The VideoLAN Forums

The current forums on forum.videolan.org are starting to become a bit of a disorganized mess. The forums are very successful, but that is starting to become a problem in itself. For one I think we need a bit more subdivision in the forums.

We currently have:
General Discussion
- VideoLAN: General discussion about VideoLAN

Technical Discussion
- VLC media player: Technical discussion about VLC media player
- VideoLAN Server: Technical discussion about VideoLAN Server
- Streaming: Technical discussion about streaming features in VideoLAN applications
- Requests: Feature requests for all VideoLAN products

Other
- Coffee: Just have a drink and chat
- Private: Private forum
- Deleted: Forum for deleted topics. Move them here

I suggest a new layout along the line of:
VLC media player
- VLC Windows: windows specific usage questions
- VLC Mac OS X: mac specific usage questions
- VLC Linux and friends: *nix specific usage questions
- General VLC discussion: anything not fitting in the above forums can go here
- FAQ entries
- Feature Requests
- Bug reports
- Skins (i'm in doubt about this one, but i think it might help spur skin development).

Serving streams
- Broadcasting
- Video On Demand
- Encoding/Transcoding
- VLS/miniSAPserver

Other
- Forum/Website discussion
- Coffee Corner
- Private: (hidden) moderator forum
- Deleted: (hidden) deleted posts forum

I would also like to create a few more rules.

1: when a bug has been confirmed the topic name needs to get [CONFIRMED #] word added to it, where # is the trac ticket number. This should also be posted as a link in the forum post.
2: when a usage issue or bug has been solved it needs the [SOLVED] word added to the topic name.
3: moderators need to actively move topics if they are in the wrong place and inform the users.
4: all rules for a specific forum need to be in one permanent sticky and not in multiple

That basically leaves one problem... We need a lot more moderators for the forum. FK, zorglub, courmish, dionoea and me are the most regular moderators, but it really is not enough. I think we need more non-developers to moderate the forum. Moderating != answering all the questions. If we can find a few enthusiastic users that would be willing to help us regulate the forum, then that would help a lot. If you are an active user of VLC and would like to help out with moderation of the forum, then please leave your name and your experience with vlc in a reply posting.

I would like some feedback from the forum users. What do you think about the proposed new subdivision. Do you have suggestions for more categories and forums?

(private and deleted shouldn't be mentioned here since only a dozen people have access to them)

Seems to be a good idea ... but i'm afraid that regular users will be unable to find the appropriate forum to post in (for example not knowing if its an OS specific problem or not).

I also don't understand what you mean by FAQ entries. Is that supposed to be a FAQ replacement ? (that would mean that only admins could post in this forum) Same thing concerning Bug Reports.

Other than those few remarks, i think that this would be a good idea ... especially the new moderators thing

On a side note, what about language specific forums ? (like german and french ... these seem to be the languages that VideoLAN users tend to use the most)

Other question : how do we handle the current categories once we adopt the new organisation ? Is someone going to move each topic to the appropriate category ? are we going to have an archive section ?

In my opinion, moving the topics arround would be the best solution from a user point a view. But i doubt that anyone will want to move those ~10 000 topics. (kind of like string reviews ... they never get done ... )

BTW, we also need a forum dedicated to moderation issues (Private seems dedicated to VideoLAN issues ... thus developers and not moderators)

I'm thinking that most users will simply choose their OS forum, and that is fine by me actually. Most issues are intferface/vout/aout related and therefore OS specific. Most other issues are bugs and should go into the bugs forum.

Bugs and Requests can be seen as "ticket nomination" forums. I see it as a way to still have a clear place for users to post their possible bugs in, without ending up having trac as messy as bugzilla had become due to this.

FAQ forum has a similar function. Our current FAQ is simply not expanding, because it's too much work to gather info from the forum, create good Q/A pairs of it and put them into the SVN FAQ guide. I'm hoping that it will stimulate people to help us with this.

And i think where ever a forum cannot be renamed that we should archive it indeed.

so suggested new forums inlcude:

- VLM
- VLC Development
- VideoLAN project
- Moderator room
- French forum
- German forum

Some other things that will get more attention in the future, but that i'm experimenting with.

I added rankings for users. Currently there is:
- New Cone (1+ postings)
- Blank Cone (10+ postings)
- Cone that earned his stripes (100+ postings)
- Big Cone-huna (500+) postings
- Site Admin (rename to Cone Admin?)

If anyone has any ideas for better rank names or something, then please suggest them. If someone would like to design rank images (The likes of http://www.phpbb.com/phpBB/catdb.php?cat=21), then please go right ahead. Shouldn't be very difficult to draw a line of small cones, i'd say.

A better icon for the top of the forum might also be a nice idea. Perhaps inspired on the T-shirt cone ?
http://download.videolan.org/images/tshirts-big.jpg


And if you really want to be my hero, then a complete VLC style for the forum would be da cone of course

To be done:
- Set up the forum rules on a per forum basis

Add the forums
- FAQ
- Bug reports

Possible future forum additions
- French forum
- German forum
- VLC development forum

Having a moderator for the VideoLAN (archived) forum could be nice. So people can at least move topics to other forums (i can't do it now since i don't want to use the videolan password on http and don't have https access here)

how about another sticky thread in the windows dept.

I'm seeing a common pattern in the posts about non-existent video, or wrong colored video, or mosaic distortions and such(settings problems).

with "solving the Audio distortion problem in VLC 0.8.2 on Windows":

maybe there could also be:

"solving the video issue"(<- intentionally a bit generic of a topic)

and lock the thread too so it doesn't get disconfigured..

then we can post a link to the FAQ, and a word about overlay, system memory buffers, the smurf affect and so on.