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Merge forums, OSQA, MLs to discourse?
At #149 we discuss a alternative to OSQA and some already mentioned discourse based forums, which are used by many other FLOSS communities as well.
This step might also allow us to unite different OSM community channels, which some see as ongoing problem for newbies (which one to choose?) and long time contributors (monitor them all, splitted discussions, ...)
Discourse offers possibilities to import discussions from
Would this be a useful second step, if we get a discourse setup running?
Is it possible to use discourse as a mailing list? i.e. to interact with it via email? If not, then you'll never get rid of the mailing lists, and instead you'll just add an additional communication channel.
Have you discussed this with existing heavy OSM Forum users? Do they have any feedback on what Discourse is like compared to the existing OSM Forum software.
As someone who cannot log into the OSM Forum because the software doesn't support my OSM username, changing the software has advantages to me.
It has "mailing list mode" yes.
I mean obviously it's not the same as a real mailing list but it's probably the closest anybody has ever come to creating an integrated forum/mailing list system.
The other option is to use Mailman 3 which can use authentication via OpenStreetMap (OAuth) and has a simple web frontend to send emails. It is in use by OpenRailwayMap. Try it out.
OpenRailwayMap uses Debian packages (but self built packages with slightly more recent versions and some patches). The packaging can be found at
- https://github.com/fossgis/django_mailman3-debian
- https://github.com/fossgis/hyperkitty-debian
- https://github.com/fossgis/postorius-debian
- https://github.com/fossgis/mailman3-debian
The ansible playbook is available as well.
Literally nobody on earth is actually using mailman 3 other than Fedora.
Well OK apparently you've found the one other place that does ;-)
In addition to apparently being a massive PITA to install (though I expect discourse is as well...) it also has a horrible UI to boot.
Even Fedora has now spun up a discourse instance though the internal lists are still using mailman 3 for now.
sorry folks, but please no off-topic and keep discussions on pros / cons of discourse at ticket #149 but not here. This is dedicated about merging our internal communication channels.
Let's find out, if unified forums is a chance for our community?
Have you discussed this with existing heavy OSM Forum users? Do they have any feedback on what Discourse is like compared to the existing OSM Forum software.
I think we need to reach out to those people to get them involved in the discussion.
I started topics at forum and at OSQA. My idea is to wait for the WeeklyOSM, but of course anybody can start discussions at the talk ML or other useful places?
This is dedicated about merging our internal communication channels.
FWIW, I'm opposed to merging the forums and the help Q&A site. We definitely have problems with the underlying OSQA software, but the two venues serve completely different use cases.
More generally, I don't think that merging disparate communication channels has a significant benefit. With an ever-expanding community, it's foolish to attempt (or to prioritise) the ability to "monitor all the communications", and different people and different groups of people prefer different styles of communication in different situations (real-time chat, questions and answers, rambling discussions, short-form message broadcasting, long form blogging, etc etc). There's no pressing requirement to combine these different formats together.
So I think before attempting to merge anything, it needs more careful analysis about the style and purpose of communication in each format, and the current and future volumes of communication in the combined format, and whether this then makes sense. I would expect, for example, even a simple analysis to show that the mailing lists and help Q&A to have little overlap in either purpose or style of communication.
FluxBB and Discourse are not 'completely different' but a technological evolution to the demand of users and administrators. On the other hand, our Telegram channels are overloaded with chaotic information and very difficult to read and follow.
The forum of the Argentinean community is in 4th place in number of posts and only contains a tiny part of the information that circulates through other channels.
Canada has 38 topics, Spain 91... It does not take much study to realize that the forum is a cemetery and the different communities are looking for other ways. Moreover, there is already a Discord World!
Times have changed and we must understand the new challenges and offer solutions before the world imposes them.
In Argentina we have created a specific working group for this topic and we are studying all the possibilities to improve the general communication, mainly for the new users who have many difficulties to follow the diversity of channels that we currently have [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/ES:Argentina#Contacto].
Currently, our main channel is [https://telegram.me/osm_ar] but we also have themes [Covid, Nature, GLAM] that were created to ease the charge.
Indeed, Telegram is not the appropriate tool for this type of problem, so we are seriously considering migrating the Forum to the Discourse. In this way we hope to be able to channel general questions or queries to the forum and to retain Telegram for more fluid conversations.
