[K12OSN] Teacher Forums

[Eric Harrison]

On Sun, 5 Dec 2004, R. Scott Belford wrote:

> Here in Hawaii we wrestled with creating a separate, more teacher-friendly 
> list, and we discussed in great length the relative merits of a mailman list 
> vs. phpbbs.  We created and ran a BB for a while, but without active 
> moderation, many questions went unanswered and most of us were accustomed to a 
> standard mailing list.  If the desire exists to use this technology for a 
> teacher forum, we certainly have the bandwidth (UH) and the hardware.
>
> Red Hat has graciously offered to host another list.  They contacted Paul 
> Nelson, the moderator.  He and Eric can have this done.
>
> I wonder, would the list prefer
>
> a. A new, teacher focused mailman list
> b. A new, teacher focused bb
> c. A new developers list, leaving K12OSN to its original intent of being an 
> end-user list. (Paul pointed this out)
> d. Two new mailman lists for end users and developers
>
> I personally think a new, clean space that only novice end-users are 
> *encouraged* to enter is the easiest.

As I've stated in the past, I'd really rather not try to split up
the existing community. A mixture of technical and non-technical
people is what has got us this far.

On the other hand, I can see the great value in a "users" list for
those "how do I make an openoffice template" type of questions. I
understand that John EndUser would be confused or intimidated by
the questions asked by Jane SysAdmin.


If we do choose to setup a new forum, I'd like it to have as much
cross-pollination as possible with this forum.

So I guess I vote for a. A new, teacher focused mailman list

-Eric