A few comments in random order :

• (historically) we go, promote and enhance the tools people use most : at some point the forum lost all interest so we switched to mailing lists, at a later point irc became the main tool and mailing list lost again popularity. We then needed a tool to coordinate actual tasks, thus the lab was born.
• I see the lab as a task-oriented forum with some very interesting side effects linked to the tool itself (deep email integration, deep github integration, oriented on who does what, so people can claim tasks)
• Even if it's not easy to use, the wiki is the longest standing tool, I guess we'll keep it for long.
• My opinion is to use what people use, and even more use what active contributors use. The rest are wishes, or forcing others into working another way.

Now the question is : where the forum fits in this?

I dont think the forum should close, only that development should be moved out of it. The forum is nice to have when people get their devices, if its just open now it will continue to build for when its needed.

I think there should be more use of categories on the forum though, it is labour intensive to link to each and every post that has to do with a topic. Linking to #stereo-3d is better.

http://www.discourse.org/ already works on this principle, rather than static structure. I find it more inviting and friendly than phpbb, but phpbb is not that bad.

https://meta.discourse.org/t/phpbb-3-importer/17397 features some tools for migrating phpBB to discourse.

@philippej: the people lost the interest in the forum. True, but what do you think, why is that? They also lost the interest in the mailing lists, why is that? And what about the lab? How many people participate here?

What should the goal be? A broad user base who is paticipating with ideas and discussions, or a small group of developers talking in a more or less closed compartment?

So the question appears to me as:
To give the people what they use is nice, but what kind of people do you have in mind?

Mailing lists suck a bit for finding information, they work better for "official" correspondence in larger projects. Often in a semi-direct manner.

With the proposed changes ive made for the landing page, wiki and forum eula i think the project will be more popular.

Maybe https://github.com/erming/shout https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/736509/shout-irc-screenshot.png can be used in place of the webIRC, and placed in a more prominent place? Its always nice to see that something is live.

Same with forum posts, im sure there is a plugin for phpBB to include a feed on the website. Right now it isnt very connected, and i only found the forum a few days ago, and ive been luring the site for years i imagine, it needs to be more connected.

What does lab lacks that a forum would bring?

Lab is currently the tool that made us actually "have stuff done" the most, that's why I'm pushing for it.

On the forum we often ended up with endless discussions with nothing concrete done. Same for mailing lists.

Starting from now I (=personal opinion) will push for solutions where clear responsibility is given for each task, and will avoid discussion tools where no clear outcome can be seen (except IRC of course, which is our super brainstorm-discuss-anything-free-for-all platform).

This is what I call "working around concrete objects". Be it a documentation item, a physical enclosure, a piece of software, or a support question asked by a user.

On Lab you can :

• track who does what
• see what needs to be done
• claim tasks
• discover areas where you can help
• organize tasks in projects
• post mockups
• sync everything with repository commits
• support users
• provide easy sign-on

...all this by email or web + irc bridge.

Because of the lack of interest, I think this topic can be closed.
Although the fact, that only two persons added a comment speaks for itself.

Over and out.
Komtrakatze

By the way, how can I quit my account here?

We are currently evaluating shout as mentioned by allan.