Modernizing the Trisquel forums
The Trisquel forum has served for several years already, using some Drupal forum module. However, it has many issues:
- It is not responsive, meaning you can't read posts well on a smartphone or a tablet (unless you are constantly zooming, and trying to touch small buttons).
- Only some HTML can be used for post formatting, not Markdown or even BBCode.
- There could be better moderation tools (as well as more moderators...).
- It is "non-standard" in the sense that most people are not used to a forum that is embedded within Drupal.
- It could look better, more readable (some texts are quite small), and with a less distracting background.
I personally would recommend those free forum software: Flarum (PHP, MIT/Expat), Discourse (Ruby, GPLv2), NodeBB (Node.js, GPLv3). Such forum software would probably be hosted on a subdomain.
I know you guys are very attached to mailing lists, so I'll warn you already that those forum software are not intended to be used with e-mail. Generally, you can only reply through a Web browser.
There probably is no importer script for Drupal forums either, so the old forums will have to be accessible from somewhere.
Eventually, maybe redesign the whole site to look more modern and responsive. We could take inspiration from Antergos and Fedora.
It works great for me! :-)
I am a member!
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We could, but we are neither, and this forum works well as-is.
Voting to leave it alone,
Dave
On 10/03/2015 01:01 PM, name at domain wrote:
> Eventually, maybe redesign the whole site to look more modern and
> responsive. We could take inspiration from Antergos and Fedora.
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Only some HTML can be used for post formatting
One change that I would like to see is a syntax box or page where you can see what HTML elements can be used. For the quote below, for example, I had to use the "code" element instead of "blockquote". Personally I don't care about responsiveness since I don't own a "smart phone".
I am a member!
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Ok, that makes sense, or, allow markdown, with a link to a syntax
guide, like mediagoblin does.
On 10/03/2015 02:52 PM, name at domain wrote:
> One change that I would like to see is a syntax box or page where
> you can see what HTML elements can be used. For the quote below,
> for example, I had to use the "code" element instead of
> "blockquote". Personally I don't care at all about responsiveness
> since I don't own a "smart phone".
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Technical issues aside - different categories in the forum would be useful. This place is getting more crowded and so some structure would be good. A way to mark a topic as solved would also be good.
> The Trisquel forum has served for several years already, using some Drupal
> forum module. However, it has many issues:
Using a mailing list makes the posts as quickly accessible as one's email
provider can muster. I find that to be plenty responsive. Don't downplay
the email aspect for compatibility with free software either --
prioritizing access via a computer that is not a free software device (a
"smartphone") is painfully ironic in the context of discussions intended
for use by people discussing a totally free software operating system.
> Only some HTML can be used for post formatting, not Markdown or even
> BBCode.
I think that's good. I want to read what people have to say, not what fancy
stuff people pull off in formatting.
> It is "non-standard" in the sense that most people are not used to a
> forum that is embedded within Drupal.
You are claiming to speak for what "most people" are used to but providing
no evidence of how you arrive at your conclusion that you're accurately
summarizing their views.
> It could look better, more readable (some texts are quite small), and
> with a less distracting background.
Style strikes me as inconsequential both because with a mailing list
gateway I can make the posts look as I wish (including getting proper
threading information) without altering anyone else's ability to do the
same, and because style strikes me as entirely subjective.
> I know you guys are very attached to mailing lists, so I'll warn you
> already that those forum software are not intended to be used with e-mail.
I don't think taking away something we're attached to is going to make for
a good suggestion. I prefer more priority be given to what is being said,
what you say we're "attached to", and directly addressing the irony of
favoring changes that benefit non-free computers for forums meant to
discuss a totally free software OS.
I understand that users use what I'd call trackers (what you call
"smartphones") and making it nicer for that audience to become aware of
software freedom should be a goal. Therefore I'll offer a tip for how you
could reframe your suggestion: Consider providing a set of changes
specified as a CSS stylesheet for the forums. This, in theory, would let
the posts become formatted differently and perhaps increase ease-of-use on
a variety of screen sizes (including tablets and phones) while keeping
other aspects as-is (such as not touching the mailing list gateway, not
requiring big changes to the underlying software, and not prioritizing
things that ought not be viewed as so important when compared with free
software compatibility). CSS can do quite a bit these days (the CSS Zen
Garden is remarkable in how different a site can look given only a change
in stylesheet), you might be able to get what you're looking for without
doing anything but supplying one CSS file (no Javascript needed, no add-ons
or plug-ins either).
