47 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
47 lines
1.5 KiB
Plaintext
=====================
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MERC 4: Support forum
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=====================
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:MERC: 4
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:Author: Michael Price
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:Status: Accepted
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:Type: Process
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:Created: 2018-02-27
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:Last-Modified: 2018-09-04
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.. contents:: Table of Contents
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:depth: 3
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:local:
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Abstract
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========
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This MERC proposes the move of the official community meeting place
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from Google Group to a self hosted forum platform.
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Motivation
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==========
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Google Groups is not a proper forum platform and as such is lacking many
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features that would increase participation. Google Groups has not had any
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significant update in years and the age of the platform is visible. There
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are no official mobile apps for Google Groups, no responsible template
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is not provided. There are not integration options. These factors
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contribute to the problems of knowledge dilution and one time
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participation being experienced in the Mayan EDMS community.
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Other concerns for moving the community to a self hosted forum solution
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are that Google Groups presents a single point of failure by relying on
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a free product hosted by a commercial company with no continuation plan
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for the product. Google Groups doesn't provide archiving features and
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the current archive solution relies on other third party services, one
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of which (GMANE) has stopped working. Recent user privacy and censorship
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issues regarding Google, reinforce the need for a self hosted solution.
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Specification
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=============
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Platform chosen was phpBB. Factors were: written in PHP, ease of installation,
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compatible with several database managers, mature, extensive development history.
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