Power to the Programmers!

[Dan Jallits]

quote:What is your specific suggestion?

Change open source to LAMP and include four more branches, Apache, MySQL, Perl and Python.

I could be the only one interested in seeing a change. Maybe not. I think we should see how the rest of the community feels, maybe create a poll. If there is enough interest, then it should be opened up to the user community and the P2P administrators to create a new structure.

A great way to determine where your user's interests are, besides the number of posts in specified folders, is to have them pick their top 5 favorites within their profile, because this would give the admin another sense of who their "customer-base" really is.

These are just suggestions. Regardless of the outcome, I am very happy to see P2P again.

Best Regards,
Dan Jallits

[richard.york]

Uh yeah I'm with you, this new set-up sucks royally!

Ditch the Snitz!
As a regular user of the old p2p site, the only reason I participated was because of its convenience. I'd like to echo that I never had a problem with spam, or name cloning, or anything else. Every post I received in my inbox was related to the forum.

I could care less for all the gloss and prepackaged bells and whistles of the snitz interface. This forum is for amateurs! I'm happy with plain text. And as programmers I'm sure that most of us are!

I'm going to miss the old set-up! And I probably won't use this site again unless it returns. Wiley has gotten more than just Wrox, its stolen its SOUL as well! Thanks alot guys.



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mailto:[email protected]
Smiling Souls
http://www.smilingsouls.net
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[KenSchaefer]

quote:Originally posted by JSample
 Ken:

While your concerns have been echoed many times over a couple of different topics, I still fail to see where the system we are working on with Jeff and Hal falls short of what you were just describing.

http://p2p.wrox.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=60

...

James Sample

Hi James,

If you can't see the differences between a web-based forum (your suggested improvements notwithstanding), and an email list-serv, then I suggest that you need to go out and see how listserver systems work.

Sure, the improvements you're making will help, but it still doesn't come close to approximating a newsgroup or a email listserver based system.

a) I can quickly see how many new messages there are (since the folder list in my email client tells me). There's no reliable way you can do that using a web-based system.

b) I can post solutions much quicker from my mail client (It's harder to cut-n-paste answers between two programs, it's harder to find previous answers in the forum to link to, -and- you have the overflow limit configured too high. I'm sure the last one is easy to change though but it is frustrated to have to sit and wait to post an answer)

c) It is easy to scan all the threads and see if someone who I know has a good reputation has already answered the thread, in which case I won't look at it as a high priority

d) Using an email client is *much* faster than browsing a website

e) You can get decent *threading* via email, whereas here you see everyone's replies to different people lumped into a single page, which makes it difficult to see who is replying to what.

I could go on, but I won't. If you've used email based systems you'd understand what I'm talking about. If you haven't, then it'll all seem inconsequential to you.

It seems that you've decided, for the reasons you've given, that you're going to stick with the path you've choosen. Personally, I doubt you'll have the success with this system that P2P had with the old system, but I'm also hoping to be proven wrong.

Good luck with the endeavour.

Cheers
Ken

www.adOpenStatic.com

[Hal Levy]

Hi Ken,

I had a long conference call with James and Bruce yesterday and have gotten the business requirements for an e-mail interface. I have been asked to "head up" development of the project. I am putting together a requirements document that I will be posing soon. I invite you, and anyone else who can, to participate in the development of this e-mail system. There are some real business challenges to overcome- as the requirements are "set in stone" and if we can come up with a system that meets those requirements, they will be happy to add it to the forums.

I can tell you that they are dedicated to making this system, within their business restrictions, the best it can be. I throughly discussed why they didn't just "put up" the old Lyris system- They had real technical hurdles that would have resulted in further months of delay before P2P would be back up. I have details about that, if you wish to know them.

a) The sending of e-mail from the web system is part of the forum, and working well. Changes have been made in the past to make them more rule-friendly. Another change is coming to the e-mail format (like the removal of the Hi so and so,") and better formatting. It's in process. I don't see how reading the messages in your inbox doesn't tell you how many messages there are. A spell checker is on it's way and is being tested. This was a custom implemented spell checker to provide maximum flexibility.

b) This is what I am working on, specifically. A modification to allow e-mail posting. I am not sure what you mean by "overflow limit" but I am sure James can look into the problem.

c) you can do this now with your e-mail client. Just subscribe to the forums you like to read and they will come into your inbox- you can then group by topic (at least in outlook). Each message has a reply link on it. Click the link and reply to the message that you read in your inbox. Not a perfect solution- but good in the short term.

d) it can be :)

e) I have seen this implemented in message boards (such as petfinder.com's message boards) and in News Clients. But I have never seen great threading in e-mail. Perhaps I misunderstand you?

Ken, I hope you wish to participate in the development of the e-mail system- I have great respect for you and adOpenStatic.com. I use it frequently as a source of information.

Hal Levy
Daddyshome, LLC

[KenSchaefer]

Hi Hal,

I'll try to explain what I mean by (e) above. Suppose person A starts a thread. Person B replies to A, and C posts a followup. In C's email, I can see A's message, B's reply and C's final followup. Suppose Person D also replies to the original post (A), and E posts a follow up to D. In E's email, I can see A's original post, D's reply and E's followup. I *do not* see B or C's postings. Likewise, in C's final post, I do not see D or E's posts.

On this web-based system, everything's a bit more of a mush. My reply could be to your post, or someother post further up the page. Unless each poster takes care to identify which post they are replying to, it becomes difficult to see what's going on. It becomes more difficult the more "sub conversations" there are, and the longer each conversation continues.

WRT to point (d) - this web-based system will never be as fast as my using my copy of Outlook Express on my local machine. I click on a message, and it appears instantaneously. Here, I'm clicking backwards and forwards, waiting for pages to load etc.

WRT to point (c) - the ASP.Net forums (www.asp.net/forums) that Microsoft runs has a similar system. You click on a link in a message to post a reply. However, this does not address the point I was trying to make. In my email client, I can see a new thread, -and- I can instantly see who has replied to the original question. If it's someone I know (eg Jeff Mason or David Cameron on an SQL question), then I can leave the question for the time being, feeling confident that it has been answered. With your subscription system, it's not the same. I still need to read each and every email to see who has replied to a given question.

Additionally, and this is a killer for me, I can't see each reply in context (eg what the poster was replying to), because only their reply is included in the email.

Cheers
Ken

PS With the email subscription, the HTML "tags" that people embed in their replies (to get effects on the forums) also seems to be included with the actual reply, which could become irritating if there's lot of such tags

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