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Feedback and community vs spam
2006-10-15
I finally implemented a way to mass delete feedback, since spammers have been
hitting my feedback form several times a day for awhile now. To my
surprise, I found a few legitimate comments as well, so you might hear from me
if you left a comment in the last several months. Of course, it is rather
pointless to try to spam the feedback form, since I am the only one who reads
it. However, it did get me thinking about trying to foster participation
and discussion here.
There are clearly a people with display and conversion issues, and there does
not seem to be any other central place where they can go for help. Looking
at the questions people have asked so far, I am not able to answer them myself,
but maybe someone is out there who can and will participate.
The main options I'm considering are:
-
Google Groups -
I like the Google design aesthetic.
-
Yahoo Groups - Way
too many annoying ads
-
Usenet - not enough control for my taste.
-
Self-hosted - lots of control, but do I really want the headache of running
a spam target?
Some of the considerations:
-
cost - I'm not really going to pay any signifigant amount for a commercial
product or service. If there are ads, I want to get the ad revenue.
-
open - I want to be able to get everything out in a usable format.
Wouldn't it be nice if there was a common data model?
-
long-term viability - I don't want to have to switch at some point down the
road. It should be something that is actively maintained and improved.
-
indexed - I want it to be search-engine friendly, and be able to include the
search results with the main FileFormat.Info search results.
-
anti-spam - Given the spam I get on something that is not indexed, I can
only imagine what it is like on a public forum. I need built-in
anti-spam tools and probably moderation as well.
-
inclusive - Everyone should be able to participate. Ideally it would
support OpenID and other common login systems and not have to have a local
sign-up process. It doesn't need to support anonymous or private
posting.
-
usability and looks - I want it to be easy to use and look great. I
should be able to skin it so it is nicely integrated in with the rest of
FileFormat.Info.
-
source language - though I primarily use Java and know some PHP, if I host
it myself, I would prefer something in Ruby. But I don't intend to
muck with the code, so it doesn't really matter that much. It should
have a decent data model and be able to use the latest version of
MySQL. And it needs to run on Linux (Debian).
Nice forum software that I've seen include:
This could be a pretty long list (see
this
one). The
Wikipedia
article on Internet Forums doesn't really have enough information to
help. The note at the top of the
Rails Forum (which uses PunBB) is pretty
funny.
Tags: ffi forum
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