MozCampEU2012/Future of Discussion Forums

Title of Session: The Future of Discussion Forums

Facilitator(s): Michael Burns

Are you paid or volunteer staff?: Paid

Area of Contribution (Team Name): IT/Operations

How are you currently involved with the community?: I maintain the Mailman installations (discussion forums, mailing lists) for Mozilla.

Location of Work (where do you reside?): Mountain View, CA

Talk Length (please choose between 30, 60, 90, 120 minutes): 60 (30min could also work)

Summary: Mozilla is in the process of reevaluating the discussion forum system that powers mailing lists and newsgroups for the many Mozilla projects. This session is to gather feedback on the progress made in testing, and learn the expectations of what a new and improved system should look like, including evaluating third-party solutions. A top priority is to provide a Web interface (similar to Google Groups or phpBB) that allows reading as well as posting but still ties in with the email lists and newsgroups that already exist. This would let us integrate the (somewhat abandoned) Web Forums that are more new-user friendly with the more actively used newsgroups or mailing lists. In addition to a seamless posting experience across protocols, a smartphone-friendly interface, drastically improved SPAM protection, and a more crowd-sourced moderation system are also top goals.

Finally, we will also discuss the viability of third-party solutions like Diaspora, Jive, or Yammer that can encompass the entire Mozillian community network.

How your session furthers the MozCamp Goals (https://wiki.mozilla.org/MozCampEU2012/Tracks): Mozilla requires a lot of communication to happen over the Internet, by a range of technical and non-technical users. Everything from Support to Development to Governance need to be discussed in the open and across multiple mediums (web, email, nntp) [1]. Unfortunately, our commitment to flexibility means that communication is not always as smooth as it could be. To encourage as much participation from the community as possible, and to minimize frustration, it is necessary to provide an improved discussion forum system that is both flexible and functional.

[1] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Discussion_Forums/Problem_Statement

Expected Outcome or Deliverable: (0) Collect feature expectations (or mockups) of what a better communication system for Mozillians would look like. (1) Feedback on how to implement and prioritize these new features. (2) Feedback on the improvements being made with the current Mailman v3 tests, which addresses some of these goals. (3) Gauge community response to proprietary solutions (such as Jive).

Desired Audience Type or Skill-set: community members who have or wish to participate in the ongoing discussion on mailing lists (or newsgroups) for various Mozilla projects, and would like to see the process improved. Also, community members that want to join the discussion of projects around Mozilla but get too frustrated or intimidated by the current process.

Equipment Needs (Video projector already included): (optional) A whiteboard, chalkboard or other large writing surface to collect notes.

To Be Completed by the Audience-

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Gerv
John99