How can we make the ROMS forum more active?

[rsignell]

ROMS gang,

I was disturbed by this Monday's ROMS discussion summary announcement that
"There were not topics discussed this week." and was thinking about ways to make the ROMS forum more active.

I'm pretty sure that there were some people who had ROMS issues to discuss last week, but rather than discuss them on the forum, they used different techniques (e.g. phone calls or direct e-mails to developers or users), and the community generally loses when this happens. If it's a problem, perhaps other folks are struggling with the same issue or perhaps already have the answer. If it's a proposed solution, other people might have good comments or even better ideas.

One thing that would help would be to have all items posted on the forum be sent to a mailing list (that of course would be optional to sign up for). People might be more likely to ask a question on the forum if they thought they could get a response back that day.

I think as it is now, nobody looks at the discussion except when the weekly Monday e-mail arrives with the previous weeks summary -- thus people's questions might take a week to get answered, which is too long.

Another thing that would help is that if you receive a ROMS question or suggestion via direct e-mail, tell that person to post it on the discussion board, and you will answer it there. It might take a bit more time in the short run, but in the long run it should save time.

Any other ideas?

Thanks,
Rich

[m.hadfield]

One thing that would help would be to have all items posted on the forum be sent to a mailing list (that of course would be optional to sign up for).

Yeah, I second that. Shouldn't be too hard to set up.

[cousins]

One thing that would help would be to have all items posted on the forum be sent to a mailing list (that of course would be optional to sign up for).

Yeah, I second that. Shouldn't be too hard to set up.

And I third it. The less it gets used, the less it gets used. I posted a problem in the Bugs discussion on Tuesday and a few people have looked at it but no response to something that can be duplicated in just a few minutes.

Either the messages could be sent to a list, or the whole thing could be moved to a list, since it is much easier to reply to a list than it is to go to a web site, log in, find the email and then reply via the web editor. If there is a way to reply via email and have it replicated on the BBS I guess that would be the best but probably prone to error and spam.

Another option would be to have it go to a Daily summary if there has been a message that day.

I hope people had a good weekend...

Steve