On 12/29/12, Vladimir Panteleev <vladimir@thecybershadow.net> wrote:
> 1. It is a free service provided by a third party.
>     As their TOS states, they may cancel or limit the service at
> any time without prior warning.

Yep, remember how DMD binaries were finally hosted on Github, which had faster downloads than digitalmars.com. And then they decided to kill the feature.

On 12/29/12 9:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of
>> community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the most
>> appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's currently
>> implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)
>
> We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.

We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.

Andrei

On 12/29/12 10:22 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> Sönke has listed the advantages provided by Disqus. I'll list a few
> disadvantages (some of which may be obvious) for consideration:
[snip]

Good points. I, too, think a customized, highly integrated version of forum.dlang.org would be preferable. Perhaps integration with newsgroup wouldn't be necessary, i.e. no need to make posts made on the documentation pages appear on the regular fora.

Do you think it would be easy to implement and maintain the features I discussed in http://goo.gl/G4pJ9? Let's not forget that we'd benefit of future improvements to disqus (if any) by default, whereas if we build it we need to maintain and improve it.


Thanks,

Andrei

On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 17:37:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> On 12/29/12 9:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>> On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>>> Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of
>>> community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the most
>>> appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's currently
>>> implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)
>>
>> We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.
>
> We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.

How did you reach that conclusion?

When comparing the amount of contributions, we should take into account that D is not as popular as PHP or jQuery.

The previous system used ProWiki, the problems of which have already been discussed in depth. One of the more important ones, as it pertains to discussion, is that it did not provide a simple way to monitor all changes to comment pages (it does not seem to have an equivalent of MediaWiki's Special:RecentChanges and RSS/ATOM feed). Thus, questions could go unanswered for months, until someone actually noticed that a question has been asked.

With MediaWiki, I have the option of integrating edit notifications into DFeed, and turn them into IRC notifications. This has allowed #d users to answer StackOverflow questions within minutes of them being posted. (I have delayed this to avoid pointless flooding while the bulk of initial edits occurred.)

On 12/29/12 12:54 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 17:37:37 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
>> On 12/29/12 9:55 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
>>> On Saturday, 29 December 2012 at 14:22:27 UTC, Andrei Alexandrescu
>>> wrote:
>>>> Yes. I very strongly believe we need to have a form of
>>>> community-provided contents. (Not sure whether disqus is the most
>>>> appropriate vehicle, but since it's the only one that's currently
>>>> implemented, it's by definition the best we have.)
>>>
>>> We also have a wiki, and the existing links to it on each page.
>>
>> We've had that for a while, wasn't successful.
>
> How did you reach that conclusion?

By recknoning that next to no library documentation content has been produced on the Wiki.

> When comparing the amount of contributions, we should take into account
> that D is not as popular as PHP or jQuery.

Wasn't comparing against those - just saying it's not happening. FWIW in my opinion: click on a link to get somewhere vs. content integrated on the page - big difference.

> The previous system used ProWiki, the problems of which have already
> been discussed in depth. One of the more important ones, as it pertains
> to discussion, is that it did not provide a simple way to monitor all
> changes to comment pages (it does not seem to have an equivalent of
> MediaWiki's Special:RecentChanges and RSS/ATOM feed). Thus, questions
> could go unanswered for months, until someone actually noticed that a
> question has been asked.
>
> With MediaWiki, I have the option of integrating edit notifications into
> DFeed, and turn them into IRC notifications. This has allowed #d users
> to answer StackOverflow questions within minutes of them being posted.
> (I have delayed this to avoid pointless flooding while the bulk of
> initial edits occurred.)

That sounds great.


Andrei

On 12/29/12 12:54 PM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> With MediaWiki, I have the option of integrating edit notifications into
> DFeed, and turn them into IRC notifications. This has allowed #d users
> to answer StackOverflow questions within minutes of them being posted.
> (I have delayed this to avoid pointless flooding while the bulk of
> initial edits occurred.)

I should add that I just explored disqus.com's moderation and related amenities are pretty compelling. You'd be looking at a fair amount of work to implement such. (Not to discourage you or anything as I do agree with the advantages of in-house.)

Andrei

On 12/29/2012 8:03 AM, Vladimir Panteleev wrote:
> Walter removes such posts regularly. The problem is that forum.dlang.org caches
> them indefinitely. I'm working on this problem right now.

Thanks for working on that. His posts are ugly and make us all look bad having them on the front page of the forum.

On 12/29/2012 5:47 AM, Chris wrote:
> As regards PHP I have to admit that I hardly ever use the code examples in the
> comment section - too basic and too messy. The best real world PHP code is still
> either on Stackoverflow or on webprogrammers' homepages, articles etc. But that
> is because PHP is used by amateurs and professionals alike, I think, (cf.
> http://w3techs.com/technologies/details/pl-php/all/all). In the case of D, I
> trust that the code samples will be of high quality given that the D community
> consists mainly of programming and computer science experts (and I exclude
> myself here!) or at least people with a keen interest in the subject. D could
> definitely do with more code samples especially those showing clever and optimal
> ways of doing things (commenting on the pros and cons like on Stackoverflow).

The interesting thing is I am always trying to write the canonical great example, yet I am always unhappy with it later because I've run into a better way of doing things.

On 12/29/2012 6:15 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> 5. Both have voting, and PHP sorts comments in decreasing order by upvotes. Can
> we also sort the same? Also, can we add some randomness (e.g. randomly push one
> of the comments in a top position) such that new good content has a chance to be
> upvoted?

This is an interesting issue. I think an interesting metric would be a combination of number of votes which add to a ranking score, and age of the post which subtracts from it.

Or maybe simply have a couple of buttons which change the sort order:

1. by vote
2. newest first
3. by karma of the poster
4. by number of posts by the poster
5. by a "house blend" of the above (!) If Sönke wants to get really creative, have an "equalizer" with four sliders to control the weight of 1..4.

On 12/29/2012 10:08 AM, Andrei Alexandrescu wrote:
> FWIW in my
> opinion: click on a link to get somewhere vs. content integrated on the page -
> big difference.

In my opinion, too.