Talk:Vote to Replace Google Groups with Discourse Forum

Migration

It looks like there's been at least some work done by other people in moving from google groups to discourse - see here, e.g.

I suggest we make performing the migration a part of the vote language; e.g.:

• We authorize the board to lock out the Public and Private Google Groups from additional posts, with the requirement that the posts already in the Public and Private google Groups be migrated into Discourse.

Mct (talk) 13:34, 4 October 2017 (CDT)

I think it is better not to migrate old stuff. The problems outweigh the benefits. It would pull in ancient baggage. Skm (talk) 10:53, 5 October 2017 (CDT)

Wording is jargony

'implement' isn't the best word choice. It has a technical meaning that doesn't fit here.

I suggest replacing it with 'use' and 'run'.

• "We authorize the board to use Discourse for the main member forum..."
• "spend up to $500 to run Discourse".

Skm (talk) 10:14, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

Or maybe for the first point, "We authorize the board to replace Google Groups with Discourse for the main member forum".

Basically, avoid using words that will over-specify or specify the wrong actions. Skm (talk) 10:19, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

Done--Rtystgeeke (talk) 11:05, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

Costs

Wouldn't hosting be a recurring cost? Skm (talk) 10:15, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

The yearly cost doesn't seem to be higher than the proposed budget, I'm not positive on the requirements so any help with that would be great. --Rtystgeeke (talk) 11:09, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

500 can cover more than one year, but eventually it would run out. I'm estimate cost based on Digital Ocean's prices for their lower tiers $10/month or $20/month. I don't know if we'd want more than that. Skm (talk) 11:20, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

I added language that the CTO needs to cover this expense in their budget.--Rtystgeeke (talk) 11:37, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

Why does the cost need to be specified? It sounds like something that could fit in the CTO budget. Skm (talk) 10:15, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

Just a placeholder for the vote at the moment. I haven't audited the budget to see if we need to allocate money, but it would be an unplanned expense. --Rtystgeeke (talk) 11:09, 22 September 2017 (CDT)

moderation features

There is concern on the mailing list about how moderation would be different compared to Google Groups, and I am providing some references for Discourse here. I am not familiar with how moderation works on Google Groups because I have never done moderation for any google group. My impression of groups is that it is all or nothing, which seems awkward to me.

Things Discourse moderators can do

• Discourse Moderation Guide has subcategories including:
  • Poor title (moderators can edit titles)
  • Off-topic digression (moderators can move posts to a new or existing topic)
  • Duplicate topic (moderators can move posts to the duplicated topic)
  • Heated, difficult, non-productive discussion (complicated stuff)
• Description of various user states in Discourse

Things Discourse users can do

• have different trust levels. (I think for the discourse experiments we set trust level for people logging in from member accounts to higher than +1 but I can't remember.)
• "Like" a post (there is no down-voting)
• Flag a post (by default, users with trust-level +1)
  • What are Flags and how do they work? (posts can be marked as off-topic, inappropriate, spam, something else)
  • So What Exactly Happens when you "Flag"?
  • If a post is flagged by more than 3 (the number is a setting) users of trust level 1+ (this is also a setting) it is collapsed and someone browsing the forum has to click to expand it. See page for example.

When we played with Discourse before, I thought it would be nice to have moderators per categories. For example, if we had a python category it would make sense to have people who run the python groups be moderators only in that category but not in a category like hot metals. People want the feature but it does not exist yet. (I haven't been hosting PYOO for a while now, and I wouldn't want to be a moderator for anything else. too much work to triage whether something is off-topic, spam, mean, etc). Skm (talk) 13:40, 25 September 2017 (CDT)

example discourse sites

btw, we've been using discourse at work. Skm (talk) 08:51, 4 October 2017 (CDT)

• https://community.ubuntu.com/ Recently we switched the community site over to it.
• https://forum.snapcraft.io/ We've used it for snapcraft for longer.