Subject: Re: [vserver] Request For Comments - VServer web presence http://test.songshu.org
From: Ed W <lists@wildgooses.com>
Date: Sat, 28 Feb 2009 15:33:26 +0000

Hi

> noticed a huge amount of mails on this subject this morning and its
> good to see many idea's, please allow to  me to be the first to
> introduce a mockup, i did this in the last hour so its far from
> finished but at least its an idea.

Very nice - I like where you are going.

Probably some pictures which should "isolated virtual servers" more than
flowers would be good.  Now racking my brains for ideas...

- boxes
- russian dolls (toys which fit inside each other)
- Jail bars
- world in a box
- penguin in a box...



> maybe someone might be willing to give some thought on the layout of
> the data structure as it is displayed on the wiki frontpage only with
> up to date finished content to make sure a first arriver can more
> easily find what he (or she) is looking for.
>
>
> ====maybe also ====
> a simpler page
> <code>
> explaining the wiki syntax
> </code>

For my site I just ripped off a bunch of the media help pages and
roughly strung them together.  I think it's either linked by default or
easily linked to put the help in the edit page?

> forum.linux-vserver.org
>
> are we willing to support this??
> the mailing list is great but many new users prefer a forum to ask for
> support and can browse the subjects without having to sign up first
> when investigating various visualization techniques, the benefit of an
> active forum is that it clearly indicates an active community and that
> would be a good sign. Also the most frequently asked questions would
> give us some clear idea on how to improve the documentation.

This always gathers a heated debate...  It seems to depend a lot on when
a person joined the web.

Roughly speaking the debate is (in order):

- NNTP news groups
- IRC
- Mailing lists
- Web forums

So for example I like nntp groups, but they are almost dead for the
modern web 2.0 guy...

Most technical people seem to gravitate to somewhere around IRC and
mailing lists, usually these same people really dislike web forums

Less technical users tend to favour forums and reject mailing lists as
being unhelpful (I think the point is that mailing lists are great if
you are more deeply involved in the project and forums are better for
just "dipping in")

A halfway house seems to be to add a google news archive.  This is close
to being a web forum for many folks, but keeps email as is. 

I would suggest that perhaps this debate is premature since it will
likely absorb a lot of energy and the end result is likely that at some
point there will be a forum, but right now it will likely just fracture
a fairly small userbase at a critical time?

Ed W