Proposal: Create a dedicated "Events" category on Fedora Discussion

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Hi everyone,

I’d like to suggest creating a dedicated “Events” category here on Fedora Discussion.

Right now, we have an “event” tag under the News and Announcements category, but event posts are rare - and the last one was in 2023. Many events don’t make it here at all, which isn’t ideal for long-term visibility or follow-up engagement.

As someone involved in Fedora DEI and helping with community events (like this upcoming Fedora Docs Workshop), I’ve seen the need for a more visible and organized space to share event updates.

A separate Events category would:

  • make it easier for the community and contributors to find and follow upcoming events
  • help us track regional/community activity better
  • provide a place for post-event recaps, feedback, and community impact (the Community Blog is great, but this could complement it in other ways)
  • encourage more people to share event recaps, planning updates, and call-for-participation posts
  • be more sustainable than relying on Matrix/IRC chats that disappear in time and also improves visibility and archiving of event-related content

This also supports the Fedora DEI goal to highlight contributor work, support regional advocacy, and make community activities more transparent.

All posts can still be moderated, so quality and relevance will be maintained.

Would love to hear what the moderators and others think!

@glb @ankursinha @jonatoni and other @moderators

Best,
Cornelius

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It makes sense to me. +1. :slightly_smiling_face:

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I also endorse this. @moderators, WDYT?

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We had already complaints in the past that the categories have become too many and thus things have become incomprehensible to people who are not already deeply involved. I am also not sure if people seek events in Discourse except what belongs in the Project Category.

I don’t say I am -1 or so, but wanted to mention the points that had been put forward in the past. I think somewhere is an open topic about how to decrease the number for the very reasons, but I think it is no longer active.

I like the idea, but not sure if the amount of events that are discussed here justify a new category. E.g., for the UK events we have already our own Project Discussion tag for the very SIG, and our respective other communication channels. That way we can also easily link our events to the #UK SIG/community and vice versa.

However, a compromise might be an “events” sub to the News category? So next to “Podcast”, “Announce list”, “Community blog” and such? That way we could see if it gets used or not, and it remains distinguishable from what belongs to Project Discussions. Not sure if that makes sense?

Anyway, before going into implement something like that, the first question I would ask: why do “eligible” (definition “eligible” yet undetermined:) events not make it to the News category at the moment? I mean, posted News are usually quite good visible here, and if an event is intended for the “general (Fedora) public” but does not make it to the News category, I am not sure if a separated events category would make the difference?

In any case, thanks @lochipi for raising awareness :classic_smiley:

Supplement: I suggest to move this to the Site Help & Feedback category as that category is for topics like this one, and that way you would get a feedback beyond commops/dei. Most mods/regulars review that category more frequent (some get pinged a lot and might not consider each time someone pings them, so “@ moderators” might not achieve the goal for everyone:)

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I would +1 this - I hear the too-many-categories problem @py0xc3 metions, but for events there are some specific bonuses we can have…

All of the following depends on the Calendar plugin, which is used on the Ansible forum, so I’ll show some examples from there. However, I think we should have access to this plugin from CDCK, so it should be a non-issue (but I’m not an admin so I can’t check).

Firstly, in-topic events, with attendance, maps, etc. Example:

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The “…” menu has lots of options, including a link to add the event to your calendar. Also, for free events, this could (potentially) replace things like Eventbrite, as it can manage attendance lists for door access, etc. The “…” menu allows for exporting a list.

Second, category-level calendars. Example:

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Aggregates all the events in the category and sub-categories. We use this to group events, e.g for CFP closing dates.

Also (no screenshot, it’s similar) you can get a forum-wide calendar, eg Ansible. Obviously theis covers everything.

Side note - you can also do in-topic calendars. Example:

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THis is less useful IMO, because it doesn’t play well with the forum/category-wide calendar, but it can do recursion which is nice for some meetings.

I would argue all of this is really useful to us, especially for grassroot organising of meetups (the Ansible calendar pulls data from Meetup.com to populate the events, for example).

Now, none of this technically requires a new category, it can all work as-is. However, the ability to create events at all is tied to a category-level permission (i.e. can this category have events?), and I would say it’s cleaner to disable that for most categories, and keep events in one place. That also means you can restrict who can create events to a higher trust level (e.g. TL2) so that we don’t get new and innovative types of spam :slight_smile:

So, yes, events category + plugin is my suggestion :slight_smile:

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I have no specific opinion about it, but I think we should do a really deep recategorisation of the whole forum.

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I’m +1 as well, and I really like the suggestion that @gwmngilfen has mentioned

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That could be combined: use the opportunity to not just think of adding this category or not, but do a wider approach and discuss what categories we actually need, what make sense, what to split, merge, add, remove, etc.

