Discusss: use Discourse instead of mailing list

[Matt Wilkie]

in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/leo-editor/oQwOLKtiAlg/XfKuuBhUBgAJ Xavier recommended using Discourse instead of Google Groups for Leo discussion:

I think it would really great for our community if we moved our discussions to a real modern forum like Discourse, as Python and many other communities have already done.

This post from the Python forum gives some explanations of the particular benefits/features of Discourse, though it is in response to someone comparing it to a simple mailing list.

But some of the greatest features that they don't mention there which I think would really benefit our community are:

• Easy refactoring of forum threads! Moderators can easily move off-topic posts to a new thread, so the current topic can be kept focused, without losing any contributions. This is for me a feature that sets Discourse apart from any other forum software (and I've looked at many).
• Easy creation of polls!

Though there are probably many more that I even yet don't know.

I stongly feel that we have to move forward as a Team and Discourse could be a game changer in many ways.

Myself, I've had a good experience with Discourse elsewhere and would be happy to use it. (Some of the initial badge notifications are a bit excessive and noisy but that disappears quickly). The browser editing experience is excellent. Refactoring of threads would be awesome.

I see two major challenges:

(a) Free hosting for open source projects must be applied for and is reviewed on a case by case basis. Leo has a small community so might not fit "a tool to host discussion at scale". Self hosting would cost ~$60 USD/yr + setup, and someone would need to commit to maintaining it for the long haul.

(b) The Google Group has a lot of history and is a major resource when answering questions. I wouldn't want to talk about things in one place and research in another. There is conflicting info on whether the free hosting supports imports (I've asked for clarification).

-matt

[Xavier G. Domingo]

Thanks Matt for creating this topic about my proposal!

I've just seen that they have just answered to your question.

Regarding the things they take into account to consider a community as a valid "candidate", at the page that you've linked they say:

Some signs to look for:

• Your issue tracker is being crowded with feature requests and “bikeshed discussions”.
• Users of your project seek out development advice from other users.
• Your project gives way to new projects built on top of it that can be shared and talked about.

in our case discussions are both in our issue tracker, but even more in our Google Group so I think we clearly qualify in that regard.

Let's try and see how that evolves... If they agree to give us the free hosting, we can try the migration and see how it works before deciding. This is how many other communities, including Python, have done it.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+...@googlegroups.com.
To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/db5a723d-0a8c-443c-87b5-967846cd46d3%40googlegroups.com.

Libre de virus. www.avg.com

[Edward K. Ream]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 11:06 AM Matt Wilkie <map...@gmail.com> wrote:

in https://groups.google.com/d/msg/leo-editor/oQwOLKtiAlg/XfKuuBhUBgAJ Xavier recommended using Discourse instead of Google Groups for Leo discussion:

Especially interesting because Python uses it.

I see two major challenges:

(a) Free hosting for open source projects must be applied for and is reviewed on a case by case basis. Leo has a small community so might not fit "a tool to host discussion at scale". Self hosting would cost ~$60 USD/yr + setup, and someone would need to commit to maintaining it for the long haul.

Let's apply and see what happens.  Have you already applied?  I am having trouble applying.

(b) The Google Group has a lot of history and is a major resource when answering questions. I wouldn't want to talk about things in one place and research in another. There is conflicting info on whether the free hosting supports imports (I've asked for clarification).

Why do we care about imports?

Edward

[Matt Wilkie]

(b) The Google Group has a lot of history and is a major resource when answering questions. I wouldn't want to talk about things in one place and research in another. There is conflicting info on whether the free hosting supports imports (I've asked for clarification).

Why do we care about imports?

My thinking is that many times my solution for Problem X is found by searching the mailing list. Xavier's recent story about find-minibuffer setting is a good example. If we do switch platforms in 6 months will be telling people "oh yeah, I'm pretty sure we talked about this. Search Discourse. ... Oh, it's not there? now search Google Groups".

Another benefit would be the "Suggested topics" at the bottom of each thread which shows related discussions would reach farther back in time.

