I think you’ve missed the point of a forum, it’s less about support and more about a place where users can hang out and compare notes.

I’m not up to speed on the code base but I visited the forums on a daily basis. I would of been more active had the forums been less support geared, and more user focused. That big red announcement and the questionnaire that prevented quoting was a huge hindrance.

My suggestion, change forums, find one that has better RSS support and follow it in your favorite reader. Yes, you’ll have to go on the forum to reply but hey, the link will be right there in your reader.

Check out Phorum: http://phorum.org

Oh, if you’re dead set on using email as your conduit:
http://www.phorum.org/phorum5/read.php?16,14081,page=1

Thanks for SimplePie.

Yabba — I’m not interested in the web interface. For those of us who are providing the bulk of the support, we all tend to be more development-centric. The benefit of having a mailing list was very appealing.

Sure, people can use the web interface, and I expect that most will. For those who are willing to be more involved, a mailing list is great because everyone gets the messages, and everyone gets the responses. It has the tendency of making people more educated about the topic, and more people can more easily get involved in answering questions if they so choose.

We had to make a decision that makes the job easier for the people doing it, while still ensuring that people get the help they need. I believe that this will make it easier for people to get the help they need without having to rely primarily on me for support, and it definitely distributes the workload better across all who are capable of helping. Aside from a few people not liking the Y! Groups web interface, it’s generally a win-win when it comes down to the aspects that are the most important.

I’d hate to see you go, but everybody on this earth needs to make the best decisions for themselves. For me, I need to make support easier for everyone to contribute to, and for people like you to get the help they need with SimplePie. Those are the things I care about. Y! Groups might not have as slick of a web UI as PunBB, but the overall benefits outweigh the overall disappointments.

I also work on FOSS ( a non-WP blog project … yeah I know, tad tough to believe there’s anything beyond Wp :p ) and our forums are also a tad “developer intensive” but they also have a lot of user interaction. It takes time and effort , but eventually your core users take over most of the support … the hard part is getting core users that can actually follow the code ( particularly tough if you have a small user base ), but eventually you hit a topple over point.

My advice would be to continue your current forums but encourage more user participation. Promoting users that constantly give good advice to moderators and delegating aspects of the forums to them is a huge step forward

¥

But I understand you can’t handle it all, but surely there is a better way. Maybe someone else can run the forums?