Discourse - next steps / actions

Hi all,

I'll try to keep this brief, at least by my standards :)

Firstly, I think it's clear that the discussion is leaning towards implementing Discourse for at least one, and possibly both, of the mailing lists. Many people have contributed - I'd like to thank them all for keeping this from descending into a flamewar :)

We do need to give the users list a little longer for feedback (it's only been a week), but I think here we can start to talk about the migration planning.

Since we all (or most?) need to start getting used to Discourse, I've written up a draft migration plan there:



I've just updated it to reflect the latest discussions. No doubt I have missed something though, so I've made it into a wiki post - feel free to edit with suggestions.

There are two things I'd like to get input from people on:

# Moderators

I need a small team of moderators to deal with running the forum. I don't expect it to take up much time, but it is important that more people than just me know how things work. 3-4 people (including me) is probably enough to start with.

So, volunteers needed! Don't make me start picking on people :)

# Choice of lists to migrate

As above, we have to decide if we migrate both lists or just one. I see significant benefits on having everyone on the same platform (top 2 - the @groups feature is very useful for discussions, and the discoverability of dev discussions for users helps them to get involved and grow our dev community). However, I know others are more cautious than I.

Again, since we'll all likely be using Discourse in some capacity, I've gone ahead and created a poll on Discourse for us. Please do leave your feedback! Votes by email-response (here or on Discourse) are of course acceptable for those allergic to UIs, I will add them in ;)



I've not covered foreman-announce - we use this so infrequently, and posting rights are heavily restricted, so I think we can decide what to do with it later.

Hang in there, we're getting to the fun bit! :)
Greg
Although I prefer to only migrate users list, if we decide to migrate both I would actually like to see foreman-announce to be migrated as well. We previously had issues sending plugin announcements into this low-volume list, it's a chance to change this and split it into announce-core and announce-plugins or something like that. I assume there would be an easy way of subscribing to those tags via RSS or email.

LZ


··· On Thu, Nov 23, 2017 at 5:31 PM, Greg Sutcliffe <greg@emeraldreverie.org> wrote:
Hi all,

I'll try to keep this brief, at least by my standards :)

Firstly, I think it's clear that the discussion is leaning towards
implementing Discourse for at least one, and possibly both, of the
mailing lists. Many people have contributed - I'd like to thank them all
for keeping this from descending into a flamewar :)

We do need to give the users list a little longer for feedback (it's
only been a week), but I think here we can start to talk about the
migration planning.

Since we all (or most?) need to start getting used to Discourse, I've
written up a draft migration plan there:



I've just updated it to reflect the latest discussions. No doubt I have
missed something though, so I've made it into a wiki post - feel free to
edit with suggestions.

There are two things I'd like to get input from people on:

# Moderators

I need a small team of moderators to deal with running the forum. I
don't expect it to take up much time, but it is important that more
people than just me know how things work. 3-4 people (including me) is
probably enough to start with.

So, volunteers needed! Don't make me start picking on people :)

# Choice of lists to migrate

As above, we have to decide if we migrate both lists or just one. I see
significant benefits on having everyone on the same platform (top 2 -
the @groups feature is very useful for discussions, and the
discoverability of dev discussions for users helps them to get involved
and grow our dev community). However, I know others are more cautious
than I.

Again, since we'll all likely be using Discourse in some capacity, I've
gone ahead and created a poll on Discourse for us. Please do leave your
feedback! Votes by email-response (here or on Discourse) are of course
acceptable for those allergic to UIs, I will add them in ;)



I've not covered foreman-announce - we use this so infrequently, and
posting rights are heavily restricted, so I think we can decide what to
do with it later.

Hang in there, we're getting to the fun bit! :)
Greg

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Later,
  Lukas @lzap Zapletal
Although I prefer to only migrate users list, if we decide to migrate
both I would actually like to see foreman-announce to be migrated as
well. We previously had issues sending plugin announcements into this
low-volume list, it's a chance to change this and split it into
announce-core and announce-plugins or something like that.
Completely agree. I'd like to see more use of whatever "announce channel" we end up going with - even if that's keeping the announce list and giving more people rights on it.

I assume there would be an easy way of subscribing to those tags via
RSS or email.
Indeed there is, you can add ".rss" to any category, topic, or tag - we don't have an "announcement" tag yet, so here's an example for the "discussion" tag:

https://community.theforeman.org/tags/discussion.rss

Greg


··· On 24/11/17 08:56, Lukas Zapletal wrote:
Ugh, writing-emails-when-tired--

Forgot to add, email notifies for a tag are available from your user settings, just the same as for categories, so yes both RSS and email are possible.

Greg


··· On 24/11/17 20:34, Greg Sutcliffe wrote:
I assume there would be an easy way of subscribing to those tags
via RSS or email.

Indeed there is, you can add ".rss" to any category, topic, or tag..
It's been a week since I opened up the poll, time for an update...

TLDR: Poll closes next week, then it's "New year, new tools" ;)

# Myself

As most of you know, today is my last day full-time, as I go off on leave tomorrow for a few months. However, this is my most ambitious community project to-date, and I will not be abandoning it. Expect to see me active in the evenings (GMT) - my profile [1] will tell you when I was last seen if you want to stalk me :P

If you need me urgently, an email or a private message on Discourse should reach me within 5-10mins, and I will reply as soon as I am able (likely immediately, at least in brief).