All that said, maybe we don't care enough to go through the work required. (I'm willing to help test that.)

-matt

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Hi,

The idea of using another platform, instead of mailing list, has arrived locally from time to time. FYI we have considered NimForum[1] because of its simplicity and because we would like to deploy and migrate data in an easy way in case of being necessary. But for now, we still keep the mailing list and no migration has been done.

[1] https://github.com/nim-lang/nimforum

Cheers,

Offray

[Edward K. Ream]

On Wed, Aug 28, 2019 at 3:14 PM Matt Wilkie <map...@gmail.com> wrote:

(b) The Google Group has a lot of history and is a major resource when answering questions. I wouldn't want to talk about things in one place and research in another. There is conflicting info on whether the free hosting supports imports (I've asked for clarification).

I tried and failed to sign up for discourse.  There is an email fallback.

Has anyone tried to register before?  If not, I'll register via email.

Edward

[Chris George]

I am currently looking at Flarum which seems to be a better fit than Discourse. More eyes and thoughts would be good.

Sign in and I will make you an admin if you want to evaluate it.

https://leoeditor.flarum.cloud

Chris

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/CAMF8tS3XzEsmCzWCbu6%3Da3MrEcdsmU1RU71X7yd4_3rkTDy5GA%40mail.gmail.com.

[Edward K. Ream]

On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 9:11:48 AM UTC-5, Chris George wrote:

I am currently looking at Flarum which seems to be a better fit than Discourse. More eyes and thoughts would be good.

Sign in and I will make you an admin if you want to evaluate it.

Done.  Thanks for getting us started.

Edward

[Miles Fidelman]

Not for nothing, but every time anybody switches from email to some closed, web-based service, membership & traffic drops off tremendously (even with email notifications).  People continue to use email lists because they work.  Nothing works as well as a good email list, with a searchable archive.  My advice:  Don't.  Just don't.

(spoken as someone who hosts a bunch of email lists - Sympa is my platform of choice)

Miles Fidelman

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/96043219-0817-4adb-80dd-4619192acd10%40googlegroups.com.

-- 
In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, there is.  .... Yogi Berra

Theory is when you know everything but nothing works. 
Practice is when everything works but no one knows why. 
In our lab, theory and practice are combined: 
nothing works and no one knows why.  ... unknown

[Edward K. Ream]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 10:06 AM Miles Fidelman <mfid...@meetinghouse.net> wrote:

every time anybody switches from email to some closed, web-based service, membership & traffic drops off tremendously (even with email notifications).  People continue to use email lists because they work.  Nothing works as well as a good email list, with a searchable archive.  My advice:  Don't.  Just don't.

Thanks for this advice.  Any comments?

Edward

[Matt Wilkie]

every time anybody switches from email to some closed, web-based service, membership & traffic drops off tremendously (even with email notifications).  People continue to use email lists because they work.  Nothing works as well as a good email list, with a searchable archive.  My advice:  Don't.  Just don't.

Thanks for this advice.  Any comments?

Mile's observation is valid and real. Google Groups works as well as it does because we can choose to use email client or browser editor, and switch back and forth at whim. Though I almost always use browser to 'talk' I still keep my email subscription active, so I have a personal backup in the event Groups is inaccessible, temporarily or permanent.

My chief attractions to Discourse are:

• the prospect of being able to refactor and split threads, while keeping them linked
• Being able to edit posts, like wiki
• Liking posts, creating a signal people can use for understanding how important that idea is to the community
• Excellent browser editor
• Web experience in general is better and smoother than any other other forum I've used (inc. Google Groups)
  
• Track record of the lead developer (a primary creator of Stack Overflow).
  

Github Issues has all of these functions, and many other attractions like interacting with the code repo directly. Plus, very significantly, being able to track and respond by email. Discourse doesn't do this, on purpose. I'm not sure I like that.

I think GH is probably a better platform for Leo overall, with one major and fatal flaw: mixing discussion and issues in the same place would pretty much kill issues as a focussing and driving forward tool. (It occurs to me now that one could create a new GH repo whose sole purpose was community discussion. Or use an old one, like the leo-editor-blog.)

