Holes in KDE (fork of "Changes in Git Infra" thread)

[Luca Beltrame]

Ian Wadham wrote:

Hello Ian,

for reference, I'm one of the KDE Community Forum adminstrators (aka the 
"green guys").

> So what CAN I do?  This needs major re-phrasing --- hopefully as positives
> rather than negatives.

This comes from the upstream software we use - phpBB. I admit it's written 
in a not-so-friendly way, but there's little we can do at this point: mainly 
because we try (reasonably) to avoid modifying the upstream software too 
much, because that has a maintenance cost (and we already are short on 
skilled people and we already have some modifications to the forum software 
wrt upstream).

> I have one.  Otherwise, I would have to register a new KDE Identity in
> order to reply, for example, to a "maintainer wanted" post(?)

Yes, the forum requires a valid KDE Identity login. 
 
> more.  Another possible turnoff.  Speaking for myself, I almost invariably
> click away from sites that want you to register, unless I am really,
> really interested.

Unfortunately, this is unavoidable as forums as large as KDE's attract a 
whole load of bots, spammers, and other ad-spewers. Even with registration 
enabled (and checks to external services to prevent obvious spammers) we 
have to kill several spam posts per day.
Also IMO registration is to keep a minimal barrier of entry to prevent 
flames and other unwanted behavior (granted, the forums behave exceptionally 
well - few times we've had to poke people to behave). 

Hopefully this clears things up.

-- 
Luca Beltrame - KDE Forums team
KDE Science supporter
GPG key ID: 6E1A4E79