> "Using a mailing list makes the posts as quickly accessible as one's email provider can muster. I find that to be plenty responsive."
That's not what responsive means. He is referring to responsive design.
> "prioritizing access via a computer that is not a free software device (a "smartphone") is painfully ironic"
actually, smartphones are just as capable of running free software as any other computer. There are some low-level pieces of software that currently have no free replacement, but that's also true of most desktops running Trisquel. Although you choose not to use handheld computers like you understand most people do, they (smartphones) are not somehow inherently non-free. So there's no irony here, painful or otherwise.
> "I think that's good. I want to read what people have to say, not what fancy stuff people pull off in formatting"
Don't brush off the suggestion without first understanding it. There's nothing necessarily "fancy" about proper communication, and especially the example he gave was exactly how the forums are thereabout inadequate: You can't do a block quote. If the forums did have this basic formatting feature, you would no less "read what people have to say". For most people, it would make it *easier* to read what someone has to say, by giving clear visual context to the conversation so we can stop deciphering makeshift ASCII equivalents and get back to our lives. If it happens to end up looking better while we're at it, that's another thing - but unlike style, good design is necessary.
> "You are claiming to speak for what "most people" are used to but providing no evidence of how you arrive at your conclusion that you're accurately summarizing their views."
The non-combative way of saying this is “I disagree that most people are not used to forums embedded within Drupal. Can you prove that?”
I, for one, agree that Drupal-embedded forums are rare, and rightfully so. I would make the same speculation that average users would find it relatively unintuitive.
> “Style strikes me as inconsequential both because with a mailing list gateway I can make the posts look as I wish (including getting proper threading information) without altering anyone else's ability to do the same,”
Clearly the design of the website doesn't apply to you, since you don't use the website – so leave it to people who use the website to comment on this.
> “and because style strikes me as entirely subjective.”
Style _is_ completely subjective – good design is less so. He is referring to good design, which is about function, not beauty - if the text is hard to read, it's hard to read. Design is not a trivial matter and is worthy of discussion.
> “I don't think taking away something we're attached to is going to make for a good suggestion”
Since we're being subjective, yes – it often does make a good suggestion. Things that people are used to get taken away all the time, which is why we have progress. No one is suggesting taking something away without replacing it – so be sure to acknowledge the software suggestions he gave. If you think they are all inferior to this one, comment on that. Or rather: provide evidence of how you arrive at your conclusion, as you put it.
> “Consider providing a set of changes specified as a CSS for the forums.”
If it were this simple, the suggestion would be moot. CSS is for style, but only goes so far with design – it is fundamental problems with the underlying HTML-generating software that are being addressed. Once that's brought up to date, we can all tweak CSS to our liking.
Of course, this one is just my opinion – you may not agree that the forum software is relatively primitive. It may be possible that massaging the current system will work.
> Clearly the design of the website doesn't apply to you, since you don't use
> the website – so leave it to people who use the website to comment on this.
I find this to be the most troubling part of your needlessly heated post --
the idea that it's acceptable to tell anyone not to comment on something --
should strike everyone as anti-freedom of speech (believing in freedom of
speech means freedom of speech for views you don't like) and very much not
in keeping with civil disagreement.
"prioritizing access via a computer that is not a free software device (a
"smartphone") is painfully ironic in the context of discussions intended
for use by people discussing a totally free software operating system."
Sure, let's not care about people who aren't already freed. That will help the movement grow!
Beside that the logic of your argument seems to be wrong to me as a whole, i want to stress that there are tablets and also phones that run with a 100% free operating system (replicant).
I'm using one and i would like to read the forum in a convenient way.
I run a tablet with Replicant (albeit with nonfree wifi firmware). It is very difficult for me to read this forum.
The mobile support problem could be solved by a carefully planned transition to Drupal 8:
https://www.drupal.org/drupal-8.0/features#mobile
Drupal 8 will presumably be released sometime next year (first beta was just released), in which case most maintained modules should be compatible by the end of 2017, which gives the Trisquel webmasters about two years to plan and prepare for a smooth migration. I feel that would be a better use of their time than setting up a whole new forum package, and learning how to support it long term (if they don't already), but of course that's up to them.
