On Fri, Apr 06, 2007 at 08:11:26AM -0700, ChronosWS wrote:
> May I then suggest we set up a forum, [...]

I use this mailing list.  It is a forum.  It has a web archive.  If you
want a separate mailing list for authenticated pontificating, that would
mean people would have to look somewhere else.

I like mailing list because it all comes to me and I don't have to log
in anywhere.

> where the devs can log in, [...]

Log in to read mail?  Count me out.  ;-)  That's an access barrier.

> throw down
> their ideas and have them discussed. When a decision is arrived at, collect
> it into the official document so people can read what the current canon is.

We have official documents in the source control repositories of each
subproject, client, server, metaserver.  We also have Wiki pages.  That
doesn't make them official though, there is no central government yet.

> For my own project, we do a lot of brainstorming in IM during the day.  He
> then posts the IM to the forums so we have a complete record of how we
> arrived to the decision.

Yes, we've been doing that already.  We use instant messaging over the
IRC protocol, server irc.freenode.net, channel #netrek.  Several of us
log it.  The logs find their way into change control comments or Wiki,
or this forum.

> us and keeps things pretty well organized without going overboard on having
> a bunch of Word or OO docs running around.

If it can't be expressed in text, there has to be a problem in how it is
conveyed.

> I can set up a forum for this on my co-lo box if people are interested in
> it.  Unfortunately, that box does not have properly configured email
> services, so it can't do nice things like notify you when posts have changed
> and whatnot.
> 
> Is this something the group would be interested in?

Thanks for the offer, but no, I'm not interested in that.  If you think
there is a target group that won't use mail but will use forums, you
could set up a forum mirror of this mailing list, such that all posts to
it appear in your forum, and all posts to the forum appear as threaded
replies in the mailing list.  As long as it doesn't break and spew mail
everywhere, that would be fine.

-- 
James Cameron    mailto:quozl at us.netrek.org     http://quozl.netrek.org/