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Subject: Re: An introduction and a discussion about the OpenOffice User Forums
From: Dave Fisher <dave2wave@comcast.net>
In-Reply-To: <4E355D60.5000708@ellisons.org.uk>
Date: Sun, 31 Jul 2011 12:45:59 -0700
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References: <4E355D60.5000708@ellisons.org.uk>
To: ooo-dev@incubator.apache.org

Hi Terry,

Welcome. We have had some discussion about the user forums already, but =
it was over a month ago. We have areas on the Community Wiki for =
planning transition. [1] [2]

[1] https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Site-PPMC-Plan
[2] =
https://cwiki.apache.org/confluence/display/OOOUSERS/Transition+Planning

Please create a page on the wiki under "Transition Planning" with these =
and further details. We'll then engage Infrastructure and get forward =
traction on finding the home for user.services.openoffice.org.

Regards,
Dave

On Jul 31, 2011, at 6:49 AM, TerryE wrote:

> Hello all,
>=20
> My name is Terry Ellison and I am the lead community administrator and =
maintainer for the OOo user forums (user.services.openoffice.org).  I =
was one of the core of community members which set up the forums in =
October 2007, and before that I was active on the alternative (English) =
oooforums.org.  I am also a moderator on the VirtualBox.org forums and a =
member of the QA team on phpBB (the forum application used to implement =
the forums).  My contributions to the OOo development itself are small =
(I fixed a couple of memory leaks in the Basic RTS and understand the =
code base of this subsystem). I had 30 years service with EDS (now part =
of HP) rising through system development, technical mangement to =
eventually operations CTO for Europe, before retiring early because of =
illness (ME/CFS which I am slowly recovering from)
>=20
> What I would like to discuss here is what we do with the forums.  In =
the four years since their creation, we have added another 8 language =
forums to the original English one: French, Spanish, Italian, Dutch, =
Hungarian, Japanese, Chinese and Vietnamese.  Across all forums we have =
some 75,000 registered members, who have created 300,000 posts on 78,000 =
topics. We have also gone through 5 phpBB version upgrades.
>=20
> However, the main use of the forums is not by the posting members, but =
by guest users who browse these topics to find answers to their OOo =
problems and the search engines which index the forum content.  We get =
roughly 200,000 page requests / day (that is web pages -- the images, =
CSS, etc. add ~4 x in terms of Apache requests).
>=20
> I and the rest of the OOo community activists believe that this =
content and facility provides a valuable service to the wider OOo user =
community, so we are keen to see its continuity and seamless transfer to =
part of the Apache.org project.
>=20
> The technical aspects are a little detailed, but this was my =
professional area, so these aren't a risk if I am allowed to support =
this.  I'll leave these to further discussion and the appropriate cwiki =
page.  The main issues seem to be of approvals, support, infrastructure =
resource allocation, since the technology set used by the forums is =
phpBB + OOo-specific customisation, and this is a new service for the =
current infrastructure team even though it runs on a standard LAMP =
stack.
>=20
> The purpose of the note is to raise this issue with the wider =
community and to provide a vehicle for discussing any related queries.
>=20
> Regards
> Terry Ellison