Forums (Re: [Actionchix] Website wishlist)

[Mary Gardiner]

On Fri, May 19, 2006, jennyw wrote:
> actionchix (I was surprised about this one)

I decided this one on these factors:
 1. actionchix is for collaborative projects between chix [1]
 2. lots of people interested in getting involved first check out
    archives to find out level of activity, tone, that kind of thing

[1] Note: not just for "make LinuxChix better" projects. If you have
some other computing project -- code, documentation, educational
material -- that you'd like to work on with fellow chix, you can use
this list to discuss and coordinate it.

> newchix (a little surprised about this one, too)

I've been surprised by this too, but I was told the reason is that a lot
of newchix fear that when they apply for jobs or similar, someone will
find archives of them asking introductory level questions some time in
the past and judge them poorly for it.

I'd support forums that were integrated with our mailing lists, so that
forum posts are cross-posted to the mailing lists and vice-versa, as
long as threading is maintained in the mailing list version. I'm averse
to a separate set of forums being set up.

As far as software goes, something to think about to make it possible is
finding forums that support NNTP. Mailman can interface with NNTP I
understand. This might also allow people to use newsgroup readers to
read our lists (although closed lists might pose some problems), which
some people prefer over mail because you don't have to download the
bodies of messages, just the subject headers for browsing.

-Mary