We are also considering Telefuel where we already have a Beta installation [https://www.telefuel.com/w/001Jdh8Mw4sgXsTpezCK/] so we can have 'channels' and not migrate quickly to Discord.
In short, to this day we think:
- Preserve the Forum as a historical channel but we would migrate the posts.
- We would make a more complete homepage with a CMS [https://openstreetmap.org.ar/]
- We would keep the Telegram, for the time being
best
There is user &ergio which is willing to help on a discourse server!
I just asked the forum admins to offer me an export to import into Discourse... In the Argentine community we are ready to be the laboratory of this idea [https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Talk:Forum]
the forum is a cemetery and the different communities are looking for other ways.
Uhm... The forum is the main communication channel for communities in Austria, Belarus, Netherlands, Germany, Russia, Poland, Ukraine and many other countries. If that's not the case for Argentina, that doesn't mean it isn't for other countries. If you contact active members of these communities, I doubt the decision to move to Discourse would pass that easy.
I have no doubt that many users will want to continue with the forum and each of them must have their reasons, mainly out of habit.
But if we want to move forward we will have to take some action according to the 21st century
I was just looking at yesterday's stats from our main Telegram: 100 posts! In the forum: 1
Also... it is not my idea to close the forum! We can leave it to the dinosaurs to play in their park ;-)
Seriously... I just found this thread in the forum [https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=783989] ! It seems that we are not the only ones looking to leave the cemetery.
Илья, have you ever seen or used some of Discourse instances (don't confuse with Discord)? It's used on many opensource projects, and it's definitely the best forum engine. So I believe there should be no objection from other members.
Let's not berate people who use the forum. Language like “dinosaurs” doesn't help. (Plus dinosaurs are cool).
Let's not berate people who use the forum. Language like “dinosaurs” doesn't help. (Plus dinosaurs are cool).
Hi @rory, I love dinosaurs ;-) I'm a 53-year-old dinosaur, who learned computing with a Sinclair Z80!
The problem we have in AR and many other communities is that the forum is not used by anyone! I don't have any problem with the forum, but it doesn't respond to users' needs, except for dinosaurs ;-)
In other words, we have to find a solution for the new users somehow.
PLz. stay ontopic. This is about the idea to shift to discourse and maybe to merge different existing channels into it.
In case you missed it: https://wiki.osmfoundation.org/wiki/Operations/Minutes/2020-07-15#FluxBB_is_old_and_slow
Action item: @iandees to try converting fluxBB DB to go into Discourse.
Hi! More updates also on the forum here: https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?pid=795873#p795873
I've let this fall as most of my time available to OSM has been on CDN tests. I'll try to make some progress on the remaining pieces of Discourse migration this weekend.
In the german forum there is a thread as well https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=68944
In the german forum there is a thread as well https://forum.openstreetmap.org/viewtopic.php?id=68944
It seems to me that it only contributes to the general confusion. The first step I think should be to offer an alternative to the forum
OAuth 1.0a vs. OAuth 2.0 seems to be one of the issues according to one of the recent forum posts.
Not sure if there are any plans to move OSM website to OAuth 2.0 or if writing a custom OAuth 1.0a plugin for DIscourse is doable? There's also a somewhat stalled issue on OAuth 2.0 for the OSM website out there: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/1408
As far as Discourse is concerned - can you confirm if OAuth 2.0 is sufficient? or does it need OpenID Connect?
Discourse has built in support for Oauth2: https://meta.discourse.org/t/oauth2-basic-support/33879
I can also use something like what you did for the existing forum, @tomhughes, but Oauth2 would obviously be better.
Right so no need for OpenID Connect but we would need JSON support on the user details API endpoint.
but we would need JSON support on the user details API endpoint.
My proposal would be something along these lines: https://github.com/mmd-osm/openstreetmap-website/commit/0fb725ea611e7788a05bcb39bbf65ccdfe7ae505
We, In israel, have stopped using the forum completely and are using telegram now. We are a small community. The forum is not working well for us and of I need to guess it's due to the fact that it doesn't work well on mobile. I don't think telegram is ideal, mainly due to spam, and I'd love to try out something else.
