This is a great idea! I think this is a much better alternative than current user and dev lists, which are handicapped by an atrocious UX for browsing archives (PonyMail).
On Tue, 16 May, 2023, 1:34 am David Mackey, <d...@davemackey.net> wrote: > Hi All, > > At yesterday's meeting I suggested that discussion forums might be useful > for managing tension in communications and increasing the visibility / > popularity of the Solr project. At the time this didn't seem viable due to > the centrality of mailing lists to ASF's communications but Eric suggested > that if other projects where using forums that Solr could as well. > > *(ASF Projects Using Discussion Forums)* > I did some research and discovered that a number of ASF projects are using > forums: > > - Airflow <https://airflow.apache.org/community/>, Pulsar > <https://github.com/apache/pulsar/discussions>, RocketMQ > <https://github.com/apache/rocketmq>, ShardingSphere > <https://github.com/apache/shardingsphere>, StreamPipes > <https://github.com/apache/streampipes>, and Doris > <https://github.com/apache/doris> are all using GitHub Discussions > <https://github.com/apache/airflow/discussions>. > - TVM <https://tvm.apache.org/> uses Discourse > <https://discuss.tvm.apache.org/>. > - OpenOffice.org <http://openoffice.org/> uses phpBB > < > https://forum.openoffice.org/en/forum/index.php?sid=b4a0ff493ecb816d6a05cceaeee19283 > > > . > > *(Refined Role Proposal for Discussion Forums)* > Understanding better the fundamental nature of mailing lists to ASF > projects I'd like to suggest a more tightly scoped implementation of > discussion forums for the Solr project: > > - As an adjunct to, not replacement of, mailing lists. > - With a focus on answering questions that users/developers have that > are informational rather than decision making. > - And perhaps some early stage idea discussions before they are ready > for a serious proposal. > > (*Advantages of Discussion Forums to Solr Community)* > I think this would offer the Solr community a few different advantages: > > - *Visible Vitality *- The Solr project has vitality but it isn't > entirely visible. An active forum (discuss.elastic.co) can provide this > visibility. > - *Redundant Question Reduction* - Forums provide a way for users to > find answers to questions that might otherwise be asked repeatedly in > Slack > chats or on the mailing lists. > - *Content Creation* - Users create valuable content (which is indexed > by search engines) through their discussions. > - *Noise Reduction* - If at least some informational / idea discussions > were occurring in the forums the volume of emails on the mailing list > would > be reduced. > > *(Recommended Implementation)* > While GitHub Discussions would be the easiest to implement I would > recommend Discourse. GitHub is developer-centric and as such would likely > exclude most (non-dev) users. > > Discourse (the org) offers Discourse (the software) as a hosted service for > free <https://blog.discourse.org/2018/11/free-hosting-for-open-source-v2/> > to open source projects. > > I'm happy to help if this is something the Solr community would be > interested in. Thanks for taking the time to read and consider. > > Sincerely, > Dave Mackey >