-matt

[Xavier G. Domingo (xgid)]

People continue to use email lists because they work.  Nothing works as well as a good email list, with a searchable archive.  My advice:  Don't.  Just don't.

Thanks for this advice.  Any comments?

Mile's observation is valid and real.

I'm afraid it is not in this case:

Reply-by-email enabled for all Discourse customers

How do I use Discourse via email?

Reply by email, mailing list mode and create topic by email

Google Groups works as well as it does because we can choose to use email client or browser editor, and switch back and forth at whim. Though I almost always use browser to 'talk' I still keep my email subscription active, so I have a personal backup in the event Groups is inaccessible, temporarily or permanent.

You can do all that with Discourse if you want: choose to use email client or browser editor, keep your personal backup, etc.

 

My chief attractions to Discourse are:

• the prospect of being able to refactor and split threads, while keeping them linked
• Being able to edit posts, like wiki
• Liking posts, creating a signal people can use for understanding how important that idea is to the community
• Excellent browser editor
• Web experience in general is better and smoother than any other other forum I've used (inc. Google Groups)
  
• Track record of the lead developer (a primary creator of Stack Overflow).
  

This list is a good summary of some of the pros of Discourse. I can add some more to the list:

• Open source with 699 contributors, 28K+ starts
  

• Easy creation of polls
• Community driven moderation and other strong moderation features for moderators
• Better organization of posts by using Categories and Tags
• Social login supported with Google, GitHub, Facebook, email, ...
  
• Markdown, BBCode, and HTML formatting in posts
• Mailing list support
• Automatic backups
• Hide spoilers
• Sitewide alerts & pinned topics
• Huge list of plugins available like: Discourse Solved, Discourse Voting, ...
• Allows importing our Google Groups email list
  

If they accept to give us the free hosting, I would give it a try. We can take a better decision after trying it for a while and seeing how it works.

Final Disclaimer: I'm NOT affiliated in any way with Discourse. As I already explained, this happens to be a field I've been very interested for years and finally found in Discourse many of the good things that I was expecting for any modern communication system.

[Xavier G. Domingo (xgid)]

On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 11:02:29 AM UTC-3, Edward K. Ream wrote:

I tried and failed to sign up for discourse. There is an email fallback.

Has anyone tried to register before?  If not, I'll register via email.

I successfully registered using the same Google account I use for Leo Google Groups some years ago. What's exactly the problem that you have during registration?

[Xavier G. Domingo (xgid)]

On Friday, August 30, 2019 at 11:11:48 AM UTC-3, Chris George wrote:

I am currently looking at Flarum which seems to be a better fit than Discourse. More eyes and thoughts would be good.

Sign in and I will make you an admin if you want to evaluate it.

I didn't know Flarum and I like it! It shares many features with Discourse, including the option to split off-topic posts to new threads, social login, magnific interface, etc.

What I don't see there is the "reply by email" feature, which seems to be a must for our community...

[Edward K. Ream]

On Fri, Aug 30, 2019 at 11:09 PM Xavier G. Domingo (xgid) <xgdo...@gmail.com> wrote:

I successfully registered using the same Google account I use for Leo Google Groups some years ago. What's exactly the problem that you have during registration?

I don't know what the problem was.  I filled out the form, and it said there was an (unspecified) problem, and that I should register via email.

Edward

[Chris George]

The biggest downside to email lists is formatting the messages. Plain text is good, but code, images, proper indentation etc. is better.

The number one feature difference between Discourse and Flarum is replying by email which as we all know suffers from the formatting issue.

https://www.quicktopic.com/52/H/CvZytvhthSeAs

Quicktopic tries to blend the two by using html to format. Flarum uses markdown.

I guess a polltosee if email replying is a huge isue for people might be in order.

Flarum is attractive in that they explicitly recognize that lock in of existing data should never be aan issue.

Chris

[Chris George]

So I broke my leg this morning.

