Users still using deprecated forums

Yeah, I wouldn't have even noticed some forums are deprecated if I hadn't seen this. It's really hard to tell in the drop down and looking at http://drupal.org/forum it looks like the deprecated container is empty, though I guess the others are indented a bit now that I look close.

Michelle

We also need more helpful pointers than "Please see the module issue queue or the appropriate group on http://groups.drupal.org". Especially since the list of working groups is long and unsortable.

I suggest a sticky post in each forum, titled "This forum is deprecated" and containing the relevant links. Here are some suggestions for links -- I'm sure I've missed some.

Database compatibility
- http://groups.drupal.org/database-schema-api
- http://groups.drupal.org/mysql

Documentation
- Doc mailing list http://drupal.org/mailing-lists
- http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-redesign-analysis
- http://groups.drupal.org/beginner-documentation

Drupal core
- http://drupal.org/project/issues/drupal
- Dev mailing list http://drupal.org/mailing-lists

Drupal.org infrastructure
- http://drupal.org/project/issues/infrastructure
- http://drupal.org/project/issues/webmasters
(Preferably with a sentence or two explaining the difference between the issue queues)
- http://groups.drupal.org/drupal-org-redesign-analysis
- http://groups.drupal.org/classifying-and-presenting-the-contributed-modu...
- Maybe http://groups.drupal.org/issue-tracking-and-software-releases

Media and document management
- http://groups.drupal.org/document-management
- http://groups.drupal.org/podcasting
- http://groups.drupal.org/video
- http://groups.drupal.org/pdf
- http://groups.drupal.org/radio
- http://groups.drupal.org/videocasters
- http://groups.drupal.org/image

Performance and scalability
- http://groups.drupal.org/high-performance

Social software and communities
- http://groups.drupal.org/social-networking-sites
- http://groups.drupal.org/community

Is it possible for us to programmatically set comments to read only on these and remove the Post new forum topic. link at the theme layer maybe?

Yes, sticky posts seems relevant for this.

I did not know about this thread, so I posted the following comment in a separate one (let it die, continue here):

"If the purpose with the deprecated forums is to shift the activity focus elsewhere, I think that each such forum should have its own sticky post about the deprecated status, preferably with pointers to the new arenas.

It is not enough that (even just some of them) they have a quite anonymous link below the forum title on the forum group index page. Many of the new replies come from users having found the parent posts through search or other direct references, so they might not be aware of the deprecated status and where the Drupal.org forum maintainers would want them to post (instead).

Ideally, that message should also appear emphasized and colored right above the subject field when posting new content or replies to existing content in those forums.

(This is a good example on the need for features related to closing forums, which Drupal currently lacks.)"

(from http://drupal.org/node/257019)

Personally, I would use something a little more obvious than "deprecated". I'd never even heard the word before the infamous podcast. Perhaps something like "Read only" or "Archived" or even really obvious "No new posts here".

Michelle

Deprecated -> Obsolete?

The word Deprecated has a specific meaning and it applies to the status of those forums. I am not willing to change that. I expect people to be willing to easily lookup words they have problems with, they are already on the Internet so a lookup is easy and learning new words is a good experience for those unfamiliar with it.

As to sticky posts, sure. I modified the descriptions. If someone wants to create posts and then have then checked and made 'Sticky' then go ahead. I did several of them at the time I changed the forums.

I will consider changing the forum titles themselves.

Changed forum titles.

I am trying to help out in the Drupal usability group- we want to go through the Deprecated forum, and discover any good advice, but we also want to stop the flow of new comments.

As we are trying to sort through the issue queue, this would help focus the efforts of those who want to contribute. This is crucial, as there may be good suggestions in the forum we don't want to lose, but it adds another layer to bring it into the issue queue (which is something I will work on this week).

We came up with a suggestion, with add1sun's help, to change the d.o theme based on the URLs for those deprecated forums. e.g., http://drupal.org/forum/6

1) remove the "Post new forum topic" link
2) re-iterate the announcement that these fora are deprecated, and are only there for reference, and provide appropriate links.
- "Forums that are no longer actively used. Please see the appropriate issue queue http://drupal.org/project/issues or group on http://groups.drupal.org"
3) also adding in an ID/class on the body tag of these deprecated fora would allow for CSS to 'grey' out all text & links to suggest deprecation.

Thank you!

This is of course not an ideal solution, but would be very very helpful in the interim as a stop-gap.

Hi, I'm comeing from http://drupal.org/node/279199 and have not yet the time to read every thing yet but the first thing that comes me in mind is:

WHY DO YOU NOT COLOR RED The advice for the deprecated Forum?
or make a RED Bunner blinking with the advice not to post there for technical reasons?

People react on Color (hopefully !) Cheers

#14 and 15 might be relevant as feature requests for the forum module in general.
Many sites might benefit from this, and that would reduce the overhead of manual fixes that needs to be maintained on drupal.org across upgrades etc.

For preventing users from posting, it may be best to have a form_alter in the drupalorg module that prevents users from posting to name tids. It could be as simple as disabling the Submit button with a drupal_set_message('blah', 'error').

Anyone for a patch?

Queue Cleanup

I don't see this as a critical issue anymore - the deprecated forums are rarely posted in (every once in a while, yes, but not daily).

Since the word "deprecated" is here to stay, can this be marked as wont fix?

I agree @silvering going to mark it "wont fix" if some consider to retag please feel free!

Is it possible to disable the "reply" link in the deprecated forums?

I suppose we could link_alter it away.

Moving.

Just to report that this is still an issue after the upgrade. There are comments in here as of this week https://drupal.org/forum/115

I suspect that Google is mostly directing folks this way. Can we block Google from indexing these forums?

We could also ask some of the folks who submitted things there "Why did you do this and how did you get here?"

Tagging this with d.o content strategy. We have some plans for deprecating forums entirely and moving to more of a Q&A format based on the content strategy work.

Also, I completely agree that if we can't deprecate forums entirely, we definitely need to be able to shut down a deprecated forum from new posts being added.

lists module currently protects posting to the old security advisories forum, and doesn’t actually interface with forums currently otherwise. So we can make this a generic set of forums that are closed.

This is deployed now. No one, including admins, can post to deprecated forums.

Is it possible to disable the "reply" link in the deprecated forums?

We can close comments to all nodes in deprecated forums.

Comments are now closed for topic in deprecated forums.