General Forum Cleanup Proposal Options

[Varti]

Hi,

I think it is about time we do a general cleanup of the forums. Some of the forums here are not used anymore since many years, for various reasons (shrinking community, ROMs/distros not being used anymore...). I'm sure most of you will be now tired of reading on the front page about Omicron's Linux solution, the gizmoforyou.com website and that Portabase was put on Kickstarter smile.gif

I believe that it would be better to only keep the forums which are being used in the last few years, and consolidate more forums into one if they have been only rarely used. Furthermore, now that we have the new GPD forums, the forum's structure as is now would confuse any newcomer, as it is still taken for granted that the whole forum is devoted to the Zaurus. I believe this is what offroadgeek and dz were planning to do in the future when they renamed the forum from ZUG to OESF, i.e. to make this a generic support forum for many handhelds and portable devices based on Linux.

I have checked which forums have been used in the last year, here's the list:

Site Suggestions, Requests, and Updates
General Discussion
GPD Forums
Angstrom & OpenZaurus
New products and alternatives
Hardware Mods
Arch Linux ARM
Off Topic forum
pdaXrom
For Sale / Wanted

My idea is to create a new forum called "Archived forums", where all the unused forums would be moved to, while still regaining the original forums structure; for example, Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums->Everything Development->Python would end up in Archived forums->Distros, Development, and Model Specific Forums->Everything Development->Python, and so on. All the archived forums and posts will be set as read-only, so it will be still possible to access them.

Since this will be a major update, I'll make a backup of both the forum's files and the database before starting the cleanup, so that in case something goes wrong I can quickly put back the old forum online. This is my proposed new forum structure, all the forums which are not listed below will be stored in the Archived section:

General Forums
- General Discussion
- For Sale / Wanted
- Off Topic forum
- New products and alternatives

Model Specific Forums
- Sharp Zaurus
- - Zaurus - Hardware discussion
- - Zaurus - Arch Linux ARM support
- - Zaurus - Other distros support
- GPD Devices
- - GPD Pocket - hardware
- - GPD Win - hardware
- - GPD - Linux OS
- - GPD - Windows OS

Everything Else
- Embedded Linux Hardware / Software Index
- - ELSI News
- - ELSI General Discussion
- - ELSI Development
- OESF Wiki
- Site Specific Forums
- - Site Suggestions, Requests, and Updates
- - OESF Announcements

Archived forums

Note that almost all the "new" forums are the same as the old one: I'll keep all the old posts in there, and make it possible to reply to all the old threads too; only the forums in the archived section will become read-only. The only new forums are Zaurus - Hardware discussion, Zaurus - Other distros support and Other Devices, which will not have any old post. By the way, with this new structure all the subforums inside GPD Devices will become visible in the main page. Remember that we can add any new forum at a later stage, if required. I'll keep for now the same structure for the Elsix forums, we'll decide how to handle them later, when the site will be back online.

Feel free to add any comment, I'll wait for a couple of weeks before proceeding (and I'll anyway announce it before starting).

Varti

This post has been edited by Varti: Mar 3 2017, 05:38 AM

Reason for edit: Consolidated the two posts into one, to avoid confusion.

[koan]

Just a comment - how many people have a GPD device ? I mean own one right now ?

[Varti]

Just a comment - how many people have a GPD device ? I mean own one right now ?

I have counted four of them having a Win (ArchiMark, linx, RX Shorty, TheWalt), I'll probably join them soon, and it seems speculatrix is thinking of getting a Pocket.

Varti

[Varti]

Since no objections have been raised, I'll do a backup and proceed with the changes later today (roughly at 15:00 GMT / 07:00 PST / tomorrow 04:00 NZDT).

Varti

[ArchiMark]

Sorry for the late reply here....

But just located a thread (regarding pdaXrom being updated...) from last November that's now in the Archived section, tried to reply and realized it's locked.

Unfortunate, that that thread is locked...since it's not that old and referred to potential updates.

Just a comment.....




Mark

[Varti]

Sorry for the late reply here....
But just located a thread (regarding pdaXrom being updated...) from last November that's now in the Archived section, tried to reply and realized it's locked.
Unfortunate, that that thread is locked...since it's not that old and referred to potential updates.
Just a comment.....

You're not the only one wanting the pdaXrom forum to be set back to active, plus there's at least one user who still actively uses it and ports programs to it. I have moved it back to the active Zaurus forum, and I hope to see some further development on it too (although personally I'd still prefer to see all the efforts being focused on one distro). I have also moved a couple of related threads from the "other distros support" forum.

Please let me know if you want any other forum to be moved back to the main forums.

Varti

[ArchiMark]

Thank you for your quick response and action, Varti!

Mark

[koan]

There doesn't seem to be a forum for software Q&A, announcements or development.

[Varti]

There doesn't seem to be a forum for software Q&A, announcements or development.

For now, the idea was that all the development related threads would be posted under their respective distros forums, i.e. Zaurus - Arch Linux ARM support, Zaurus - pdaXrom and Zaurus - Other distros support. The old Everything Development subforum had separate forums for each ROM/window manager and a User Requests one, which might be redundant now. I can create a new generic Development forum for all the models and distros/ROMS if you agree.

Edit: to be more clear, Model Specific Forums would be renamed to Development and Model Specific Forums, and a new Everything Development and User Requests subforum would be added alongside the Zaurus and GPD ones, so it would cover development for both families of devices (and any other future ones).

Varti

[koan]

For now, the idea was that all the development related threads would be posted under their respective distros forums

I see. The problem there is that software is often compiled on multiple platforms.

I think we need a Software and Development forum, perhaps under General Discussion or Everything Else. I don't think we need separate subforums; until such time as there are a lot more regular posters.

If you would rather plan ahead then Software Forum, Software Q&A subforum, Software Development subforum should be enough.

[Varti]

Sorry for my previous post which was a bit confusing, I was in a hurry when I posted it...

After some thought, I support the idea to create 3 new subforums - for new SW announcements, SW Q&A and SW development. The first two were once covered by the Software forum (https://www.oesf.org/forum/index.php?showforum=27), but IMHO it would be better to have the announcements and questions forum split into two forums, as you suggested. I find these subforums to be important enough to deserve to be on their own forum, i.e. to be inserted between Model Specific Forums and Everything Else:

Software and Development
- New software announcements
- Software Q&A
- Software development

Otherwise, I guess they'd belong more to the General Forums. I'd add a sticky post in all of them asking to clearly label, in each new thread, what models and distros is/are targeted. We'll see in the future if separate forums for each device/distro will be required, as you already mentioned.

Varti

[koan]

I support this change

[Varti]

New forums created, and moved there a couple of existing threads.

Varti