BTW: Just for the record, Discourse does allow replies by email:
https://meta.discourse.org/t/new-reply-via-email-support/7764
Earlier this year, I tried to give the forum administrators simple tips on how the forum could be simplified and look cleaner.
https://trisquel.info/en/forum/tweak-forums-user-friendliness
Nothing happened. I hope the forum gets a little cleanup. With new Drupal version it seems to be a good point of taking a look. Same time as Trisquel 8 release?
Even if for the most part it works just fine, I wouldn't mind improvements,
as long as it keeps on working fine without Javascript.
What might really be missing (I think it's easy to fix)
is a way to display important announcements.
For example, I nearly missed the fact that IceCat has security issues for several weeks.
We could have an Announcements section on this forum, where only moderators can create new threads.
I don't think what we need is a more "modern" forum, all we need is a forum with fewer bugs and maybe a few more features. Could PunBB work?
I'm not aware of any free/libre responsive themes for PunBB.
From the front page: "The version 1.4.3 offers support of responsive design, the OpenSearch plugin, and many more." Now, I have no idea what that means :P
I also think that a better forum and wiki are needed. I guess this drupal bundle remains because is easier to mantain (I'm aware of the lack of hands working on trisquel).
With the current forum when a thread is never-ending indented is impossible to follow. It also lacks features like quotation, sticky threads, moderation tools, etc.
FluxBB http://fluxbb.org/ is another good option, it's the one used in arch or xfce forums
https://bbs.archlinux.org/
https://forum.xfce.org/
the forum and wiki are fine
they are user friendly and work well
but it would be good to add a mobile version of the site if possible
I have no issue with the forum or wiki. While yes things can be improved there is nothing really important missing.
The biggest feature of a forum is the community, everything else is just minor details.
+1
About the looks, To change text size and background, it should be modifiable with the "Stylish" plugin.
More like a temporary solution since a better default text size might matter for some new users.
Or maybe We could just post a "Stylish" CSS that does just that.
The forum is not "just fine" at the moment.
A major issue occurs if posts get a lot of replies. At some point, it's impossible to find out "who replied to who".
Also, nested posts get more and more narrow and at somepoint, are impossible to read.
Trisquel aims at people who are not so technically skilled, that's the reason why the forum software should have higher priority than the mailing list.
I am a translator!
>nested posts get more and more narrow and at somepoint, are impossible to read.
yep. that's the only issue with teh forum.
Same. That's the only issue I've ever picked up on when actually accessing the
forums online, rather than through my mail client.
I seem to be one of the few who are perfectly happy with the forum the way it
is. My only requests would be figure out some better threading mechanism (or
stop threading past a certain point and just display posts in list-form), have
an 'important announcements' thingy, and make the Trisquel site fully
LibreJS-compliant.
Makes sense.
But I insist on a way to display announcements (security related at least),
and that it stays javascript-free, or at least works with libre javascript.
Whatever is done, don't sacrifice the mailing list! It is the lifeblood of many.
I am a member!
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I'd be happy if the forum were just mailing lists.
On 10/05/2015 12:28 PM, moxalt wrote:
> Whatever is done, don't sacrifice the mailing list! It is the
> lifeblood of many.
>
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"I'd be happy if the forum were just mailing lists."
it would most likely intimidate a lot of new users if that happened
I believe you mean 'intimidate'.
High-traffic mailing lists are fine if you are the kind of person who focuses on one project at a time, or has a fairly narrow range of interests. For magpies like myself who are involved at different levels in many different projects and communities, subscribing to mailing lists for all of these quickly creates an unmanageable email flood. I prefer low-traffic mailing lists for urgent/ important announcements, and forums for the high-traffic chitter-chatter.
Thus, although I am generally an email-centric person in my net use, I like to use the Trisquel forums via the web, not email. Also, it's easy to search the forums using the web. The only way to do this by email would be to keep an email archive of the entire forum on my hard drive, and try to search through that. No thanks.
EDIT I would really like to see a forum area dedicated to gaming on Trisquel (BTW what ever happened to the Trisquel-Gamer-DVD project?)
> (BTW what ever happened to the Trisquel-Gamer-DVD project?)
It has followed mostly the same path as the Fedora Games spin (read: nobody really used it or cared about it...).
More information on Wikipedia.
