Here are some initial ideas on something new to replace it. The following text is taken from an old posting I did, and also relates to bug 169. Let's flesh this out with some interface ideas and mockups.
The idea is to build something that not only works for moodle.org, but is also generically useful for people who want to categorise and sort discussions of all types in an educational context.
Think of the interface as the current forum interface with a few extra things added. This means we can take advantage of all the great things we have in forums already like HTML editor, filters, multimedia, attachments etc etc.
Here on moodle.org I would keep a number of forums, one per Moodle module (as now). So we'll have one forum for Assignment bugs/issues, one forum for Wiki bugs /issues, etc.
Each forum can have a number of classification Scales applied. For moodle.org we don't need all the ones that the current bug tracker provides. I think the following will be enough to make a useful working environment and reduce confusion:
Found in: 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 ...
Fixed in: 1.3, 1.3.1, 1.4, 2.0, 2.1, 2.2 ...
Type: Minor problem, Major problem, Minor Feature, Major Feature
Status: New, Not needed, Under discussion, Being worked on, Needs testing, Finished
Now imagine the following changes to the current forum interface:
1) The discussion view will have these additions:
- a menu or button so that teachers can change the current "moderator" of that discussion. This will be very useful in educational environments. To reduce admin load there can be an auto-setting per forum that makes the person who started the discussion into the default moderator.
- the classification scales appearing as menus along the top. This can be changed by moderators+teachers only or by everyone (depending on a forum setting).
- a button for subscription/unsubscription to the current discussion
2) The forum view will be improved with the following additions:
- Each discussion row contains the above classification columns, the moderator name and also the total ratings for the forum (in addition to the ones that we have already like date, replies etc). The ratings column could be used like votes.
- The titles of each column are clickable so that you can sort by any column, ascending and descending.
- A search form at the top of the forum display lets you restrict the displayed discussion to any subset of the classifications (eg Show me all the "major problems" that are "new", or, show me all the "major features" being moderated by "Martin Dougiamas")
Finally, a usage scenario. Imagine someone posts a post somewhere in a discussion with a good idea about the forums (eg this post
- split that post into a new discussion
- move the new discussion into the Forum forum
- Classify it as "Major Feature", "Under discussion" for version "2.0".
- Assign myself or someone else as the moderator (person responsible for taking care of it).
If this existed, things could be sooo beautifully organised around here.