Discussion: Where should we start a discussion forum?

[docwilmot]

I was interested in the concept of Backdrop from the start, but I am not sure how to contribute. GitHub seems (to me) to be a place for code, not community, and I notice that most open source projects pride themselves on a 'thriving community'. Is it too early to start Backdrop Forums?

Options for places to have a forum

Option	Good	Bad
Reddit	Immediately available Will happen anyway Great for non-technical people Can customize look and feel	Requires a Reddit login No SSO w/ Github
Facebook group	Immediately available Will happen anyway Great for non-technical people Everyone already has facebook (admit it, you do)	Requires a Facebook login No SSO w/ Github
Zoho Forums	Immediately available SSO w/ Github JQuery chose it	Only one forum (free version)
Stack Exchange	Immediately available Will happen anyway SSO w/ lots of things	It's not a discussion forum. Credit needs to be earned No SSO w/ Github
Google groups	Immediately available	Requires a google account Does not let you choose a new persona No SSO w/ Github
Backdrop Forum module	Module Already ported SSO w/ Github Our own dogfood	Requires a Backdrop login Needs to be built (dev resources) Needs to be maintained (dev resources) Needs to be hosted (cost) proven unsuccessful on d.o? Old technology
Backdrop Views/Content type	Config-ready SSO w/ Github Our own dogfood	Requires a Backdrop login Needs to be built (dev resources) Needs to be maintained (dev resources) Needs to be hosted (cost) proven unsuccessful on d.o?
Discourse	Immediately available Open Source Ubuntu chose it	Requires a Discourse login Needs to be built (dev resources) Needs to be maintained (dev resources) Needs to be hosted (cost) OR Would have to buy (cost) Not Backdrop No SSO w/ Github

[ghost]

Not sure about the short-term, but in the long-term I think we should go with option 2: 'Backdrop Views/Content type' forums. If we can make something really cool that works well, we could even package it up and release it similar to how WordPress did: https://bbpress.org/

To avoid the 'logging into backdropcms.org' problem, we could make it its own site; something like support.backdropcms.org...

[ghost]

yes, or community.backdropcms.org The contributed projects pages could live there too.

[jenlampton]

All the separate sites will eventually use bakery module (needs to be ported) and sign a person into all sites at once (www, api, support, etc) and we'll also cook up a single-sign-on with gitub so people can use that account for all our sites too (if they are developers). The problem is that people don't like creating MORE accounts. Making them create 3 more is worse than 1 more, but it was the 1 more I was talking about as being a problem.

Most of my clients, for example, don't have accounts on drupal.org. But they do often ask what a themer is. It would be great if we could find a solution that works for those people - since developers will have a github account and can use the issue queue. (Though, it would be ideal if our solution would work for everyone - maybe that's asking for too much).

[ghost]

So if we want our clients to be able to participate in a support community, but don't want them to have to register a new account, how will that work with something like Zoho, Facebook or Google? Are we assuming those places have the ability to login using other services (e.g. login to Zoho using Facebook) or that clients already have an account there?

[jenlampton]

It depends on the service we choose, I suppose. I'd be fine with either.

[cellear]

Let's see if one of us can find a client willing to pay for a custom Backdrop-based forums solution and give permission to donate it back!

[sirkitree]

Jen added a table to the original post above. I've added a couple more pros to Reddit as a forum.

I was pretty skeptical of Reddit at first when I was introduced to the VR community, but it's proven a really great forum. Moderation, stylization, posting guidelines, among others. Hope to see ya'll there!

[jwalling]

In case it wasn't mentioned, it would be good to have a shareable event calendar connected to the forum.

[sirkitree]

Connected how @jwalling? We can put a link to it from the subreddit, though I'm not sure where that link is at this point.

[jwalling]

@sirkitree Connected: Easy to link w/o need to use a separate password.

[jwalling]

Ideally, it should be easy to post to the forum and calendar using one login, as in Drupal Groups.

[docwilmot]

proven unsuccessful on d.o

This is the comment for on-site forums. Just curious why you think it is unsuccessful? Hadnt realized people thought it was unsuccessful.

[mikl]

As far as I'm concerned, the rampant NIH-ism is one of the worst features of the Drupal Community. We have Drupal.org with a half-assed issue tracker, half-assed continuous integration service, half-assed forums, half-assed group-platform, half-assed documentation wiki, etc.

All those things work, of course, it's just that they are, in most aspects, worse than other available solutions. And they suck down an immense amount of volunteer work to maintain – work that could otherwise have been funnelled into making Drupal itself better.

As for dog-fooding, I've never seen any convincing evidence that this actually significantly helped drive adoption of Drupal. What drove adoption of Drupal when that took off was that big-name sites were using it as CMS – whitehouse.gov was a huge turning point.

So I think the rational approach would be for the Backdrop community to focus on making a great CMS, instead of trying to build yet another forum software.