Since I will have a fair bit of  downtime coming up I would be happy to work on the import/backup to see what can be done.

Edward, would you like me to apply and get started?

Chris

[Chris George]

This is what a flarumemail notificatioin looks like

Hey ChrisGeorge!

admin made a post in a discussion you're following: Testing the Editor

To view the new activity, check out the following link:
https://leoeditor.flarum.cloud/d/3/8

---

Admin reply. Testing.

---

You won't receive any more notifications about this discussion until you're up-to-date.

[Edward K. Ream]

On Sat, Aug 31, 2019 at 5:44 PM Chris George <techn...@gmail.com> wrote:

So I broke my leg this morning.

Ouch! So sorry to hear that.

Since I will have a fair bit of  downtime coming up I would be happy to work on the import/backup to see what can be done.

Edward, would you like me to apply and get started?

Actually, I am thinking that we should just stick with Leo's existing forum and issue tracker.  I don't see any major benefits to changing how we communicate.

Edward

[Xavier G. Domingo (xgid)]

On Saturday, August 31, 2019 at 7:44:34 PM UTC-3, Chris George wrote:

So I broke my leg this morning.

Ups! I hope it's not serious and you get well soon!

 

Since I will have a fair bit of  downtime coming up I would be happy to work on the import/backup to see what can be done.

That's an example of a positive attitude for sure: seeing always the glass half full!

 

Edward, would you like me to apply and get started?

I think we should not ask just Edward, but the whole community. 😃 That's the main goal behind the proposal after all: to have better ways of reinforcing the community and getting feedback from it about where should we spend our collective efforts.

[Edward K. Ream]

On Sun, Sep 1, 2019 at 9:00 AM Xavier G. Domingo (xgid) <xgdo...@gmail.com> wrote:

I think we should not ask just Edward, but the whole community. 😃

I agree.

Edward

[Xavier G. Domingo (xgid)]

Actually, I am thinking that we should just stick with Leo's existing forum and issue tracker.  I don't see any major benefits to changing how we communicate.

Edward

Jeje, it's weird to hear that from the author of a piece of software that is changing the way we work with code and information:

Leo is a PIM, IDE and outliner that accelerates the work flow of programmers, authors and web designers.

"Leo is a revolutionary step in the right direction for programming."―Brian Takita

"Leo is the best IDE that I have had the pleasure to use. It has totally changed not only the way that I program, but also the way that I store and organize all of the information that I need for the job that I do."―Ian Mulvany

Discourse and similar tools are doing the same for communication and community building. And I think we have to start building a stronger community and fostering participation now that Leo's future is at stake with your announcement of wishing to retire as "Leo BDFL".

[Xavier G. Domingo (xgid)]

Discourse and similar tools are doing the same for communication and community building.

I have just read https://www.discourse.org/testimonials and here are some of the quotes that resonated the most with my own feelings about Discourse:

“It’s really oriented towards community and considering that in 4 months since I started the forum I got over 20k posts and a lot of active and engaged members I can say it’s doing just that.”

—Johnny, mpsocial.com

“Our Discourse forum is the epicenter of our community. We have been active on social media (facebook, twitter, etc) for a few years and as our community grew significantly, we realized we needed a more flexible medium to engage with our users. We tried a few alternatives and nothing came close to Discourse in term of encouraging healthy and constructive discussion despite a very passionate and diverse audience.”

—Philippe, Infinite Flight

“Having a forum allows us to do a number of community centric things: run contests, talk strategy, facilitate fan art, report/resolve bugs, talk about player feedback and feature suggestions, and discuss updates. Ultimately, it helps us build a stronger identity as a community-first developer, since we are able to foster stronger connections with individual community members and the community as a whole through our activity there.”

—Gordon, Proletariat

“The wide range of Discourse tools, as well as its intelligence that comes out of the box, made it possible for our community to thrive — despite the fact that the number of potential users is very limited. I run an online community of Ukrainian goat keepers. (…) I DO believe that one of the key factors in achieving our goals was and still is using Discourse. (…) Discourse is worth the effort and time you spend on learning its features. Your productivity will boost. You will be able to do much more with fewer team members compared to other discussion engines. JUST USE IT.”