I think that was already brought up a few times (so generally to adjust the amount of what “jumps into the face of the reader” at first glance; mostly about decreasing, but not specific to categories, and also within the respective categories), but somehow it disappears before something is ready for implementation. We are too much focused with other things in the “here and now” :frowning:

By the way, I just reviewed it, and “News and announcements” is somehow redundant: that could be also “News and events” to shift more attention to events on the category level.

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Great idea Greg!

Lets start by opening the new category and then see if someone wants to work on the calendar plugin.

We have a number of +1, and @mattdm even liked the idea.

How about it?

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So we’ll need a forum admin to help us configure it - sadly, I am not one :slight_smile:

There have been some improvements in the Calenda/Events plugin recently, including the ability to grant event creation to a group, which would mean we could enable events everywhere, but only for specific groups (perhaps, TrustLevel3 to start with?)

In that path, you still get a /events url that covers the whole forum, which gives you a global view. What’s missing is the ability to subscribe to that (or a catgeory calendar) - today, you can only subscribe (that is, get an ICS file) to a single event at a time.

So, do we have an admin to help? I’l be happy to assist with the configuration :slight_smile:

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I’m not sure if it useful to add a plugin/category and hope that someone feels responsible to make something with it. Usually, this ends up with it idling and being inactive because things likely develop as they start: many +1, but no one took over explicitly responsibility over time. Also, if I get this plan right, it just adds another category without resolving other categories into each other. So we have - despite complaints in the past of too many categories and resulting incomprehensibility - 1 more category, and it can be questioned if it will fulfill a purpose.

Before enabling or adding something, I would start with the question who feels responsible to add events there over time and from what group they have to come from, so that this plugin can fulfill a purpose. If we cannot rely on that, it does not really make sense, does it? Hope that makes sense :classic_smiley:

So with regards to the group: once enabled, who can maintain the content of the plugin? Does it need to be a moderator or site-admin? Or everyone with a specific trust level? That way we can identify the group that any volunteer needs to come from (plus someone who knows where to reliably get information about events from - do we even have “the one” place to get all events from? I tend to assume not → so volunteers need to be well connected in the community, and the community needs to be able to reach out to them if something is not clear, e.g., what is up date if people identify inconsistencies: SIG?). Then we can see if someone from this group volunteers to give the plugin a purpose. I presume then we might have good chances to get it on the to do list of one of our site admins (given Matthew’s current emphasis I presume this will go to infra / Kevin) :classic_smiley:

Personally, I am not convinced if our organization/structure is eligible to create reliably the one place for event documentation. That is just an assumption of course, but we should at least clarify some questions more detailed before implementing something.

We also might consider to gather wider feedback before doing so (I might be able to help with that, pin a proposal topic for some time or so)… This topic has not really had a wide visibility (196 views in total since it exists)

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We would really like an Events category to promote regional and smaller events.

The plug-in idea is great, but it is secondary.

Can we pin the idea of the events category or get some movement or seek feedback on that independently of the plugin?

I think anyone should be able to post events. Big or small.

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If you really want visibility for such announcements, you can post them to Fedora Magazine. Also, there is a wp-discourse plugin that can automatically mirror posts made on Fedora Magazine to a subcategory somewhere on this forum and offload the comment handling to this forum.

If a Discourse admin can help with the initial configuration of that wp-discourse plugin and subcategory, then you can make the Fedora Magazine editors moderators/admins for it and we can try to keep things moving as part of our operation.

Just an idea/suggestion.

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If you refer to the News/Announcements category, that is intentionally limited, because people have to rely that whatever is posted there has passed some Fedora channels/instances and that this is really “officially Fedora” announcements/news → everything else belongs to the Project Discussion. We also use the Project Discussion category for the Local London Meetup, along with a Matrix channel (keep in mind that local SIGs are possible as well, as we have it in UK, and they can create their own channels). If something is more important, you can always reach out to a team that can publish in News/Announcements and see if they agree that this shall be officially announced news - but that category is not intended to be used by everyone to announce every event/issue that has any affiliation with Fedora (that would also create room for abuse). I don’t think changing the use of News/Announcements would get wide support, and in any case, it would go beyond an informal feedback from users in Discourse. Keep in mind that Discourse has become the major channel of Fedora, and therefore, this is one of the major means of distributing official Fedora information/announcements. We should be careful to mix that with other things. I hope that makes sense :classic_smiley:

By the way, whom do you mean with “we”? I assume you refer to a team/SIG? Maybe that team/SIG has already an affiliation/overlap that can be useful for your goals, or maybe it makes sense to use Project Discussion for their announcements like the UK SIG? Keep in mind that pinning is not limited to Announcements/News, though it has to be interesting/useful for the wider community for some reason to not devalue pinnings :classic_smiley:

Anyway, I think Gregory’s thought might be a good compromise: the Magazine’s output is reviewed and it is “official Fedora” information once it is published by them. That could be possible without needing a new category, as it might be mirrored to News/Announcements because of that (though I would involve @jflory7 and hear his thoughts at first once he is back:)

If the Magazine team would take over that way responsibility, it sounds like a good idea: no increase of categories, a well established Fedora channel to ensure review, etc. → and a useful use of the News/Announcement category, but still being only official Fedora information :slight_smile:

Would the idea of Gregory address your needs / what you have in mind? Given that you seem to seek something to promote events, that would seem more useful than a calendar to you, wouldn’t it? I think Gregory’s idea would also address the thoughts of @lochipi (?) :classic_smiley:

If everyone is fine with that, I can involve infra and if they say that they can put this on their to do list, we might pin a poll about it for some days and see if the wider community agrees to that.

