Forum Moderators: rogerd
We publicly launched our software for service based e-Commerce and general e-Commerce recently and are considering adding forums for community development. Our project is Open Source GPL but we earn our living from subscription based support. We already have two mailing lists in place.
There has been a lively debate at typo3.org recently about whether they should host community forums on their site instead of only relying on mailing lists.
Can I get people's opinions on these questions?
- Should community forums be there from the start?
- Should the forums be the "Hub" of the site or do mailing lists deserve to be that?
- What types of sites do forums work best for?
- What Open Source project sites do their forums the best?
Hope this stimulates some good thinking as we want to provide the best services possible.
Cheers,
Damian
[edited by: rogerd at 4:03 pm (utc) on Nov. 21, 2005]
[edit reason] no specifics or URLs, please [/edit]
If I'm considering buying (or downloading) software, the first thing I check is the forum. My criteria:
1) Is there a lot of activity? (Good if "yes" - suggests a thriving project.)
2) Are there "orphan" (unanswered) posts? (Good if "no" - orphan posts suggest getting a questiobn answered quickly might be tough.)
3) Are users helping out, too? (Good if "yes" - suggests a busy community with more depth than a few developers.)
4) Are there any nightmares going on? (Good if "no" - I'm leery if there are dozens of posts from different users about a particular unresolved problem.)
By harnessing the power of community, you can provide better service to your users.