I really think Discourse is the best forum software out there. Designed towards getting great conversations going and getting out your way. It's no accident that it's been picked up by big open source projects like Ubuntu (http://discourse.ubuntu.com/ )

I already host a few Discourse instances for smaller projects, and the Backdrop community would like to try it, I can host an instance for you as well, free of charge as long as you don't start having thousands of concurrent users.

[ghost]

@miki this reinforces my thinking that the Backdrop CMS community should be handled by "the community". There is sure to be plenty of discussion about the logistics of your proposal, I think it's possibly a step in the right direction.

[docwilmot]

OK I've been to the Backdrop Reddit started by @sirkitree and it looks good. BUT I wanted to bring up one, slightly embarassingly simplistic personal thought about Reddit because I am in no way knowlegable about that site: Reddit's reputation to my mind doesnt seem fantastic at this time. I hear Reddit and I think hackers and Jennifer Lawrence. If I am overreacting, then Reddit otherwise sounds like a good idea. If I'm not does it harm Backdrop to be there? Am I overreacting?

[sirkitree]

Reddit is pretty prolific, and if you follow the crap that makes it to the front page, it looks terrible. Subreddits are their own communities though, and can be good or bad, depending on the people that moderate and the people who frequent it. The overall reputation of Reddit should not be a limiting factor IMHO, but I can certainly see where you're coming from.

[mikl]

Yeah, Reddit is a bit like a microcosm of the internet. There's a lot of really terrible stuff there, but you don't have to go to those subreddits, if you don't want. I've been a Redditor for ages, and I rarely see anything objectionable.

[jenlampton]

@mikl I think Discourse is off the table because it has all the same down-sides as eating our own dogfood (support, maintenance, hosting) plus, it has the additional disadvantage of also being technologies that we are not experts in. Though your offer to let us take it for a spin on your servers is quite generous, we will be in a pickle the day we do start to have thousands of concurrent users.

Discourse may in fact be the best forum software, but I don't think it's the best choice for this community.

I took the liberty of organizing the list in the top post in (roughly) best-to-worst, in terms of pros and cons. The top four or five items all have links to where we can try things.

Let's start by giving Reddit a shot, but we can also try Zoho Forums, Facebook (seriously), Google Groups, and Stack Exchange. Let's see what works and what doesn't work and see if we need to give anything else a try, or if one of those becomes a clear winner.

[cellear]

Since we have Facebook Groups on the list, it seems to make sense to mention Google Plus. Is https://plus.google.com/+BackdropcmsOrg/posts group a discussion forum, or is it reserved for PMC announcements? (You could make a case for LinkedIn groups as well, as the Backdrop job market gathers steam.)

[jenlampton]

I thought google plus was dead? Officially, we just use the hangouts - no announcements or anything there.

Also, looks like we already have linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/groups/Backdrop-CMS-6930143?home=&gid=6930143&trk=anet_ug_hm

[cellear]

G+ certainly didn't kill off Facebook, as some were predicting. (Neither did Ello!) But it has some pretty thriving discussions on various vertical topics that people are into. Or so I've heard :)

[docwilmot]

So Reddit it is then. We should put a link and an announcement on Backdrop.org. And change the logo there from the dragon to the Backdrop logo?

[jenlampton]

The header has the backdrop logo. I'll let you guys decide if other logos need to be changed :)

[sirkitree]

@docwilmot what changes would you like to see? Would you mind taking the conversation there, posting a thread on changes you'd like to see. Totally open to changes but we should probably keep the conversation about changing the subreddit there.

[jenlampton]

@docwilmot brought this back to our attention over in https://github.com/backdrop-contrib/webform/issues/2#issuecomment-128151760

I think it may be time to revisit this discussion. I also like the idea of people being able to "join something" even if they do nothing else there.

First, let's decide on metrics of success, so we can tell if all the extra time/effort/money that's not going into Backdrop the software is benefiting Backdrop the community in a significant way. Then, let's give a few things a shot! :)

[kreynen]

As much as I advocate open source and standards, it's hard to argue with how much more people enjoy Slack over IRC. Code like https://www.drupal.org/project/slack_invite opens up what is normally an invite only process to something anyone can join. WordPress.org moved their core conversations to Slack. As far as know, they never looked back.

[jenlampton]

This issue can continue to be used to discuss whether we should try to build our own discussion forum, but we also need to start thinking about how we'd do it and what it would look like, to better inform that decision. I've started two additional issues related to building a discussion forum:

• https://github.com/backdrop-ops/backdropcms.org/issues/249 (Content)
• https://github.com/backdrop-ops/backdropcms.org/issues/250 (Implementation)

[jenlampton]

Since it sounds like we have decided to build our own forum, I am going to close this issue. Thanks everyone for participating! eats our own dogfood