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We have the DEI advisor to the Council and the Fedora Community Architect and others +1 on the idea of creating an events category.

I think creating a new events category would be a great idea.
In the past I have been a member of small informal groups tied together by a global organisation - they work really well.

glb’s offer is really great - thank you! It would go along with creating a dedicated category too. Do we want small 5 person events in regions promoted globally in the magazine though? I will think more about this idea overnight to post a more considered reply.

In the initial post by Cornelius, he explains

I work with, but am not a member of DEI.

As this is a DEI proposal, events or event proposers could be cleared through DEI, or other relevant SIGs holding the events.

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DEI has already the possibility to post announcement/news. So no need for adjustments there :classic_smiley: However, I presume they will be also “conservative” about what they post as News/Announcement. Anyway, if you want DEI to post more or stuff for others on News/Announcements, you need to reach out to them first → if they feel this to be appropriate, they have the possibility to use this category for this.

But as SIGs can be very easily formed, which is intentional, opening the category for all SIGs equals to opening them for everybody. Access to this category is intentionally to some extent formalized and restricted to formally embedded/constituted teams. I am not sure but I could imagine that practically, opening this category for the wider community would go to the level of mindshare, not sure if anyone who has the possibility would make this decision with levity.

The proposal of Gregory would add another possibility to make posts in announcements/news with all its attention, plus the magazine itself, which adds possibilities for those who want to post about events in a more formal way - that way even two media with overlapping but not equal audiences are covered at once. If there is any team who is tailored to prepare and provide content for a wide audience, it is the magazine. For everything else, we have Project Discussion, which many use to propose and organize events.

If it is about promoting events, as I read your elaboration, then Gregory’s proposal has the highest impact of all proposals, and I am actually not sure how far a separated event category should achieve this better than the News/Announcement category: if everyone can use a new event category, we are back to project discussion, and much takes place in project discussion, and many people read or skim it → it is good as well. But separating local / non-Announcement-level events from Project Discussion, you remove a lot of readers who might have skimmed/read it given that they regularly check out Project Discussions → a separated events category will not reach the many members that filter Project Discussion to check out what is going on in Fedora without having the many ask-topics. And I don’t think many will check out regularly & explicitly a dedicated events category that considers all types of events, as the majority of the events in the world is not interesting for them. So it doesn’t add value to an event topic compared to project discussion or news/annoouncements, does it? Hope that makes sense?

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I don’t have an opinion re/forum organisation, since I mostly stick to the mailing lists and don’t visit here often. But, as an event organiser, having more ways to invite people and spread the word is always useful. ;‍)

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What we’re trying to achieve is a single place to list all Fedora-related events, whether they’re organized by Fedora, local meetups, booths, or talks at external conferences. I see your point about visibility and how a separate events category might reduce reach compared to Project Discussion or News/Announcements. Maybe instead of a separate category, we could explore using a dedicated tag to centralize events while keeping them easy to find and still visible to the wider community?

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Maybe instead of a separate category, we could explore using a dedicated tag to centralize events while keeping them easy to find and still visible to the wider community?

Indeed, but that possibility already exists in the news/announcements → #events topics (that’s what I had in mind actually)

Assuming that this category is followed by most (and as it is enabled by default as “watch” on all new accounts, which is Discourse’s highest level of “follow”), I considered this the most useful thing, except cases that fit better in project discussions category → but that can be decided then by the authors, respectively those maintaining News/Announcements.

Anyway, if this is complemented by the idea of Gregory, it would be indeed interesting to know if the wp-plugin can only set categories or if it can set also tags (?) (I indeed forgot to consider that in my earlier post)

Just to avoid confusion: I am not -1 or so, I just argue that I am not sure if some approaches I read here achieve the opposite of what used to be the goal here.

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I haven’t tried much with the plugin yet, but here is a screenshot from a local test instance of WordPress that I have installed.

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From that configuration screen, it looks like the posts are routed to a category (or subcategory) and there is an option to allow the post authors to set the tag(s). I guess the Fedora Magazine editors could manually make sure a certain tag is set for new articles, but I don’t think that would be reliable. It would probably be better to have a subcategory for the Fedora Magazine posts if you decide to try this. Just my 2¢. :slightly_smiling_face:

P.S. This is the first link at the top of that screenshot: Install and configure the WP Discourse Wordpress plugin for Discourse - Administrators - Discourse Meta

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