The future of forums in Moodle

The future of forums in Moodle

by Derek Chirnside -
Number of replies: 3
This is a post about a process to get a better forum into Moodle.

Wikis have had a lot of attention:
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Wiki_requirements
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Wiki
Voting on wikis: http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=89653#p403265

So have blogs:
http://moodle.org/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=44830
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Blogs
http://docs.moodle.org/en/Blogs etc etc

Why not forums?
Is there interest in a page Development:Forums?

The model is: the docs page on wiki requirements but in actual fact we could do much better than this.
Maybe we need something to concatanate the conversations around the tracker, docs and Moodle.org forums. Some random tracker feature requests for forums follow, often dating back prior to 2005, all of which are as yet unaddressed chosen from over 578 in the tracker . . .
Some in my view are very significant.
etc etc. I've had a look at ForumNG, and know of the interest in getting this into Moodle sometime, but a lot has to happen before that. Basically, my feeling is that
  1. Forums in Moodle have been neglected in favour of a lot of other good stuff
  2. Anyone (anyone!!) who has taught a course even with just 25 students with a lot of interaction where we are trying to assess/value forum posts will have got frustrated
  3. We can't get everything we (persoanlly) want, but careful consideration of what we want to do would help develop a quality forum feature list. ie go from function to features
  4. Developers are in a world of their own if they don't have links to the world of users.
  5. Users can be the same . . but they have less chance of knowing about the coding problems of the developers.
  6. Now it is time (overdue?) to look at forums a little more
  7. This needs to be a paralell process with the other stuff
I know this is a complex issue from a coding point of view (eg fix poor code or start clean? Backwards compatibility?) and that may be why it has been put off so long.

Derek
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: The future of forums in Moodle

by Helen Foster -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Moodle HQ Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Plugin developers Picture of Testers Picture of Translators
Derek, thanks for your post with list of Moodle Tracker issues.

After Moodle 2.0 is released, the core development team will be focussing on improving activity modules and blocks in Moodle (source: Roadmap).

Everyone, please make sure you vote for tracker issues you most want to see fixed, as your votes help determine development priorities. (Note: You'll need to create a tracker account in order to vote.)
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: The future of forums in Moodle

by Tim Hunt -
Picture of Core developers Picture of Documentation writers Picture of Particularly helpful Moodlers Picture of Peer reviewers Picture of Plugin developers
Some of my thoughts on this:

Moodle forum is actually pretty good. Most developers happily use the forums here every day, so if any bugs arise, they tend to be jumped on quickly. By comparison, block and wiki were in a really bad state in 1.9 and before. Dealing with them was much more urgent.

Of course, moodle.org is not a typical example of how the forum is supposed to be used. The important use cases relate to use in teaching, and so some of the missing features are important, and better moderation was one of the things we really needed at the OU that lead us to make ForumNG.

The Moodle 2.0 release has been mainly focussed on behind the scenes infrastructure improvements. The plan now is to focus on the different activity modules in Moodle 2.1, and in many cases this is long overdue. And more overdue that we had hoped, because it is taking longer to get Moodle 2.0 finished that we expected.

Like many things, Moodle development strategy has to be a mixture of planning and opportunism. Although the big picture is infrastructure improvements in 2.0, module improvements in 2.1, we got quiz improvements because the OU and others volunteered to fund or do them. We got a rewrite of the workshop module because David Mudrak came along with a good plan to do it. The wiki happened not just because the situation was critical, but also because there were developers in Spain and at the OU volunteering to do the work.

As said above, further improvements to the forum are overdue, so now is a good time to start thinking about what the most important missing requirements are. Actually, in a few months time, once Moodle 2.0 is out of the way might be even better, but it does not really matter.

(By the way, useful tip, if you just type the id of a Moodle bug like MDL-3030, into a forum post, or on Moodle docs, it automatically gets converted into a link for you.)
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In reply to Derek Chirnside

Re: The future of forums in Moodle

by Derek Chirnside -
I've gone ahead and created a page http://docs.moodle.org/en/Development:Forum_requirements and made a start to listing in some systematic form the current features of the forum, a compilation of various ideas and suggestions for forum development I have seen - and a few scenarios to help focus thinking.
What is there is based on the OU document from 2008. (Why re-invent the wheel?)
I am interested in the question of forum improvements, but I am also patient. When Moodle home base moves on to consider forums for 2.1, I'd like to be ready. cool

Have a nice day, wherever in this world you are.
-Derek
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