[IronPython] Mailing list vs. Web discussions on CodePlex

[JoeSox]

On 12/10/07, Dino Viehland <dinov at exchange.microsoft.com> wrote:
>
> Just thought I'd collect some opinions here.  Internally we discussed this
> sometime ago but never made any decisions and haven't done much to push this
> forward...  On CodePlex we have the ability to enable a discussion forum
> (which would look like
> http://www.codeplex.com/CodePlex/Thread/List.aspx) where
> people could post questions, discuss issues, etc...  CodePlex is heavily
> RSS-enabled so you could also get RSS feeds to track the discussions in RSS
> form.  There've been some requests on the main page
> (http://www.codeplex.com/IronPython) and at least one
> person who didn't like the mailing list.
>
> But obviously we don't want to get rid of the mailing list format -
> personally it's the format I prefer (and find the least overhead for
> replying).  But I've started to use RSS a lot recently so I can certainly
> see the appeal there, and maybe others here do as well...  Overall my own
> personal worry is that we'll be fragmenting the two discussions and actually
> hinder some discussion.
>
> So, thoughts?  Should we:
>     Very easy:
>         just open the flood gates on the discussions and everyone can go
> where they want - let the search engines sort it out!
>     vs Requires some work:
>         open up the RSS feed but setup some thread-propagation-bot?
>         open up the RSS feed but send out regular digests?
>     vs the unknown:
>         something completely different?


I think an email and forum combination sounds like the most obvious
solution. For example, some online groups you can just reply to an
email and it gets sent to the distribution list and also posts to the
message board.  Isn't the Microsoft Robotics Studio forum already
using a solution like this? I forget it has been a few months since
being on that forum but I like the user interface on that forum and
the threading.
-- 
Later, Joe