# Which lists?



At first glance this poll is pretty clear, 71% in favour of moving both lists. But that would be unfair to long-time members of the community who voted to move a single list - as we often say, it's a meritocracy, not a democracy, and not all votes are equal.

There isn't a number for "merit" that exists, so as an approximation, I weighted the votes using the length of time the user has been on the mailing list (not perfect, but better than nothing). The results, however, don't shift the needle very much:

Total vote-days cast: 26490
Both lists: 16156 (60.99%)
Just users: 10334 (39.01%)

Even attempting to weight for karma/merit/call-it-what-you-like, we still get a pretty clear 61% result. I will leave the poll open into next week (Thanksgiving means the US in particular haven't had much time to consider), but I think we need to start planning for this outcome.

Sidenote: I don't want vote-days to become a standard metric, I think we're usually pretty good at coming to a consensus - but in this case I wanted to try to give fair treatment to those who disagree with me on a divisive topic. Hopefully that works for everyone. If you want to check my maths, you can find the raw data and the script I used at [2].

# Moderators & Maintenance

I'd like to thank Ori, Tomer, and Eric for agreeing to be moderators. In my absence, any spam/flagged-posts/tags/split topics/etc issues can be directed to them. Ori and Ewoud are also admins, should that be necessary for some reason.

The Discourse host has been added to our puppetmaster, and offsite backups of the Discourse DB are now happening. This includes files, and so will protect us in the unlikely event of a complete loss of the host.

# Users feedback

I will bump the users thread today and make them aware of the poll too. So far I've only heard positive or neutral feedback from users (some of it private, so you'll have to believe me), and I don't expect any major upset at this stage.

The November newsletter will also contain this info, so that readers there have a final chance to join in before we take a conclusion next week.

# Migration plan



No comments have been left on this yet, so either I've done a really good job of planning, or ... ;)

I think the debate is now coming to a natural close (no new viewpoints have been addded in a while), and we also need to consider a time to do the actual migration. New Year is traditionally very quiet, and seems to fit the timescale. Given the above plan calls for a 3 week notice period, I'm currently planning on the following dates:

Thu Dec 7th - conclude polls and state decisions regarding list(s) Mon Dec 11th - initiate migration plan (as above, T - 3 weeks) Sun Dec 31st - at midnight (or close to it) migrate the list(s)

I can work though the items on the plan in my evenings, it's not too high a load, but assistance is welcome ofc. I will also volunteer to give up my New Year's evening to do the migration - with 2 small children, I'm not going out anyway :P

New Year, new tools. Should be fun :)

Thanks
Greg

[1] https://community.theforeman.org/u/Gwmngilfen/summary
[2] http://irc.emeraldreverie.org/R
Just a short update on this - tomorrow is the day on my date list for the announcement, but today is actually T-3weeks, so I'll be sending that out to both lists in just a few minutes.

The result, as I spoke about on the demo this week, is fairly clear - while we have some cautious voices (and I thank them for keeping our feet on the ground :P), we will be moving everything to Discourse. I've tried to make sure that the concerns we *can* address outside of the obvious "one list or two?" question are handled, but more suggestions are welcome as we go forward.

To Lukas' point about foreman-announce - I've created a Release Announcements category which can be used for this purpose, which currently only moderators can post to. I'm happy to widen those permissions, perhaps via a group that can post there - I agree we should announce more things. Thoughts on this are welcome.

Handily (for those that use RSS) you can also use this category via RSS, which is a nice bonus. Try:

https://community.theforeman.org/c/release-announcements.rss

Might be useful for the new RSS feature in core? :)

The migration plan is now being enacted, and anyone who wants to proof read it (or any of the forum docs I'm writing) will make me very grateful indeed!

Cheers
Greg

Dne neděle 10. prosince 2017 23:06:19 CET, Greg Sutcliffe napsal(a):

Just a short update on this - tomorrow is the day on my date list for
the announcement, but today is actually T-3weeks, so I’ll be sending
that out to both lists in just a few minutes.

The result, as I spoke about on the demo this week, is fairly clear -
while we have some cautious voices (and I thank them for keeping our
feet on the ground :P), we will be moving everything to Discourse. I’ve
tried to make sure that the concerns we can address outside of the
obvious “one list or two?” question are handled, but more suggestions
are welcome as we go forward.

To Lukas’ point about foreman-announce - I’ve created a Release
Announcements category which can be used for this purpose, which
currently only moderators can post to. I’m happy to widen those
permissions, perhaps via a group that can post there - I agree we should
announce more things. Thoughts on this are welcome.

Handily (for those that use RSS) you can also use this category via RSS,
which is a nice bonus. Try:

https://community.theforeman.org/c/release-announcements.rss

Might be useful for the new RSS feature in core? :slight_smile:

There’s just one feed that people can add. I guess the blog one is still more
important and I think we should announce releases there too. It seems we only
cover it in newsletters.

···


Marek

The migration plan is now being enacted, and anyone who wants to proof
read it (or any of the forum docs I’m writing) will make me very
grateful indeed!

Cheers
Greg

Yeah, I wasn’t suggesting changing the default, it’s just a nice option to have.

···


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