Great OLPC Help News!

[peter]

Hello everyone,

I have been approached by the official OLPC [url="http://olpc.osuosl.org/forum/"]forum at osuosl.org[/url] to merge OLPChelp.org into a new combined entity, most likely under laptop.org.

We have been discussing many things since late last year and feel the mutual desire to do this is strong enough for it to become a reality in the coming weeks.

We are debating the use of either free open source phpBB forum software used by osuosl.org, and purchased vBulletin which we use here.

The basic software features are the same. The primary differences are vBulletin has more administrative features and has a support fee, phpBB can be deployed around the world at minimal cost and has better language support. These are very strong positive features for phpBB. [url="http://www.phpbb.com/community/"]Visit the phpBB site to see how their new version 3 looks[/url]. A phpBB based test site will soon be created for this.

We are also discussing forum administrative processes to make it easier to act on volunteer member suggestions in a quick, easy and coordinated way.

I think it is a great opportunity and whole heartedly support this exciting prospect. OLPChelp.org administrators and moderators get daily requests from visitors thinking that this is the official OLPC forum. We are primarily a group of curious users while osuosl.org consists of actual developers. We could learn a lot from each other and this will help the greater community.

Please let me know your thoughts abut what you’d like to see.

[girlygeek]

Wow! Wonderful! When will it happen?

[bluebird]

sounds like a great idea Peter. Keep us up to date what happens!

Cheers!

[robby]

Good luck with the project, Peter! Anything anyone can do to provide "where to go to accomplish what" information is great.

Since getting my XO I've been bouncing back and forth among http://olpchelp.org, http://olpc.osuosl.org and http://wiki.laptop.org (including the discussion pages-behind-pages) enough to get seriously dizzy... not unpleasantly so... but dizzy. I've been saving links to olpc things I find useful as a http://del.icio.us/bstepno/olpc bookmark collection.

I also resurrected an old blog, http://boblog.blogspot.com, which just happened to be green, as a place to post news, links and comments. But now I'd better get back to "my real job," for the semester that starts Monday!

[Fricka]

This is a great idea! I don't have a preference on the system used, I just like the idea of a consolidation of the community.

[Moto]

What will happen to us? Will we automatically be members...or do we have to sign up as newbs there?

(If the merge happens)

[peter]

All accounts, threads and posts will be migrated as is. There may be duplicate usernames, and those users will be alerted. In these few cases the members will be requested to either change their username or if both accounts belong to the same person, their accounts and posts will be merged together.

[peter]

Anyone willing to volunteer to create a logo for the new OLPC forums that looks like what's on wiki.laptop.org? It needs to be low in height so that it doesn't dominate the XO's screen, only a couple hundred pixels wide.

It's going to happen soon!

[captain.ratsie]

We managed a 5 page saga over just a link this will need its own novela
I dident recognise the domain name ,so I went and looked,that's the real olpc guys ,,did this start because I told you we needed linked in the wiki ...you did say "keys to the kingdom"...like wow talk about unexpected results ...
I'm glad your happy you put a tonne of work into this forum and its growing up ..it sounds way cool .hope you can work it out
I like open sorce everything as long as a non geek cabby can figure out how to make it go <:3O~~~

[peter]

It's actually the semi-official forum for laptop.org that was created by the OLPC support team when G1G1 started to roll out and they realized there wasn't a feedback mechanism for XO users. Laptop.org now wants to create an official forum, and they proposed the merger.

I'll have an input into the forum category naming. I share your concern about a geeky feel, especially for a product that is aimed at a mass market, not just the techies. It's why I chose simple names for OLPChelp.org, it makes it more inviting.

Progress is being made and a beta site should be up in a few days.

[peter]

Just an update. We are currently running a beta site and trying to figure out little hiccups.

The new forum will:

1. Have far fewer categories, probably no more than 5. This will make navigation much simpler and allow some forum sections to more easily fit on the XO screen.
2. Use a greatly simplified theme to make it load faster.
3. Use modular open source software. This will help us to more easily support many languages with very few modifications.

It's very encouraging so far.

Expect the new forum to be launched soon.