Hi Peter. Thanks for posting your thoughts here. I've gone ahead and added some of my thoughts inline.<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Jan 10, 2008 11:36 PM, Harrison - Schaaffe <<a href="mailto:peter.harrison@bigfoot.com">
peter.harrison@bigfoot.com</a>> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff">
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<div><font face="Arial">It's good to hear servers can be donated.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial">If ads can be used to donate a token sum to <a href="http://laptop.org" target="_blank">laptop.org</a>, I
think it should be considered, even if they are only partially effective. I
agree that horizontal real estate can be an issue on the XO, but ads oriented
horizontally on the page should be OK. A final decision on this can be delayed
till after the union is completed. Now is really not the time.</font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br>If users don't mind, I don't either. I'm tending towards a "too little to bother" end of the argument. Am curious to hear what others think...
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<div><font face="Arial">This does bring up creating a process going forward on
making decisions that affect the community. There needs to be an arbitration
process or else flame wars can easily erupt to the detriment of the group.
Please take a look at this thread <a href="http://www.olpchelp.org/forums/showthread.php?t=54" target="_blank">http://www.olpchelp.org/forums/showthread.php?t=54</a>.
Change will a part of constant debates and figuring out an easy and fair way to
implement it, while also being nimble, will be really important. I think time
should be spent to discuss such a process.</font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Agreed. This is a wonderful idea, whether we adopt it verbatim or tweak the general policy, having a formal way to account for and request change is great.
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<div><font face="Arial">I agree vBulletin isn't open source and is therefore
against many principles of the philosophy. I tried running forums on many
different platforms, phpBB being one, but was left wanting. It was the
management features of vBulletin that make it really attractive.</font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial">Using the mass mailing feature of phpBB chokes at more
than about 1000 users. It just stops sending. I tried integration with packages
like phplist, but it wasn't seamless. </font></div>
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<div><font face="Arial">Modifications to phpBB require you to edit PHP template
files directly in the OS. Updates in any forum software package are common,
often overwriting PHP modifications.</font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br>For those just joining at home, the OLPC support forum currently uses phpBB version 2 (there is a version 3) for its unique support of a script called mail2forum. This was a neat design requirement in December, now after a good month of use, we can evaluate how helpful it has proven to be. The usefulness of mail2forum really ought to be a separate thread (trying to keep things manageable!). We can assume it is not a deal breaker for the time being. I would hold that there is not an immediate need change forum packages, but if we can find a better way to peel an apple...
<br><br>The phpBB group actually put together a feature comparison of version 3 with, among other, vbulletin: <a href="http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/compare.php">http://www.phpbb.com/about/features/compare.php</a><br>
<br>OLPC has taken a fairly strong open source stance, and the Support-Gang volunteers have (at least initially) echoed their interesting in keeping with that license. Frankly, I want the growing XO hackers to be able to run local forums if they want, and having the same (open, shareable) codebase can help us facilitate that.
<br><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div><font face="Arial">The way phpBB handles SPAM is another feature that needed
improvement. I recently noticed that within the month of December 2006, spammers
using various email addresses from <a href="http://cashette.com" target="_blank">cashette.com</a> and <a href="http://mail.com" target="_blank">mail.com</a> were signing up,
staying dormant and then spamming the forums a few months later.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>This was before I installed the reCAPTCHA (thanks, Phil!) tech from the great guys at the Internet Archive for the registration and the anonymous post pages. Since then, we have had no SPAM since.
<br><br>The CAPTCHA is actually part of the IA's program to digitize books (which is why you transcribe two words, one they know for sure and one they don't!). This pool of digitized books are then made accessible for free, and could even be among the books included on the School Servers. The cleverness of the design alone was worth adding it to the site. That it happens to eliminate automated SPAM is just an awesome side benefit. :)
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<div><font face="Arial">Many popular Linux forums use vBulletin, possibly for
these reasons. <a href="http://Linuxquestions.org" target="_blank">Linuxquestions.org</a> and <a href="http://Ubuntuforums.org" target="_blank">Ubuntuforums.org</a> come to mind. Please get
Redhat's written opinion on the matter, if it is really important to the group.
I don't think it should be from RedHat's perspective given this
precedence.</font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Redhat is not setting the precedence, OLPC is. The use case I mentioned above (XO users setting up their own forum) is a very probably case. Our mission is to support them technically, but also more generally to empower them intellectually. This might be called the View Source Key Requirement. Their ability to read, modify and deploy a version of software that we are familiar with allows us to do both.
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<div><font face="Arial">I will open up the admin console for <a href="http://olpchelp.org" target="_blank">olpchelp.org</a> to
anyone on this mailing list, based on a list of <a href="http://olpchelp.org" target="_blank">olpchelp.org</a> usernames (max 5 to
make it mangeable) provided by Michael Burns, as long as they promise not to
change anything. Take a look and compare vBulletin to phpBB.</font></div></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Thank you for the account, it will be useful to get a visual tour of vBulletin as well as a technical one. Provided the same look-but-don't-break policy, I'd be more than happy to give you an account to view the
<a href="http://olpc.osuosl.org">olpc.osuosl.org</a> forum for some of the tweaks I've done to the base software. <br> </div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
<div bgcolor="#ffffff"><div><font face="Arial">I think the differences between the two sites can be
overcome and a loose alliance isn't necessary. The full integration can be a
quick reality.</font></div></div></blockquote><div><br>Agreed. Once we get a plan of attack and decide what, where and how, the actual pull together should be the easy part. :)<br><br>I think it is fair to say the Community Support Forum is tier 2 on the OLPC support chain. Tier 1 is faq and related Support documentation on the wiki and the Getting Started guide. Tier 3 is RT tickets and direct follow-up with one of Adam Holt's growing army of Support Gang volunteers. With that in mind, a strong stance toward i18n and scale should be considered. We have hundreds of thousands of donors and users coming online everyday. Especially for languages that the SG volunteers doesn't speak as readily, providing the community tools to become self-sufficient is all the more important. Pootle, Wiki translations and localized forum pages are a good goal to set for countries we deploy to.
<br></div></div><br>-- <br>Michael Burns * Student<br>Open Source {Education} Lab