—Anton, Kozovod.com

“I want to point out how much of a difference the Discourse app makes. I used to engage on Discourse mobile once a week or so, no more. I am now doing probably half of my interactions with Discourse on mobile, day in day out, both posts and pageviews. Most of our power users have picked up the app too.”

—Michel

“I was a fan of Discourse before, but now I’m an evangelist! This kind of support can only come from people who care deeply about online communities, what they stand for, and why they matter.”

—Tiago

“There is some magic in what people feel when they get used to the Discourse-way of doing things. It irritates almost everyone when they try it, but then it gradually makes people happy, then extremely happy, then they become addicted to this discussion engine. I know what I’m talking about — I spoke to tens of them, and absolutely all of them, even the haters eventually fell in love with our forum, and can’t use competitors forums anymore. ..."

“We’ve been using googlegroups for a long time for a software support forum and I was happy enough - it was easy, “did the job” and compared to the various BB options I didn’t feel the need to switch. Having spent a few days now using Discourse I’m blown away. There are so many neat, useful features in here, without it feeling overwhelming and bloated. I keep coming and finding another thing that it does “right” and I just keep getting happier!”

—Jon

"It’s a space for all coworkers to discuss, be it current methodology, philosophy, vision or strategy. We also love shared knowledge through best practices, new tools and the best ideas around. (…) All the conversation that matters and deserves a calm space to be on lives in Discourse. Everything else, the quick and inconsequential things, go to Slack."

—David, GoodRebels

My best wishes to all!

Xavier

[Matt Wilkie]

Reply-by-email enabled for all Discourse customers

 Thanks for the correction. I appreciate it.

[Matt Wilkie]

Chris George wrote:

So I broke my leg this morning.

eeep! Sorry to hear that. Eat a a couple cans of salmon/tuna a week, bones and all (adice via a friend with broken arm, via his doc), helps with bone fusing/regrowth. My wife took something called "osteo pro" when her broken shoulder was failing to show healing as quickly as doc expected, and after that it changed within a couple weeks. ... File under all the other unsoliticed advice you're no doubt receiving (or about to).

 

matt

[Chris George]

I can get local tinned salmon from my indigenous contacts so I will do that.

I just can't eat tuna anymore.

Chris

--

You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/49845a00-9656-4301-87c4-b981748f037a%40googlegroups.com.

[Matt Wilkie]

The biggest downside to email lists is formatting the messages. Plain text is good, but code, images, proper indentation etc. is better.

The major reason I shifted participating primarily via browser in this list.

Flarum vs Discourse vs Nim Forum: at the moment I side with Discourse, mostly because of gravity. A side story: I think Mercurial is saner than Git, thus preferable, but git has GitHub, so wins. Fossil is cooler than both, but again, doesn't have GitHub, so git wins. I've put aside my preferences (after some years) and use git. Where people are or will go to matter more than the tools.

matt

[Offray Vladimir Luna Cárdenas]

Hi,

My approach here is different and kind of choosing the underdog: Fossil, Nim, Pharo, Leo, instead of more popular tools. Not because of "underdogness" itself, but because this provides me a particular view point and agility where still few people is located, so the idea/practice to inspiration and signal to noise ratio is less and I can move faster in a better flow.

Our popular tech culture enjoys incidental complexity and constant struggle against flow by choosing, deploying and maintaining over complex tools. The issue is that once the decision has been made for a popular over complex tool, the technical debt starts. You can win from scale economies, but you loose in agility. Moving a popular huge culture is pretty demanding.

First decisions are the more difficult ones, because after taken, we need to be compatible with our own past.

Cheers,

Offray

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "leo-editor" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to leo-editor+...@googlegroups.com.

To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/leo-editor/f7fcd1ef-94d2-4648-ba20-c64883ab40da%40googlegroups.com.