I’ve been thinking recently that it might be useful to have a separate forum track devoted to “Software Old and New”, or something like that. People have been posting notices of stuff they’ve done to this General Discussion, like Waddlesplash’s Mandelbrot, my Gadgeteer and bbjimmy’s Yoshi, but it might be useful to have a more ‘concentrated’ collection. Seems to me that having a forum with a topic for each piece of software would make it easier for users to be aware of what’s around. In the absence of Haikuware and while HaikuDepot is gestating, it would be a good idea to have some place that focusses on apps.
The forum would not be ust for new stuff, but also where folks can discuss reviving/updating Gobe and so on.
The idea is to have something like this with a application development board, end user support board, Haiku/BeOS API Q&A etc. The forum would be part of community support system, which has been brought up a number of times, but never acted on.
You can see the diffrent software options available for us on this Google Plus poll.
It never come to anything because the whole “major staff shortage” in our web admin team problem.
[quote=richienyhus]The idea is to have something like this with a application development board, end user support board, Haiku/BeOS API Q&A etc. The forum would be part of community support system, which has been brought up a number of times, but never acted on.
It never come to anything because the whole “major staff shortage” in our web admin team problem.[/quote]
This sounds sort of symptomatic of out whole situation (:-/) Grandish schemes get proposed, but fizzle out because nobody can get round to carrying them through.
What I’m suggesting should only take a few minutes [I’d guess] by an admin to set up a new forum. It wouldn’t block any future efforts at improving the whole forum system.
[quote=bbjimmy]Yoshi already has a forum:
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Not really relevant, though. My thought is for there to be a “Well Known Place” for apps to be announced, discussed, or even just dissed. Give users a little more freedom to explore what’s available.
My preference would be not to. I don’t think those dividing lines are strong enough to want to keep those categories distinct. The purpose of the app is more important. Someone doesn’t have Java, but they see a Java app that is just what they need, they’ll probably install Java.
I do think some protocol/etiquette would be important, though. Like “The Subject line for a new app should contain its name and a brief indication of its purpose”, and “Don’t announce an app as a comment on another thread. Start a new topic.” We want it to be as easy as possible for a user to scan the list of topics to find relevant stuff.