Revive DiasporaForum.org in order to properly support users and podmins
I have been debating reviving the old DiasporaForum.org discussion forums, with a view to them providing support for both users and podmins alike.
Currently there is no one central place people can go for support - and this includes users and podmins. New users either depend on their contacts or they seemingly go without and podmins are often referred to IRC but 9 times out of 10 there is no one available on IRC at the precise moment they log on and they end up leaving without having received any support.
A discussion forum could be the first port of call for support for both user types as forums can alleviate these issues.
Ryan (KOH) who currently owns the old domain name has previously declined offers from people not related to D* to buy the domain name from him. He will however kindly donate the name to us free of charge.
In terms of hosting, I will happily host the new forums (the old forum DB is now gone) and provide the maintenance and management of them. I'll probably need a few moderators to help out if it gets real busy.
As you are no doubt aware, a discussion forum is only as good as the members' contributions and with that in mind we would need podmins to contribute and assist each other - along with seasoned D* users willing to help new users with their (sometimes really easy) questions.
In order to succeed, the forum would also need some promotion in the form of a mention and/or post reshare by DHQ, plus relative links from the foundation web site. It should also have a prominent link in the right menu of D* under the "need help" section.
The forum should not have third party banner adverts (unless D* wish to use it for fund raising, but that's a whole other subject). I'm undecided as towards the use of Google Analytics on such a forum so again, that's probably one for a separate conversation.
Your thoughts?
Florian Staudacher Thu 24 Apr 2014 5:09PM
I suppose it couldn't hurt to "own" the domain as a project asset and refer to it as "unofficial, but endorsed by the project"?
Rich Thu 24 Apr 2014 8:29PM
Any reason it would need to be 'unofficial'?
Jonne Haß Fri 25 Apr 2014 12:10PM
There's already quite often confusion about the appropriate place for contacting the project. Adding yet another official communication channel would only make that situation worse.
Pablo Cúbico Fri 25 Apr 2014 12:30PM
In case you do, I strongly suggest to try Discourse, instead of outdated platforms as phpBB or SMF, it's way cleaner and with more modern features. Also it's more "support oriented" than "discussion", since those guys have the StackOverflow know-how.
IMHO, forums work if they are not abandoned and there's a strong community behind. They are more user-friendly than IRC or the mailing list for common and non tech-savvy users. But it's pointless if it doesn't grow.
To make it grow, the best is to have just one. But there has been cases as the spanish language PHP forum, which was ran by the community, and as the years passed, it became promoted as the official spanish PHP forum and it went into php.net.
Maybe you can just start one and see what happens.
Rich Fri 25 Apr 2014 4:13PM
Hey @jonnehass
There’s already quite often confusion about the appropriate place for contacting the project
Yeah, that was kinda my original point:
Currently there is no one central place people can go for support
The whole thing needs streamlining, nobody knows where to go and to be blunt, wherever they do actually go they often leave without having obtained the support they were looking for.
A discussion forum could solve this. I say 'could', as I don't actually know.
Hence this Loomio discussion :)
Jonne Haß Fri 25 Apr 2014 4:59PM
So far we achieved pretty good separation, Loomio for project development (all sorts, not just code), Github for code collaboration and bug/wanted feature tracking, IRC for shortlived adhoc communication of all sorts, diaspora for user support (could probably be improved) and mailing lists for persistent / long lived communication, like user and dev support.
A forum would contend the persistent communication part of diaspora and mainly the mailing lists. So that people feel the need for a forum means that our mailing lists are not working. Therefore I think we first should evaluate whether we can improve their usability and be more clear about the intended usage. If that's not possible a step we need to consider would be dropping them and replacing them with an official forum and a pure announcements mailing list.
Juan Santiago Fri 25 Apr 2014 11:34PM
There is a specific reason use forums and not mailing lists to support , with a forum for an answer can solve many questions, a forum created a public database of knowledge that is not created by a mailing list .
PS what are the Diaspora* mailing lists? :)
Jonne Haß Sat 26 Apr 2014 8:54AM
Mailing list archives are searchable the same way as a forum.
https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/How_we_communicate#Mailing_Lists
Juan Santiago Sat 26 Apr 2014 11:25AM
Oh! is very clear why the lists do not work, it's a real nonsense we use google products, a hybrid between forum and mailing list simil google groups seems to me the best solution, but never depending on google, I have observed that there are not many supporters wordpress. why if we work the domain DiasporaForum.org on mailman? Mailman is mailing list , discussions may be available on web, I'm not sure if can answer via web.
Jonne Haß · Wed 23 Apr 2014 4:34PM
I'm against introducing yet another official communication channel, IRC, Loomio, mailing lists and Diaspora itself suffice here. So I'm against a forum.diasporafoundation.org.
However no one can really control what the community does, so if you want to do another diasporaforum.tld, nobody stops you ;)