[Summary] Discourse for Debian
The thread about Discourse is getting too long (both in user and project
lists) and a lot of people's reactions start to repeat.
So I just wanted to summarize so far everything that people have stated so far
in a concise manner, and I invite everyone to complete this pros/cons list.
(items are in no particular order)
pros:
=====
- easier moderation (for moderators)
- attracts people who are not comfortable with email
- easier +1 for polls
- easier to split threads
- search function returns relevant results
- ability to close threads
- auto-summarize feature
- supposed to attract younger audience
cons:
=====
usability:
----------
- does not work offline
- does not work without graphical environment
- does not really work outside of the web browser
- does not work work without javascript
- Not 100% GPL - some javascript scripts loaded into users browser are not
free
- moderation abilities exclusively tied to web interface
- makes it harder to use for people with limited abilities
- makes it harder to use on weak or non-mainstream hardware that can't run
modern web-browser
- email integration is second-class, including poor support for quoting
- requires login
- hard to enter long texts due to imperfect web interface
- achievements/badges/other gamification of the process
- increased context switching (instead of all mail from many projects in one
inbox need to visit multiple different websites and your email mailbox anyway)
- trust levels are revoked if you don't use web interface often enough to
maintain current trust level
- learning curve exists and so it forces existing users to learn new tool
privacy:
--------
- tracks user activity (including time spent on each page/topic)
- currently no way to request removal of collected user's data
- "trust levels" are earned by spending time on the website and increasing
post counts allow gaining moderation capabilities
- distributed moderation based on trust levels (amplified by points below)
- moderation possibilities allow editing messages of others
- 1-to-1 messages are not really private (with email it is direct mta-to-mta
vs discourse still is a middleman)
- moderation audit log is supposed to be present by I have not found it.
- "ease of moderation" is not received positively by end users
why yet another tool/service?
-----------------------------
- yet another service splits the community
- there is already http://forums.debian.net
- there is already https://reddit.com/r/debian
- similar efforts have failed int the past due to lack of interest to web
browser services (shapado.debian.net / ask.debian.net)
I want to leave this as is without final verdict. Everyone should make their
own.
--
Ihor Antonov
https://useplaintext.email
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