Background
As you probably know, we’ve got two Discourse sites, this one and Fedora Discussion, over at, well, https://discussion.fedoraproject.org.
Historically, this distinction exists for a simple reason: we had Ask Fedora as a Q&A site, using site software which attempted to emulate Stack Exchange. That software stack wasn’t sustainable, so we decided to migrate to Discourse. The idea was to use Discourse to basically fill the same space, so we wanted to keep the same “this is a site specifically for user Q&A”.
At the same time, as an experiment, we launched the other site for wider discussion, and in particular project/developer conversations.
Now
Two and half years in, both sites have been pretty successful, although I think terms of involvement I’d say Ask is wildly successful while Discussion… acceptably-so for the experiment. Therefore, I started a conversation about redoing Discussion’s organization using the lessons learned, plus some modern understanding of how best to use Discourse and discussion forums in general.
As part of that conversation, @aday strongly advocates for merging the these two sites:
This is a good point. On the other hand, I don’t want to break something that’s working, which this site clearly has been. It’s been successful as a community driven effort, and all of y’all have done a great job leading it and making it grow.
Previous conversation; pros and cons
Ask Fedora regulars talked about this briefly a few months ago in The Lounge (what’s that? see trust levels), because there’s another possible advantage — if we merge the two sites, we are likely to be able to move from the “Business” plan to the “Enterprise” one sooner rather than … hopefully some day.[1]
Advantages (Technical/Features)
If we had the Enterprise plan, in addition to supporting the combined traffic of the two sites (we’re at a level that we’d need it to do that), we would have access to the Translator and Mult-Lingual plugins, which would help solve some of the issues we’re already struggling with here. And we could use the Footnote plugin, so long posts I write like this could be more concise.[2] Plus, greater uptime guarantees, priority support (as I said, I use it a lot), other plugins, a “staging” site to experiment on, and possibly more help with some enhancements to badges and calendaring that we’re considering.
More Advantages (Conceptual)
With a combined site, we don’t need to have banners everywhere sending people to the other site. And if someone asks in the wrong section, it’s really trivial to move it. We can even move or branch conversations which start in one area to another, without linking across sides.
Merged sites would spread moderation tasks like handling spam accounts across more people, which is definitely nice.
Also a point from Allan — users want to discuss, not just ask, and we’ve got a lot of that here despite the name… a merged site could actually allow a more ask-and-answer format area because there’d also be separate discussion sections.
And, we’ve already got so many different places that conversation happens. If we can bring everything together to focus on one discussion site, one chat platform (with, of course, bridging), and one main website, it’ll be easier for everyone to really be connected to each other and the project.
Downsides
Of course, it comes with some possible downsides. There are still only two levels of categories. We would need to consider how to do the new layout carefully. Search would be more overwhelming, possibly with a need to choose filters more carefully.
We wouldn’t have the ability to replicate everything per-language as a top-level category. I know that’s been really important to many of you.
It might make it harder and more intimidating for new users who don’t feel comfortable exposing their newness to The Devs. And honestly, I’m also worried a little bit about the other way around, not that our contributors are prima donnas, but that everyone’s time is precious and even for people employed by Red Hat, most participation in Fedora is volunteer work — passion and fun — and “I want to help with the audio subsystem in Fedora Linux” doesn’t necessarily translate to “I have time to respond to user questions”. And as we all know here, helping people can be a lot of work, and there’s effectively an infinite amount of help needed. So, I think having “protected” spaces has some advantages for both just-users and for contributors — but I’m torn, because in general Fedora is all about breaking down that distinction as we are all one big awesome community.
Questions for you!
So, straw-poll time! As always, this is non-binding, but we take your input very seriously. Let us know what you think. I’m making multiple polls with several different questions, and I’m turning on “show who voted”, so I can do some correlation.
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+2
Absolutely yes. -
+1
I think so, but okay if not. -
0
I am not sure. -
0
I don’t care. -
-1
I don’t think so, but okay if so. -
-2
Strongly Disagree
0 voters
- Highly active on Ask Fedora
- Somewhat active on Ask Fedora
- Highly active on Fedora Discussion
- Somewhat active on Fedora Discussion
0 voters
- Increase
- Decrease
- Stay about the same.
0 voters
- Increase
- Decrease
- Stay about the same.
0 voters
- Difficult to understand where to go for what.
- Difficult to explain the difference.
- Despite split, sites already overlap and cause duplication
- Possible access to Multilingual and Translations plugins
- Footnotes plugin!!!
- Possible easier implementation of Matthew’s crazy ideas for badges and calendars
- Ease of moderation
- Blur lines between “contributors” and “users” into one Fedora
- Fewer sites overall is good
- I just think the sites — or, the site functions — are more likely to succeed together
- Other (I will explain below)
- None (I don’t care)
- None (I am opposed)
0 voters
- Separate Ask is easier for users who don’t yet feel like they’re part of the project.
- Separate Project Discussion keeps developers from being overwhelmed.
- Despite split, sites already overlap and cause duplication
- Won’t be able to nest categories as neatly
- I really like the top-level language categories
- Prefer different site design and theming
- I just think the sites are more likely to succeed separately
- Possible easier implementation of Matthew’s crazy ideas for badges and calendars
- Other (I will explain below)
- None (I don’t care)
- None (I am in favor)
0 voters
- Yes
- No
0 voters
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Discourse is entirely open source, but we consume it as SaaS from its creators, using funding from Red Hat. This helps us support them, keeps us from needing to do low-level infrastructure tasks that aren’t related to actually making Fedora Linux or growing and supporting the community, and also helps support the software makers. Also, I ask them a lot of support questions, so we’re getting our money’s worth. Also, thank you Red Hat for your sponsorship of this! ↩︎
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Wait, look! In the last few days they added footnotes at this level. I’m so excited! (This does not change my mind, though.) ↩︎