"Trisquel Gamer was an independent edition maintained by David Zaragoza. It came with 55 free software games and could be booted from a LiveDVD or USB drive. It was released along with Trisquel 3.5 (2010), which is no longer supported."
That's sad. I think they were probably before their time. For better or for worse, the launch of Steam on GNU/Linux has triggered a massive boost of interest in libre gaming. I've only started playing games on my GNU/Linux systems in the last couple of years, although that has nothing to do with Steam.
> the launch of Steam on GNU/Linux has triggered a massive boost of interest in libre gaming.
I think 2007-2008 were the years of libre gaming (for reasons I don't know), not 2012 (year of Steam being launched for GNU/Linux). Those years, there were large amounts of players on libre games. Now, most of them left, and many important (partially or fully) libre game projects are dying off, like OpenArena and Sauerbraten. Graphics of most libre games not having improved in the slightest in 5 years is possibly the cause (there are notable exceptions, like SuperTuxKart).
Look at the Doom 3 source code release (GPLv3+) which happened in 2011 (4 years ago already): most forks are pretty dormant, and none of them focus on making a libre content replacement. In contrast, OpenArena was fully functional in 2007, two years after the Quake 3 Arena source code release under GPLv2+.
Anyway, continued here: http://trisquel.info/en/forum/libre-gaming-popularity-and-improvements
I am a translator!
> the launch of Steam on GNU/Linux has triggered a massive boost of interest in libre gaming.
I fail to see how a proprietary DRM crapware managed to trigger a "massive boost of interest in libre gaming"..
I know what you mean. I get over 300+ emails a day, from Debian, Trisquel, and
FreeBSD mailing lists- not to mention all the FSF and GNU stuff. It takes me
hours just to get through them all- and I have a pathological obsession with
not leaving a single post unread.
The Bodhi Linux folks have a pretty decent forum.
It works without js, though I don't know if it handles mailing lists.
But unfortunately, this is what it runs on :
https://www.invisionpower.com/features/apps#forums
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invision_Power_Board
So, what are we going to do about it?
Is this another forum update request that will go to waste?
So far, we probably can agree on :
- That nested posts problem on long threads
- no-JavaScript functioning (if JS enabled, I assume it's code will be licensed properly). Why? I seems that some users have no other choice.
- Some way to display major security alerts (delayed updates for example), even if it's only a sticky thread
- keeping mailing lists
- formatting/responsiveness
Now, what libre replacement would work here?
I assume that formatting, responsiveness, nested posts/new posts, and a sticky thread should be handled by most, if not all solutions.
the challenge is to find one with mailing list and no-js (for basic use) support as well.
Calinou, those you suggested are lacking in this area, right? If so, The newer Drupal was suggested. Would that do it? If not, any other solutions?
Maybe some plugins exist for this version of Drupal.
I'll try to find a few answers to this.
I am a translator!
So, to recap:
- solve the nested posts issue
- add a report troll / spammer button
- make Ruben aka Quidam post in the forum a simple "hello! Bill Gaines has not kidnapped me and everything is going fine. The distro is doing well." at least twice a year. :)
You mean that's your personal recap.
I instead tried to recap all requests (I think), not my personal preference.
I am a translator!
Why sure it is my personal recap. After all everything I write and say and think is nothing but my personal opinion/thought/idea/ :).
I might be mistaken, but you make it sound like you're ignoring all that's been said before by deciding what is important only for you.
I am a translator!
no. that wasn't my intention. That is only my personal wish-list.
My bad then, I mis-interpreted it.
I am a translator!
that is ok hack and hack.
yeah, no big deal.
It's just that sometimes you sound very condescending.
I guess that in written text, some info doesn't go through.
I am a translator!
Ironic and condescending are not the same thing. I will try to use more smileys :) :)
be cool!
It would be nice if each of the language categories broken out into topic-based sub categories. Something like:
News
Feedback
Support
Marketing/Media Content
Documentation Content
General
Or some variation of those.
I'd love to see a better search function, which allows me to select only certain forums to be searched... This would allow me to only search English forums, and for people that can read more than one of the languages we have in the forum to search all the forums they can comprehend.
Also either documentation on exactly what formatting is available in the forums, or something that supports BBCode would be great. Hopefully this wouldn't ruin the experience of people who read the forums via email, and would allow people who post/read the web version to more clearly lay things out.