Bug 154

I forgot to mention about a rosa-users mailing lists, but maybe the audience targeted by ROSA wouldn't be very keen on using mailing lists.

(In reply to comment #0)
> Looks like the skills of a community manager are dearly needed. :-)
Thank you, Nux, got it :)
I'm in communication with our admins by now, we'll need some time to arrange it all. Hope it wouldn't take long.

I'll move this bug to "Site infrastructure" category to be created soon.

TODO INFRASTRUCTURE

trying to move to Websites/Forums

(In reply to comment #2)
> (In reply to comment #0)
> > Looks like the skills of a community manager are dearly needed. :-)
> Thank you, Nux, got it :)
> I'm in communication with our admins by now, we'll need some time to arrange
> it all. Hope it wouldn't take long.

Just a suggestion, I've noticed Drupal has some nice multi-lingual features (e.g. http://drupal.org/node/1396988), might make a good multi-lang community site&forums.

I think more easiest way using another copy of PHPBB in directory /en/
and own database.

> Just a suggestion, I've noticed Drupal has some nice multi-lingual features
> (e.g. http://drupal.org/node/1396988), might make a good multi-lang
> community site&forums.

Hi Nux,
we're already setting up an English interface on our existing forums. See
http://forum.rosalab.ru/en/index.php
and "English-speaking forum" from Russian interface redirects to English interface. Please check it.
Now I would like to ask you for a little help: we have an antispam module with questions in Russian (you mentioned that already previously  ;)) ) Could you provide some 5-6 questions in English, tricky for bots but nice for humans? I'll add them to that module. So if user wants to register, there is an option to reload this question and pickup an English one (or vice-versa)

(In reply to comment #6)
> I think more easiest way using another copy of PHPBB in directory /en/
> and own database.
Sasha, we are working on the matter already, everything will be fine

we should have set "in_progress" status to notify that Vladimir and Julia are currently working to get this done.

(In reply to comment #7)
> > Just a suggestion, I've noticed Drupal has some nice multi-lingual features
> > (e.g. http://drupal.org/node/1396988), might make a good multi-lang
> > community site&forums.
> 
> Hi Nux,
> we're already setting up an English interface on our existing forums. See
> http://forum.rosalab.ru/en/index.php
> and "English-speaking forum" from Russian interface redirects to English
> interface. Please check it.
> Now I would like to ask you for a little help: we have an antispam module
> with questions in Russian (you mentioned that already previously  ;)) )
> Could you provide some 5-6 questions in English, tricky for bots but nice
> for humans? I'll add them to that module. So if user wants to register,
> there is an option to reload this question and pickup an English one (or
> vice-versa)

Ah, ok, cool.

Juliette & guys, for the anti-spam stuff I would advise to use reCaptcha or some other captcha implementation. 

The biggest problem I had on my own forum was with profile spammers - apparently there are REAL persons registering (so captcha or questions are useless), they set a URL in the homepage profile field and never come back.. so some forums are providing them with backlinks (or whatever are called in SEO language). 
In my case I'm using FUDForum and I solved the problem by automatically deleting accounts that had not been activated within a certain period of time.
So to conclude:
1. make sure you use account activation by email confirmation
2. disable the homepage/website field in the profile section to discourage these people
3. figure out some way to automatically delete phpBB accounts that haven't been activated within a certain period of time[1] or you'll end up with a ton of them.

However if you really insist I can come up with some questions, though I doubt this technique is very efficient. :-)


[1] - here how we solved it for fudforum http://fudforum.org/forum/index.php?t=msg&th=120396&start=0&

(In reply to comment #10)
> However if you really insist I can come up with some questions, though I
> doubt this technique is very efficient. :-)
> 
Yes, please. :)
Let's start the forums with the settings we currently have, and after that we'll polish everything step by step. It could turn out to be a nice topic to discuss also with our new non-Russian speaking users, etc etc :) Main purpose by now -- we should begin intercommunicating as fast as possible.

(In reply to comment #11)
> (In reply to comment #10)
> > However if you really insist I can come up with some questions, though I
> > doubt this technique is very efficient. :-)
> > 
> Yes, please. :)
> Let's start the forums with the settings we currently have, and after that
> we'll polish everything step by step. It could turn out to be a nice topic
> to discuss also with our new non-Russian speaking users, etc etc :) Main
> purpose by now -- we should begin intercommunicating as fast as possible.

Indeed, everything has to be ready before the big release announcement. I'll get back to you later with some questions.

Sorry for the delay, the weekend kicked in :)
Here are some questions; simple task, not easy to do though. I don't know how robots "think", but I hope they won't answer these easily :)
Feel free to modify/replace them as you wish.

