[Springframework-developer] Consolidation of sf forums and user mailing list

[Colin S. <col...@ex...>]

We've talked about this briefly before, but I propose that we actually 
go ahead and for support purposes consolidate the existing SourceForge 
forums and the user mailing list into one or more forums run using some 
decent forum software (phpBB looks quite good; it's what's used by 
hibernate.org).

The SF forums are fairly horrific from both the point of view of people 
trying to get help (search is really bad, threading is really bad, they 
are slow, etc.), and the people trying to provide support (general 
management and visibility of threads, slowness). The mailing list is 
fine for what it is, but given the fact that most people don't run mail 
clients which do proper threading, and I doubt most people know about 
the searchable history archives at gmane, it's not terribly efficient 
either.

We've got a limited amount of resources available towards support, and 
my feeling is that moving to a consolidate solution with a good ui and 
good search capabilities will free up a bit of time initially, allow 
things to scale better in the longer term, and provide a better 
experience for everybody.

Let me know what you think. One issue is w/regards to hosting. Forums 
running something like phpBB would obviously incur some bandwidth. 
Thomas, I presume the host the website is on is out, in that respect, right?

Colin