I am not sure if 3 is feasible and what were the arguments against it before. So I would not insist on it. But I would like to propose 1) so that we can use it in documentation and articles and regular conversations.
Technically we do not need any formal vote for this, everyone who agrees, can just follow the pattern. But I wanted to make it as an explicit request to see if there are any objections or arguments against it, which I don’t see.
It isn’t a reason not to do it but something that is at worth considering is that there is already another forum called Fedora Forum at https://fedoraforum.org and having them both called “Fedora Forum” is likely to cause some confusion and thought should be given how to differentiate them.
But the site isn’t named discourse at all currently.
The site is named discussion, both as the subdomain name and in the logo. So I don’t know what this proposal is about.
Some people call it discourse, yes, because that’s the platform, but where does that name appear here (other than in help texts, just like for pagure etc)?
“Discussion” is both descriptive and platform-neutral. (Forum is less descriptive and in use for something else.)
The word “discussion” is not really descriptive. It is a regular word not a term.
So whenever you say “discussion” you have to say “Fedora Discussion, our forum”, or Fedora Discussion, our Discourse instance"
And then personally I never able to type “discussion(s)” on the first try correctly
When you work at the booth at the event you need to give people something easy to understand and to remember, so that they can come back home and type it in their browser with no issues. Forum is a well known concept which I think fits better.
But I guess it makes sense if when youe say “forum” people think “phpBB”.
The forum I was being part of for 10 years was based on a custom engine, and it was basically like Discourse, but without infinite scrolling. SO for me Discourse is a type of forum software, just the one significantly better than phpBB-like forums ever were.
You are not alone, I went thru the confusion in between discourse and discord … but now since I miss spelled it several time I can perfectly distinguish.
Just use the old loved ask.fedoraproject.org … it will forward users exactly where they should start.
If we don’t like “forum”, maybe there are some alternative ideas for the shortcut?
Would “Discuss.fedoraproject.org” be better?
The use case is literally: you are staying at the booth, some person asks where they can get discuss the feature in more details. You don’t have any pen or paper and you say …
P.S. This is not really a super critical issue, just an annoyance. But maybe we can come up with some easy solution and improve the quality of life a tiny little bit.
In-person I’d say forum, but wouldn’t type that online (imo not correct terminology, but I don’t imagine another person face-to-face would be into semantics )
Maybe “Fedora’s discussion forum” (if “Fedora forum” is searched, “Discussion” is 2nd result)
The word forum(s) makes one usually think about a community/user driven platform, and Fedora Discussion is understood to be more than that, given that it hosts not only the community forum (Ask Fedora), but also the Project Discussion area, other Announcements, etc.
Looking at similar open source projects, some of them choose to use the name of the platform (Discourse, Mattermost etc), while others go with the word Forums. I like how Fedora Discussion has it’s own distinctive branding.
Also, as mentioned above, ask.fedoraproject.org is easy to remember and points exactly to the user forum area of the platform. An additional forums.fedoraproject.org could indeed be used for the same redirect. I wouldn’t necessarily use it though as the default url, and neither would I change the official name.
Referring to the proposal and the title of the post, I am not aware of any (other than maybe accidental) place (official website, docs website) where Fedora’s Discourse platform is referred to as Fedora Discourse, instead of Fedora Discussion. I understand the term Fedora Discourse was chosen not to be used on purpose.
The Community pages linked from each of the editions/spins presented on the website (e.g. for Workstation) seem to be an exception, as they are using both the word Forum, as well as Discourse , but the latter rather as a reference to the official name of the platform provider though, and the former as an identification of the type of communication channel. Fedora Discussion is still there with its branding.
Discourse is a half-arsed analog for a proper forum, but that’s nitpicking.
Just as a datapoint, for openSUSE anyway, we call our discourse instance forums.opensuse.org because that’s what the domain was prior to discourse existing, and it’s just what people are used to.
It does create far less confusion, since most folks, at least have some idea what to expect, when they’re going to a “forum”
But if you look at the recent conversations, for example the latest Change Proposal, in 70 comments there no one says “Discussion”. Because it is just too long to type. I am afraid that without some kind of nickname/shortcut, we will never change that.
Can you please be more specific what exactly you would change? The URL or just how we do name/refer to the DiscoURSE (not DiscoRD) instance?
Without repeating already discussed topics, I have to correct my selves and tell @bookwar just use
Some historical & technical background information:
When we started DiscoURSE we still used subdomains. It was even so that we had separate login for ask.fp.o and discussion.fp.o . This have been two different Discourse instances. To simplify our community activities and communication work we opted for a single Discourse instance and got help from them (Discourse), to host the instance by them on external infrastructure.
The technical details of Sub Domains, they are depreciated for a project as big as Fedora’s is.
Search engines down vote such entries, and it is better to use a single domain with sub folders like we do have now. You can observe this on the URL while typing start.fedoraproject.org it will redirect you to fedoraproject.org/start.
However changing now discussion.fp.o to disuss.fp.org would have a bigger impact of down voting because we would create content on a new sub-domain (which is as already mentioned depreciated).
P.S.
Also a repetition and worth to mention it (especially for new users):
RH is owner of the domain name fedoraproject.org and ask us to use this as the official Fedora related information.
However they not own the fedora community as it selves, because there are thousands of of voluntary working, RH independent users, which keep doing the hard work!
)