Hi Thomas,
With all due respect, a forum is not for you, its for the users. I know that sounds rude, but it isn't! A wiki is a great replacement for documentation, but Roundcube still needs a way to provide support to users who need help. Wiki's are not the place for asking questions, but as a sort of end point of all user and system knowledge. 

If mailing lists are your preferred way to communicate for the community, then thats great! But what you need out of communication, is different from how I, for example, use it. Me? I personally loath mailing lists because my inbox gets stuffed with loads of threads, some I may be able to help with, some not. Also, if I unsubscribe, then I have to hack through the archive to see what I missed. What if I want to respond to a particular thread? Then I have to go through the process to subscribe again. With a forum, you chose what you get involved with, and if you leave its easy to pick back up again later. 

But crucially, with a forum, you can do two things: first it cuts down on mailing list traffic because users have a different outlet for their queries. Second, over time the knowledge available on threads can be pushed upwards into the wiki. Over time, the wiki will still become the defacto knowledge center. 

If you think about it, you have two fundamental streams of people. Developers and Users. Most Open Source projects keep these streams separate for a reason. 

Users: forums -> wiki
Developers: mailing lists -> wiki

With of course bug tracking working across the both. 

Anyway, all I'll say is I'm open for people to disagree, as long as they understand that the two streams  can and should be seperate. I don't see why the two can't co-exist peacefully. I mean, if you asked us, I'm sure there would be agreement that the developers should lurk where they feel most comfortable. I mean, without them (and you Thomas), there would be no Roundcube!! 

Thoughts anyone?

Geoffrey

On Thu, 09 Mar 2006 11:59:12 +0100, Thomas Bruederli <roundcube@gmail.com> wrote: