Okay, now that Talli is sleeping I'll add some more thoughts.
First, self-categorization by each poster within each forum (as Talli suggests), is important for increasing the value of targeting searching.
Second, given that OpenACS docs are notorious for needing improvement, a forum or communication structure needs to be developed that:
1. indicates when documentation fails,
2. helps create new documentation.
3. verifies improved documentation (by showing a lack of "new-history" to use the forum for a previously documented item).
The forums are a perfect resource for documentation development -Think of treating documentation in the same process as any other project: observe, plan, implement (write), verify.
Context of notes are important when creating docs. Does a specific note belong in the beginner doc or the admin doc etc? Right now, I'm sitting with over 400 notes (linked to the various developer-oriented forum discussions) that need to be tracked to documentation somewhere, and if not found, then added. Also, it's not clear to me if certain issues are admin, developer or beginner issues because the context of jargon is unknown --is CM customer management, content management etc.
I have a strong urge to post a question to each noted discussion, asking 1. "has X been added to documentation", and 2. "where?" But 400+ emails would be obnoxious spamming even if it were to benefit the docs. Who would read and respond to them? So, I'm left with having to assume that most are not documented (likely), and posting to the documentation project --hoping its not redundant.
If the communication about documentation is not directly addressed in the structure of forums, then extra communication is burdened to the community and specificly document writers. Asking similar questions to different noted discussions gets old fast for everyone.
We need:
1. One forum for beginners (definition: if you don't know what classification you are in, use "beginner" [end-users]).
2. One forum for admins (those managing OpenACS [such as html, graphics designers, installers, sysadmins etc],
3. One or more forums for developers. Why not keep the current developer-centric forums for developers?
This structure solves many problems. Including a self-categorizing topic for each poster, as Talli and others recommend, would add to the value of this arrangement.
