Feature request - use Discourse for discussions
Hi folks.
I've been using discourse across a number of (FLOSS) sites & projects and eployed an instance for my own testing purposes.
It's a mature stack with a lot of great functionality - and it's not a massive leap from what I'm seeing in Loomio to what's aready there.
Loomio as a whole is pretty swank, but Discourse(.org) has a clear advantage where the actual discussion thread takes place.
I'm wondering what the feasibility is of simply substituting Loomio's discussion column with Discourse's code-base, freeing up developers to concentrate efforts around other functionality that's needed, and/or contributing to the upstream Discourse code-base for functionality needed/desired?
Both are Ruby/RoR & .... orientation is not all that different IMHO.
Mikey Wed 18 Jun 2014 12:15PM
@michaelduanemoorin also mentions Discourse in https://www.loomio.org/d/73uHjQfU/liquid-democracy.
plus one times infinity for Discourse integration. :)
i think it's wasteful to try and compete with a leading open source discussion platform that has more person-hours to focus on the UX of discussion (including email integration), uses RoR, and has a Docker install. i think Loomio would benefit from standing on the shoulders of a technical giant like Discourse so we can focus on amplifying the power of our discussions.
in addition, by pigeon-holing Loomio into one discussion platform, Loomio is unsuitable for groups that already have a discussion platform. i think Loomio would benefit from integrating with not only Discourse, but maybe GitHub issues, IRC, mailing lists, Google Hangout, wikis, etc.
that being said, integration is no easy task. that's what we hope to simplify with the Open App Ecosystem.
Michael Duane Mooring Wed 18 Jun 2014 6:10PM
@ahdinosaur, this was my perspective as well. Unfortunately Discourse integration has been archived and no longer a consideration at this time by the Loomio team. Unless someone(s) goes and hacks it together and does a pull-request, it's likely not to occur: https://trello.com/c/KCTIlCX8/89-discourse-integration
Twas observed as a technical Everest, however with a simple Loomio API for commenting, and with the Discourses API, this suddenly becomes a couples lines of code to send Discourse comments into Loomios.
Alanna Irving Wed 18 Jun 2014 10:07PM
a simple Loomio API for commenting
Look forward to your pull request for this @michaelduanemoorin :)
Mikey Wed 18 Jun 2014 10:50PM
@michaelduanemoorin s/achieved/archived
Michael Duane Mooring Wed 18 Jun 2014 11:48PM
Thanks @ahdinosaur, Chrome set itself to another language for spell checking so literally everything I type gets the red squiggle and so I never know if I'm typing anything wrong anymore. *UPDATE - Just took the time now to fix it in Chrome's settings... ahhhh that's nice...
@alanna, Challenge Accepted. Never wrote an API before and if I think I'm going to do it for Docport.io then I could use the practice (just wish it were a node.js app instead of Ruby.... but that's ok...). http://memegenerator.net/instance/51323879
Alanna Irving Fri 20 Jun 2014 2:24AM
Interested in this from NYT today: The New York Times and The Washington Post announced on Thursday that they had teamed up with Mozilla to develop a new platform to better manage their readers’ online comments and contributions.
I wonder how it will compare to existing solutions. Seems like a chance to build something next level - I hope they do.
Michael Duane Mooring Fri 20 Jun 2014 6:27PM
@alanna, awesome news. The cool thing about making the commenting API will be that you could potentially swap in/out different comment-engines as plugins. So people who like Mozilla's new product can use it for their group while others can use Discourse and yet others can even use Loomio's vanilla commenting engine as well. Plugins are cool.
Richard Foxworthy Fri 29 Dec 2017 1:35AM
Hello, I stumbled across this stale thread, and am wondering if the thinking within Loomio has progressed about potential to integrate Loomio and Discourse? I think there can be a very valuable fit between these platforms, where Discourse offers the high quality discussion forum and Loomio brings high quality decision tools that can really help crystallise value from those discussions.
I can see you've made an initial integration with Slack, which is a great step forward, even though Slack is proprietary and closed source. Would love to see similar integration with leading open source chat and discussion platforms, eg Rocket.chat and Discourse.
There is a lot of value in the intersections between these platforms
Robert Guthrie Fri 29 Dec 2017 10:42AM
It's really unlikely we'll do this - but we're happy for others to give it a go.
Personally, I'm really enjoying developing our own discussion platform and I am proud that we offer alternative features and direction to Discourse.
As a team: We've just launched nested comments and have a lot of great features planned around our discussion platform for next year.
Discussion is critical to collaborative decision making and we think we feel we need to continue to innovate upon our own discussion platform to suit our particular needs.
Michael Duane Mooring · Mon 16 Jun 2014 6:35PM
Yeah that sounds like a nice open-source contributor portal that I know I'd enjoy! Hanging out in the IRC in the meantime can't hurt though. You may be people working on Loomio stuff silently already and be hoping to find some dev's for some quick questions in the IRC.