(a couple with the year's main sports event)
1. Which city is host of the 2012 Olympics? A: London
2. The Olympic Games originate from which country? A: Greece
3. Which is the first season? A: Spring
4. Microprocessors are made mainly of this element. A: Silicon
5. All life of Earth is based on this element. A: Carbon
6. The most famous clock in the world is called Big ... A: Ben
7. After Wednesday there comes ... A: Thursday
8. "R" & "U" stand for which country's top level domain? A: Russia

Thank you Nux!
Added your Q and A to the form. 
Also see this topic: http://forum.rosalab.ru/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=615
Now just try to register (and may be ask some friends to do so, too), to test it. If everything will be fine, we'll announce our English forums after these 4 days of holidays which we have now in Russia (approx May 10th).

(In reply to comment #14)
> Thank you Nux!
> Added your Q and A to the form. 
> Also see this topic: http://forum.rosalab.ru/viewtopic.php?f=5&t=615
> Now just try to register (and may be ask some friends to do so, too), to
> test it. If everything will be fine, we'll announce our English forums after
> these 4 days of holidays which we have now in Russia (approx May 10th).

Ok J, that sounds great. I managed to register just fine[1], thanks.
Let's hope this will work. Do you think it's possible to put an obvious link to the English forum on the homepage? Something like this maybe?
http://img.nux.ro/Selection_011.png

[1] - found some bugs though, I'll open new bugs.

(In reply to comment #15)
> Let's hope this will work. Do you think it's possible to put an obvious link
> to the English forum on the homepage? Something like this maybe?
> http://img.nux.ro/Selection_011.png
Yes, this was the first thing I asked about, too, but admins said it's not implemented in phpbb. 
> [1] - found some bugs though, I'll open new bugs.
Good!

My name's Julia, btw. Sorry for not introducing myself earlier :'(

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > Let's hope this will work. Do you think it's possible to put an obvious link
> > to the English forum on the homepage? Something like this maybe?
> > http://img.nux.ro/Selection_011.png
> Yes, this was the first thing I asked about, too, but admins said it's not
> implemented in phpbb. 

I know, that is fine, but maybe at least manually hack the header to add a simple link to forums.rosalab.ru/en/?
Just saying.

> > [1] - found some bugs though, I'll open new bugs.
> Good!
> 
> My name's Julia, btw. Sorry for not introducing myself earlier :'(

No problem, sorry for calling you "J". I'm Lucian.

(In reply to comment #16)
> (In reply to comment #15)
> > Let's hope this will work. Do you think it's possible to put an obvious link
> > to the English forum on the homepage? Something like this maybe?
> > http://img.nux.ro/Selection_011.png
> Yes, this was the first thing I asked about, too, but admins said it's not
> implemented in phpbb. 

It's a shame if this is used as an excuse when the company's primary business is software engineering ;-)

If I have time, I can (try to) implement this.

(In reply to comment #18)
> (In reply to comment #16)
> > (In reply to comment #15)
> > > Let's hope this will work. Do you think it's possible to put an obvious link
> > > to the English forum on the homepage? Something like this maybe?
> > > http://img.nux.ro/Selection_011.png
> > Yes, this was the first thing I asked about, too, but admins said it's not
> > implemented in phpbb. 
> 
> It's a shame if this is used as an excuse when the company's primary
> business is software engineering ;-)
> 
> If I have time, I can (try to) implement this.

Good point, but you don't want to give yourself more work than you already have. :-)
Hacking the theme to add some flags is easy, modifying core files to add multilingual features might be hard; also think of how this will make future phpbb updates difficult (and we all know phpbb needs to be updated regularly.. its security history is far from spotless ... ).

My 2 pence

Yes, guys, let's be realistic.

(In reply to comment #18)
> (In reply to comment #16)
> > (In reply to comment #15)
> > > Let's hope this will work. Do you think it's possible to put an obvious link
> > > to the English forum on the homepage? Something like this maybe?
> > > http://img.nux.ro/Selection_011.png
> > Yes, this was the first thing I asked about, too, but admins said it's not
> > implemented in phpbb. 
> 
> It's a shame if this is used as an excuse when the company's primary
> business is software engineering ;-)
> 
> If I have time, I can (try to) implement this.

Pavel,

Did a small test here http://phpbb.nux.ro/

To do the flag thingy I was talking about just download the flag images in the imageset directory of prosilver theme and link them in the file overall_header.html under these lines:

<div id="site-description">
				<a href="{U_INDEX}" title="{L_INDEX}" id="logo">{SITE_LOGO_IMG}</a>

Just add something like this:
<p><a href="http://forum.rosalab.ru/"><img src="styles/prosilver/imageset/ru.png" /></a> <a href="http://forum.rosalab.ru/en/"><img src="styles/prosilver/imageset/gb.png" /></a></p>

HTH

Indeed, one of the cases when it's faster to do than to talk about. :-)
Will deploy after holidays.

(In reply to comment #22)
> Indeed, one of the cases when it's faster to do than to talk about. :-)
> Will deploy after holidays.

Great! :-)

Also, whoever manages the forum, you should make the "English-speaking forum" a category with sub-forums dedicated to various topics (installation, hardware support, Desktop, Server etc etc etc), otherwise you will end up with a big mess of topics in 1 place.

Flags are deployed.

I opened bug #228 to track the remaining issue with a board for English speakers, and am closing this one.