428139 - Enable discussions on a per add-on sexy basis

Status: VERIFIED FIXED

(addons.mozilla.org Graveyard :: Public Pages, enhancement, P3)

Description

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

Based on the feedback from the community, freezing discussions cold turkey was a little harsh. Proposing that we add a new preference on a per add-on basis to enable Vanilla discussion forums.

First work needs to be done in the dev cp to add the pref. Then, add-on details pages will need to show a link to the discussions area for that add-on.

Putting component into Public Pages but it first needs Dev panel work.

Comment 2

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

I am reluctant to re-enable Vanilla. I believe we can achieve the simple functionality we cut Vanilla down to by writing a discussions controller.

That'd also make the discussions part of the page maintainable (go figure) and allow us to address feature requests that come in over time.

The functionality to start with should be very, very basic (viewing the old discussions, making new threads and commenting on them, for logged-in users only).

I have a feeling Laura may agree, since she had the pleasure of working with our Vanilla instance lately as well. CCing for comment.

Comment 3

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

I also propose adding "sexy" to the bug title in order to raise its attention, and on general principle.

Comment 4

[Laura Thomson :laura]

I tend to agree with Fred.  We don't require a huge amount of functionality and
Vanilla is going to be challenging to maintain.

Problems with Vanilla:
- We integrated it with our Cake install and modified it so we can't easily
upgrade it.  
- Interestingly as well I couldn't find information in the code (or on the
Vanilla website) about what version we might have - didn't seem to be a very
open community.
- We don't need a full featured discussion forum, just a few simple things. 
The functionality Fred describes above is all we really use.

Also, +1 for adding sexy to the title.

Comment 5

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

I hate Vanilla and would prefer to manually deliver all discussion posts to the interested parties than use it again.

Comment 6

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

(In reply to comment #5)
> I hate Vanilla and would prefer to manually deliver all discussion posts(...)

I suggest employing GMail paper [1] for that purpose.

[1] http://mail.google.com/mail/help/paper/more.html

Comment 7

[Michael Morgan [:morgamic]]

Agree -- Vanilla integration was a bad choice, we should research alternatives. (not GMail paper)

Comment 8

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

Getting rid of Vanilla will save us a few dozen localized strings too

Comment 9

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

Per discussion, we'll re-enable Vanilla and make sure CSS/style works with new layout and depends upon add-on detail page design.

Comment 10

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Afterwards, we'll remove Vanilla and replace it by something more maintainable, too.

Comment 11

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Need mocks from Madhava and a new preference.  Defaults to off.

Comment 12

[Madhava Enros [:madhava]]

Attachment: proposed layout of "resources" section

how about this for a discussions layout?  As in the old version, clicking on a discussion name title link would take the user to the vanilla discussion page.

Comment 13

[Basil Hashem [:baz]]

Looks awesome to me. Remember that for the support section, it can be URL or email address.

Comment 14

[Dave Garrett]

Just filed bug 433638 to spin-off part of bug 430877.

The idea is that once we get this spiffy new system in place, we should require developers to enter a support URL and/or email address if they have it turned off.  Please comment.

Comment 15

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Pushing out all these discussions bugs to 3.4.6

Comment 16

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Attachment: diff for re-enabling vanilla on a sexy basis

There's also sql coming.

Comment 17

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Attachment: sql for enabling discussions

Comment 18

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Comment on attachment 330801 [details] [diff] [review]
diff for re-enabling vanilla on a sexy basis

Pretty good. Two things though:

- Your SQL changes need to be represented in the default SQL file (config/sql/remora.sql) and possibly in the test SQL data.
- I didn't find a way (and don't see any in the code) for enabling/disabling discussions for existing add-ons. You only seem to have added a flag to the new submission process.

Comment 19

[Laura Thomson :laura]

Attachment: Revised patch with edit support and remora.sql

Comment 20

[DonGato]

Yes please, make this optional so developers can switch it off. It would be nice if even the current "Reviews" follows this path as it's always misused for bug reporting.

Comment 21

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Comment on attachment 330852 [details] [diff] [review]
Revised patch with edit support and remora.sql

Enabling/Disabling works in both the old and the new dev cp. Good job.

Several comments:
- Your "newest discussions" list on the add-on details page needs some design love. Will add a screenshot shortly.
- You leave vanilla itself untouched here, meaning, the enabled/disabled flag does not influence the ability of a user to post to the forums, it just unlinks it from the details page. But it's okay to hold off until the meeting.
- Please do not commit this without the actual forum being fixed.

Comment 22

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

Attachment: Discussions design, currently

Here's the screenshot of the current "latest discussions" section.

Comment 23

[Fred Wenzel [:wenzel]]

When discussions are re-enabled, we'll need to migrate the old data, obviously. During that process we need to make sure that deleted user accounts are set to 0 (cf. bug 432614 comment 11), so we don't create dangling references.

Comment 24

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

This will be closed in the next couple months.  I'll take the bug for now.

Comment 25

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

add-on discussions now provided by get satisfaction trial in bug 527930

Comment 26

[Stephen Donner [:stephend] Not actively reading bugmail]

Verified FIXED per comment 25.

Comment 27

[Justin Scott [:fligtar]]

This bug was pushed live off-cycle tonight.

Comment 28

[Wil Clouser [:clouserw]]

These were not pushed tonight.