Ryan, thank you very much for trying to solve a problem! I agree that building the community is the hardest problem. It's the same problem we have with MediaWiki developers, right? While I don't want to stop you from trying, I wonder whether we wouldn't all save time and energy if we try to come up with a common plan.
Precisely these days I am thinking about this very exact problem. This is why I requested admin permissions for discourse.wmflabs.org (and then I broke it, do I get a shirt? https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T179649 ). This is the scenario that I have in mind (this is my personal opinion shared for the first time here, please don take this as a Wikimedia Foundation anything): * One Discourse <https://www.discourse.org/> instance for MediaWiki users, administrators and developers. The scope here should be as wide and inclusive as possible, as long as we are talking about software: extensions, gadgets, templates, bots, tools, apps, SemanticMediaWiki... everything. * One Discourse instance for the Wikimedia movement, minus the tech community which will be covered by the previous one. I have more ideas here but this is mediawiki-l and I don't want to bore you. ;) Both instances would be hosted in Wikimedia with Single Sign-on ( https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T124691). Discourse has a multisite setup that saves some sysadmin work and server resources. We would nurture a group of Discourse savvy moderators and admins to spread the work and have extra fun. Because at Wikimedia every big idea must find a small starting point, I am starting by proposing Discourse to solve the problem of developer support. The Developer Relations team is currently busy with Outreachy, Google Code-in and what not, but if someone wants to help pushing the idea of the Discourse instance for MediaWiki & Wikimedia tech, we will help you. I guess it is a matter of combining a bit of community discussion and consensus with some ad-hoc prototyping with a new Discourse instance in wmflabs (the one I broke has a Wikimedia non-tech motivation and could be the embryo of the second instance proposed above. Interested? See you here: Provide an easy to use support system for contributors to ask technical questions https://phabricator.wikimedia.org/T155678 On Thu, Nov 9, 2017 at 7:53 AM, Sam Wilson <[email protected]> wrote: > On Thu, 9 Nov 2017, at 07:07 AM, Ryan Schmidt wrote: > > From my understanding, the point of Discourse was to be simply a Q&A > > site. This forum has this as well, however it aims to also build a > > community of MediaWiki users and admins beyond just a Q&A so that there's > > a place to go to just talk about MediaWiki in general, share tips, > > spitball ideas to make life easier for 3rd party wikis, and so on. A > > section of the site is also devoted to listing professional services for > > hire, a bit of an analog to [[Professional development and consulting]] > > on mediawiki.org[1], except with more of an ability for users to have a > > back-and-forth and leave reviews. > > > > I don't see this site as replacing any existing means of obtaining > > support. There's still advantages to the existing methods out there that > > forums don't quite meet (IRC is more realtime, mailing lists give > > flexibility in how to view the content, the on-wiki support desk allows > > anonymous edits -- although I can enable anonymous/guest posts as well on > > the forums if people think that would be beneficial). I felt that there > > was a large hole in the existing offerings, and I had the technical means > > and ability to fill in that hole. > > > > It is using a software package called Invision Community. It is > > unfortunately not FOSS software, however I felt that the feature-set and > > end user experience it offered surpassed any of the FOSS alternatives. > > > > I think the Discourse installation started as an investigation into how > it might work as a replacement for wikimedia-l and/or other mailing > lists — so very much forum-oriented rather than Q&A. It could perhaps be > both though. > > It sounds like a good idea, and even having a forum outside of the > Wikimedia world could be an advantage. I guess my first thought is about > how this will avoid the fate of that earlier forum — which is why I was > wondering about the software, because if it was FOSS then you could > conceivably make some form of regular content dump available that could > be used in case the site ever disappeared; if it's closed-source this is > less easy (not impossible, of course). > > _______________________________________________ > MediaWiki-l mailing list > To unsubscribe, go to: > https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l > -- Quim Gil Engineering Community Manager @ Wikimedia Foundation http://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/User:Qgil _______________________________________________ MediaWiki-l mailing list To unsubscribe, go to: https://lists.wikimedia.org/mailman/listinfo/mediawiki-l
