This community is extremely valuable, not just to me but to everyone who participates. Over the past many years I think it has provided not only support for CSLA, but a place to have some great conversations around software architecture, object-oriented design, and many other topics.
But as you can probably tell, the software driving the current forum is getting pretty old. In fact, so is the OS and the database.
Because of this, I need to find a new forum solution. I'm not interested in hosting yet another forum package and dealing with the administrative headaches that comes with such a choice. I've been doing that for many years now and I'm tired of it.
This means finding a cloud-based forum provider. I've done some research in this direction and have three options - you may have others.
stackoverflow has a csla tag, and it is somewhat possible to treat stackoverflow like a forum if you restrict your queries to this tag. They provide a really good Q&A experience and email support, plus cross-pollination with other topic/tag areas. We'd also surely end up occasionally engaging with people who know or care very little about CSLA.
Google groups has good forum and email list support. They support tagging of posts, and allow the use of existing Google credentials. This would provide an experience more comparable to the existing forum in that only CSLA users would probably choose to join.
CodePlex projects provide a holistic set of services (source control, issue tracking, etc.) including a discussion forum. Their forum software is the weakest of these three options, but would have the advantage (if I moved CSLA to CodePlex) of being directly integrated with the CSLA project as a whole. This would also provide an experience more comparable to the existing forum in that only CSLA users would probably choose to join.
I look forward to hearing your thoughts regarding a new home for this wonderful community!
[Poll]
I think it will be very difficult to have one platform for everything.
StackOverflow is indeed the best site for pure Q&A, but you can't call it a forum (most of the regulars over there will actually be offended if you call it that ;-). Discussions are definitely a no-go there.
Concerning source control, I think right now Github is the way to go. Forking and creating pull requests is really easy which makes it possible for "mere mortals" to also provide you with feedback and code changes. They also have an issue tracking system, but don't really support discussions.
That leaves Google groups which is a real "forum-style" discussion platform, but which is not good for pure Q&A en definitely not for source control.
Conclusion: You'll need a mix of different platforms if you want the best of all worlds.
My 2c.
fretje
Rocky - would going to StackOverflow restrict you from having any kinds of admin capabilities you currently have (or would want to retain)? I really like the idea of having everything in one place (CodePlex) but StackOverflow has its pros with broader reach. Interestingly, I noticed that the CodePlex discussion page for TypeScript directs users to use StackOverflow for questions.
I don't think stack overflow is an option. Only a fraction of what the forum is used for would be allowed. It would be cool if you used it as the main Q and A section but in doing so you risk losing traffic to the forum, which could halt discussions on other topics.
Codeplex... I've never seen a codeplex project with a healthy forum on it.
I'm not too familiar with Google groups, but it seems like the best out of the three.
I know you don't want to have to deal with hosting it yourself, but I think it's worth considering Jeff Atwood's Discourse - http://www.discourse.org/ maybe if you're willing to wait a while somebody will have a good hosting solution for it.
I voted CodePlex (for source control as well, as I like how it does release more than github); SO isn't really an option, I think that would effectively disband the community that's assembled here since it must conform to a Q&A format, which this site allows for broader back and forth discussions. Given how subjective or context based requirements can be, I'm not sure there's always a hard answer. Plus I suspect we'll hear from lots of people that don't understand Csla saying your problem is the fact that you're using Csla.
Google Groups seem like a mess.
I think as long as you put a redirect in place, the community would follow to CodePlex, just like they followed from the MSN groups Csla used to use.
I voted StackOverflow but then I got to thinking that what I really thought you were thinking is StackExchange; which I don't think you are. That is, create a new StackExchange site just for CSLA. Only people interested in CSLA would link up to it and it would be much more likely that "conversations" would avoid the wrath of those that see it as their life's goal to close inappropriate posts.
StackOverflow is always up on my browser so it would be nice to just have this forum integrated onto the StackExchange platform to get all the notifications in one place.
So really +1 vote for a StackExchange site.
I've voted for CodePlex.
In my project I am using the Catel framework besides CSLA.
This project is hosted on http://catel.codeplex.com/ and I this this is a good example how CodePlex can be used.
Everything in place from code over forum and issue tracking is useful.
alex.
I voted for CodePlex too.
I do believe we should try to follow up Q&A on SO as well but our primary discussion forum does not fit in the guidelines for SO.
See also http://stackoverflow.com/faq
Definitely not Stack Overflow... I agree with Andy's comment wholeheartedly: "SO isn't really an option, I think that would effectively disband the community that's assembled here "
I am not familiar with CodePlex in terms of discussion capabilities. Google groups seems more aligned with the notion of a discussion forum.
If there was an option for "reconsider, stick with the current forum" I'd vote for that... but maybe CodePlex is really a good fit since it sounds like many of you are voting for that.
One additional thought - will there be a conversion to migrate previous posts to the new location, or will this forum continue to live much like the one before this one did?
I voted for codeplex as well, i know alot of projects that do not have discussions but there are some (and csla might be one) that do have questions and discussions in there, for example http://orchard.codeplex.com/discussions
This does go back to hosting, but Jeff Atwood recently announced his new forum startup Discourse; maybe that could be an option since it's supposed to hopefully reduce hosting headaches?
Short of that, I do agree that it would be difficult for any of these options to provide all that is needed, but CodePlex is probably the closest.
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