[clue] [ADMIN] Allowing CLUE members to start FORUM topics and add content

[Jon "maddog" Hall]

On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 18:25 -0600, YES NOPE9 wrote:
> > 
> > On May 11, 2011, at 4:35 PM, Jon maddog Hall wrote:
> > 
> > On Wed, 2011-05-11 at 15:13 -0600, YES NOPE9 wrote:
> >> FORUM capability would allow CLUE members to comment on various topics instead of using email.
> >> This would preserve the CLUE member interchanges of information.
> >> 
> >> How much is left to make this a reality on the DRUPAL 7 site ?
> >> 
> >> Gus
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> clue mailing list
> >> clue at cluedenver.org
> >> http://cluedenver.org/mailman/listinfo/clue
> >> 
> > 
> > GNHLUG, my user group, has had this discussion many times.
> > 
> > Searchable email archives such as those maintained by GNU/mailman
> > 
> > http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/features.html
> > 
> > are also methods of "preserving member interchanges of information", and
> > email filtering and digesting are things that can be chosen by an end
> > user which have no effect on the mail archives themselves.
> > 
> > Perhaps it is just me, but many times I see Forums where issues and
> > questions are brought up, and never answered because the people that
> > could give the answer have no real reason to go to the forum.  Or if
> > those people go to the forum, it is to find an answer for their own
> > question, not to answer the questions of a lot of other people.  Ergo
> > the questions still stay unanswered.
> > 
> > Whereas in an email list a person might see a subject line go past (like
> > this one) and feel strongly enough to take a couple of minutes out of
> > their day to reply to it (like I am).
> > 
> > However, it is your group, your email list and your (potential) Forum,
> > so at this point I bow out.
> > 
> > Warmest regards,
> > 
> > maddog
> 
> I agree that searchable email archives is very nice.
> Now if there was a way to 'push' some of the email text into the appropriate forum ???
> Gus

Gus,

A "Forum" (like a "cloud") is in the eyes of the beholder.

Take a look at the MHonArc mail-to-HTML converter (which interacts with
mailman) examples:

http://dcssrv1.oit.uci.edu/indiv/ehood/mhonarc.html#examples

particularly "lists rise up":

https://lists.riseup.net/www/

or

"hort.net"

http://www.mallorn.com/lists/

or

Freelists:

http://www.freelists.org/

and imagine that each one of those "lists" was a forum topic

Organized, searchable, yet was email at one time, with people signing up
to as many or as few email lists as they want through mailman.

Unfortunately sorting free-form email into a finite bucket of a "forum"
is not automatic.  It takes time and thought, so I have no answer for
taking one gigantic list and applying magic filters that will always to
a great job of filtering email into a particular forum.

But people could chose the mail list to ask the question of, and it
would be delivered to people's mail boxes, and be easily answered back
to that thread.

Then again, the choice about which forum to choose and where to put your
post also takes time and thought...

There is no easy answer.  If there was, we all would be using it.

md

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