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Re: What are your thoughts on discourse?



Hi Sean

On 2020/03/18 19:34, Sean Whitton wrote:
> I don't mind clicking on a link to read the answers too much, but I
> think your answers should be preserved in our mailing list archives.

Here is the permalink from my answer:
https://discourse.debian.net/t/dear-dpl-candidates-what-are-your-thoughts-on-discourse/75/4?u=highvoltage

(since it's a test site I guess that might be invalid one day)

Here's the full text:

"""
Like many DD’s, I have mixed feelings about Discourse.

I’ve used it before in my local Wireless User Group. I don’t use it much
personally, but it works really well for that community. This current
(discourse.debian.net) site is obviously not the best example of an
active Discourse site, so if someone is interested in what an instance
that’s been used for a while looks like, here is CTWUG’s instance:
https://forum.ctwug.za.net/ 2

Ubuntu replaced their Community Hub site with a Discourse instance. You
can read more about that at
https://popey.com/blog/posts/ubuntu-community-hub-proposal.html and
https://discourse.ubuntu.com/t/ubuntu-community-hub-launched/102. Forums
and sites like Discourse are often used for support. I kind of like that
they explicitly don’t want to use their site for support, which I think
can become a distraction from wider community issues. Their instance is
at https://discourse.ubuntu.com/

I agree that the features you mention in the debian-vote thread are
great. Being able to upvote comments in a Debian discussion could be
very useful.

Personally, when it comes to web-based forums, I tend to use them for a
while and then only remember I have an account on them a few years
later. They tend to be obnoxious with email notifications, so I usually
disable those. For some, just using the e-mail gateway may be
sufficient, another DD did some tests on the usability of its email
integration and wrote a report:
https://writefreely.debian.social/paddatrapper/discourse

IMHO only using the e-mail interface would kind of defeat the purpose
(you might as well use a mailing list then) since all the nice features
that’s available are exposed in the web interface.

I might have to through your question back at you and ask you, what
would you want a Discourse site for Debian to be used?

I’m even going to go ahead and give a partial answer, because I’m a DD
so of course I have an opinion about everything. I think for things like
DebConf, Discourse might be a better way to co-ordinate a lot of things.
Especially since we tend to get in a small influx of new users that, for
example, struggle to get an account on the Debian wiki and once they do,
figure out how to use it, how to deal with edit conflicts, etc.

Our wiki is also full of stale documentation. And we don’t really use
talk pages on there so leaving comments or having discussion about it on
there is suboptimal. Perhaps a Discourse instance might be a better
alternative for wiki-like documentation, I’m not sure. We can perhaps
check how it works out for Ubuntu.

My point with the above is, I think you need to find something that it’s
really useful for, and that it’s really good at, and drive that use case
to spark interest in it. (Also, why doesn’t it have backups yet?)

Finally, I don’t think you should encourage Debianites to ask questions
for the DPL elections on here. Both questions and answers could go
unnoticed and unread. I think it’s better to choose a future discussion
and plan it ahead, rather than test it in production mid-way of a DPL
election.
"""

-Jonathan

-- 
  ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀  Jonathan Carter (highvoltage) <jcc>
  ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁  https://wiki.debian.org/highvoltage
  ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋   https://debian.org | https://jonathancarter.org
  ⠈⠳⣄⠀⠀⠀⠀  Be Bold. Be brave. Debian has got your back.

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