache hosted user community forums for OpenOffice already:

http://user.services.openoffice.org/

This was just recently migrated onto Apache servers.

It has some developer-focused areas, for extensions and UNO API work.

What more can we do beyond that?  It might be worth thinking of it in two w=
ays:

1) What can we do to grow the community in such areas?  Consolidating
existing communities is also a good thing, since there are network
effects that benefit larger communities.

2) What can we do to better serve users by aggregating content, sties,
etc., to offer "one stop shopping" for support questions, etc.

Personally, I'd put the community building side as the first priority.
 if we get that right, then the content side will follow.

To your question on aggregation, today we have this:

http://support.openoffice.org/

So we do already have a central support site that brings the options
together, including 3rd party websites.  I see no reason why that
cannot continue.

To go much beyond that would require more thought. But some things are
possible.  For example, if another website that was closely tied to
OpenOffice wanted to contribute its content to Apache, and the
owner/community of that website was interested in further working on
that content or service at Apache, then that would be an ideal match.
 Receiving a dump of unmaintained content would less ideal.  We'd
rather have communities with code/content coming to Apache.

But in general I don't think we want to blur too much the distinction
between what is in the Apache project versus what is not.  We don't
want users to be confused by this.  So although we can have links,
even prominent links to relevant external resources, they would need
to be clearly marked as non-Apache.


Regards,

-Rob


> Louis
>>
>> floris v aka Peter Roelofsen
>>
>