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<p>Hello James,<br>
</p>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 01/02/20 1:56 am, James Perkins
wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CADGwLpgD6YZ=JEnfuhvNxwzj4kNL_bF+OtbLKafb7LSf9QC5CA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div dir="ltr">Hello All,
<div>We are in a position where we need to change the community
space for WildFly, currently located at <a
href="https://developer.jboss.org/en/wildfly/"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://developer.jboss.org/en/wildfly/</a>.
On 2020-03-1 this community space will become read-only.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>We've got 3 areas we need to move.</div>
<div>
<ol>
<li>Forums/Q&A</li>
<li>Wiki/FAQ</li>
<li>Articles</li>
</ol>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
<div>1. Forums/Q&A</div>
<div>My preference here is we would use Stack Overflow,
specifically the <a
href="https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/wildfly"
moz-do-not-send="true">wildfly tag</a>. It seems the forums
is really more Q&A than anything.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
<div>If we want to keep the forum and Q&A separate we could
use Stack Overflow for the Q&A and Google Groups for the
forum. Though I don't really see much difference between the
forum and Q&A.</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>The JBoss AS (and now) WildFly forums have over the years seen a
steady decline in the number of posts and the quality of posts.
Unfortunately, even release announcements which used to happen in
the forums previously are no longer made there. Participation in
terms of answers or helping out with issues has reduced too (as
compared to like maybe a decade ago). The new forum software
(Jive), IMO has contributed a lot towards this - its editor was
and still is a major hassle, plus the rules around posting (from
what I remember new users weren't allowed to post more than a few
posts within a few minutes of each other and had to wait hours to
post next). Plus, repeated complaints from regular users about
this, never ended up seeing any results. Regular contributors who
used to answer or help out on issues are no longer around.</p>
<p>Having said that, from what I see, WildFly forum as compared to
other forums still sees good amount of traffic in terms of
questions. I think JBoss AS and WildFly forums are probably the
most active ones right (they used to compete with RichFaces and to
some extent HornetQ forum in terms of traffic, but ever since they
were sunset, the application server forums are the more frequented
ones).</p>
<p>I don't have any concerns on moving away from the current
location of these forums. However, I personally don't like them
being moved to StackOverflow. I have tried to be a user at
StackOverflow a few times, during the past decade. But every time,
I have disliked it. If you look at the JBoss AS/WildFly forums,
you will notice that a lot of these discussions/questions span
multiple posts where the original poster and the volunteer helpers
go back and forth asking details and trying to narrow down what
the issue is - more like a debug session spread across multiple
posts. This kind of interactive discussion hasn't ever been
encouraged at StackOverflow and neither does the software nor the
people involved seem to encourage it there. That has always made
me stay away from StackOverflow.</p>
<p>Google groups on the other hand I think are a better place. I
don't use its web interface, but given that it integrates right
into your email client, I have found it gives the same level of
interactive nature that you typically want in discussions. Quarkus
project has been using google groups for its user + dev
discussions and so far I have really liked it. So I think maybe
hosting the forums as a google group mailing list might be a good
idea. In fact, I have a feeling that it might bring in more
participation, both from the users as well as volunteers
contributors (but that's just a guess).<br>
</p>
<p>By the way, I don't fully understand the difference between
Q&A and forums. To me they sound the same and unless I'm
missing something. Asking users to post in 2 different places (one
for Q&A and one for forums) might not be a good idea.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CADGwLpgD6YZ=JEnfuhvNxwzj4kNL_bF+OtbLKafb7LSf9QC5CA@mail.gmail.com">
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<div><br>
</div>
<div>2. Wiki/FAQ</div>
<div>For this we could use GitHub Wiki here. For details see <a
href="https://help.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/about-wikis"
moz-do-not-send="true">https://help.github.com/en/github/building-a-strong-community/about-wikis</a>.</div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<p>I don't think anyone uses Wiki/FAQ anymore these days (I miss the
days where I used to wait for wikis from Scott Stark. The
classloading one is still one of my favourite ones). Neither have
I seen too many new wikis/FAQ being created nor have I seen them
being referred to in the forums (unlike the good old Adrian days
;)). So I don't have much of an opinion on whether or not to have
a new place for them.<br>
</p>
<p><br>
</p>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CADGwLpgD6YZ=JEnfuhvNxwzj4kNL_bF+OtbLKafb7LSf9QC5CA@mail.gmail.com">
<div dir="ltr">
<div>3. Articles</div>
<div>I don't know how often articles get created, but it doesn't
look like often. My suggestion would be that we just use <a
href="http://wildfly.org" moz-do-not-send="true">wildfly.org</a>
for this. These seem to be akin to blog posts. </div>
<div><br>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
Articles these days have mainly been from the WildFly dev team
before/after a release about new features (which is a good thing).
Again I haven't liked the software that hosts these articles (again
the editor and other hassles around it), but at least there have
been some new articles every now and then. I think wilfly.org for
articles sounds fine. Maybe it should optionally have the ability to
aggregate any good community users' articles every now and then.<br>
<p>Having said all this, I think it's best to post this announcement
and ask for suggestions in the WildFly forums itself, since those
are the users we should be looking inputs from.</p>
<p>-Jaikiran<br>
</p>
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