tanius
commented
6 years ago We're putting this feature on the backburner now. If it's needed for a current project, please justify why and we can prioritize it then.
Open tanius opened 7 years ago
tanius
commented
6 years ago We're putting this feature on the backburner now. If it's needed for a current project, please justify why and we can prioritize it then.
The following is what we will need for the "Facebook cross-posting" feature. (Which is the last major feature we as "Edgeryders the Company" want implemented for now. After that, user feedback and wishes may result in some more features, or maybe not as the platform is quite feature complete.)
What it is. Facebook cross-posting is an additional channel for user participation. By commenting a post on a Facebook page, that comment would automatically also be posted to the corresponding topic on Discourse. The "corresponding topic" is the one the Facebook post is about: the link that shows in the Facebook link preview area of this post.
Implementation details.
How to tell users about cross-posting. In the Facebook comment field, the default text should be changed to something like "Write a comment … (Your comment will also appear on [Discourse site URL] under a CC-BY 4.0 licence." This should be possible, as it was done by the eKantipur Facebook page (a large Nepal-based newspaper) at some point of time – seemingly not anymore, though. If this is no longer possible due to Facebook API changes, adding the same hint to the bottom of the Facebook post will also be sufficient.
We need the e-mail addresses of all our Discourse users. (Because we want to be able to send them our newsletter.) For this reason, we can only accept cross-posting from users who have opened a regular Discourse account and confirmed their e-mail address. So technically, users would be able to cross-post after connecting their Facebook account to their Discourse account.
How users connect their Facebook account. The simplest way would be a custom field in the user profile to enter ones Facebook profile URL. However, we probably have to prevent people from claiming others' Facebook accounts, so we need some type of verification. The Facebook API probably provides a dedicated "connect account" feature.
Facebook login for increased comfort. To prevent people from having to remember yet another password, and to automatically and effortlessly connect the user's Facebook account to their Discourse account, a "Facebook login" option should be added to the Discourse login / signup form. But we still need to collect the user's e-mail address and save it in the Discourse account (see above). As Facebook will probably not hand it out, we need a form field on signup for that. (This requirement is optional, and if not implemented for this issue it should be outsourced into another issue for later.)
One-way syncing only. This feature is not about syncing comments both ways. If a comment is cross-posted from Facebook and receives a reply directly on Discourse, that reply will not again be synced to Facebook. So the author of the first comment will only receive a notification via Discourse, not via Facebook as well.
Benefits. Users who are mostly or nearly exclusively active on Facebook get a more comfortable, time-saving way to post to a Discourse platform. (This is esp. relevant for countries / regions with many such users, such as the MENA region.) This feature is however not about taking away the need to visit the Discourse platform for registration, because we need the e-mail addresses of users for keeping them in the loop with a newsletter.
Source. Decisions made in a discussion with @ladyniasan and Hazem, 2017-08-21.