Thank you for sharing your feedback and experience with Discourse, Jack. >From what I have seen, I agree that Discourse will allow our conversations to be a bit more structured and we're putting a lot of thought into how to structure the forum so that topic areas will be intuitive for our users to find and explore.
Folks, all feedback on this proposal welcome, encouraged and needed. We want to do what will work best for our community. Cheers, LH On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 6:09 PM, Jack Park <jackp...@topicquests.org> wrote: > Leslie, this is a truly important conversation to have. > > To anticipate my thoughts, I have been working on evolving open source > conversation platforms, using ElasticSearch. There are two aspects of my > work (others are doing similar work): > > 1- conversation is structured. In fact it is not simply an indented > outline conversation; each contribution (node) is akin to a tweet: a terse > statement or question about a single subject. Thus, trees grow along > subject lines. Each node is one of a question, a statement which can be an > answer to a question or an amplification on another answer, or a statement > which is a pro or con argument. > > 2- a topic map federates the topics in play, allows for relations among > those topics. The same apparatus allows for crosslinking nodes in > conversations simply because each conversation node is, in fact, its own > topic in the topic map, but each node is *about* a different specific > topic, say, "Yellow on startup". Thus, all that is knowable about "Yellow > on startup", every conversation node, the manual pages, blog pages, > whatever, is eventually captured by that specific node in the topic map > (document in ES). I recently gave a talk which speaks to my views on topic > maps in the context of using ElasticSearch in a much wider context [1]. > > To respond to your question, I think that Discourse is a pretty amazing > product. It might be that a topic map can be added to it to round out the > platform. A topic map helps to increase the SNR (signal to noise ratio) in > a sense similar to the way people jump to Wikipedia to do a quick check on > what something is about. But more than that, a topic map behaves like a > "geolocator" for all the topics in play in conversations. > > It would seem that email interaction is one of those required > capabilities. Doing structured conversations in email has not yet been > shown to be easy. My observation has been that users of the ElasticSearch > email list have been very disciplined, staying on topic; that's nowhere > near the case in many other lists. But, does that translate to > implementation as a structured branching-tree conversation? Hard to say. > > But, is email really required? I notice that some people come to the > email list first with a question about this or that exception; I've found > it to be extremely useful to paste the exception in the search bar on my > browser and get a great answer before coming to the list, though there have > been (and still are) some sticky exceptions for which answers just are not > available online. > > Nevertheless, this is an important conversation to have, and not just for > the ElasticSearch community; it seems to me there is a huge demand to > improve the SNR for many online communities; I see ElasticSearch in that > solution space. > > Cheers > Jack > [1] http://www.slideshare.net/jackpark/jst-talk-final > > > On Thu, Apr 2, 2015 at 8:36 AM, leslie.hawthorn < > leslie.hawth...@elastic.co> wrote: > >> Hello everyone, >> >> As we’ve begun to scale up development on three different open source >> projects, we’ve found Google Groups to be a difficult solution for dealing >> with all of our needs for community support. We’ve got multiple mailing >> lists going, which can be confusing for new folks trying to figure out >> where to go to ask a question. >> >> We’ve also found our lists are becoming noisy in the “good problem to >> have” kind of way. As we’ve seen more user adoption, and across such a wide >> variety of use cases, we’re getting widely different types of questions >> asked. For example, I can imagine that folks not using our Python client >> would rather not be distracted with emails about it. >> >> There’s also a few other strikes against Groups as a tool, such as the >> fact that it is no longer a supported product by Google, it provides no API >> hooks and it is not available for users in China. >> >> We’ve evaluated several options and we’re currently considering >> shuttering the elasticsearch-user and logstash-users Google Groups in favor >> of a Discourse forum. You can read more about Discourse at >> http://www.discourse.org >> >> We feel Discourse will allow us to provide a better experience for all of >> our users for a few reasons: >> >> * More fine grained conversation topics = less noise and better targeted >> discussions. e.g. we can offer a forum for each language client, individual >> logstash plugin or for each city to plan user group meetings, etc. >> >> * Facilitates discussions that are not generally happening on list now, >> such as best practices by use case or tips from moving to development to >> production >> >> * Easier for folks who are purely end users - and less used to getting >> peer support on a mailing list - to get help when they need it >> >> Obviously, Discourse does not function the exact same way as a mailing >> list - however, email interaction with Discourse is supported and will >> continue to allow you to participate in discussions over email (though >> there are some small issues related to in-line replies. [0]) >> >> We’re working with the Discourse team now as part of evaluating this >> transition, and we know they’re working to resolve this particular issue. >> We’re also still determining how Discourse will handle our needs for both >> user and list archive migration, and we’ll know the precise details of how >> that would work soon. (We’ll share when we have them.) >> >> The final goal would be to move Google Groups to read-only archives, and >> cut over to Discourse completely for community support discussions. >> >> We’re looking at making the cut over in ~30 days from today, but >> obviously that’s subject to the feedback we receive from all of you. We’re >> sharing this information to set expectations about time frame for making >> the switch. It’s not set in stone. Our highest priority is to ensure >> effective migration of our list archives and subscribers, which may mean a >> longer time horizon for deploying Discourse, as well. >> >> In the meantime, though, we wanted to communicate early and often and get >> your feedback. Would this change make your life better? Worse? Meh? >> >> Please share your thoughts with us so we can evaluate your feedback. We >> don’t take this switch lightly, and we want to understand how it will >> impact your overall workflow and experience. >> >> We’ll make regular updates to the list responding to incoming feedback >> and be completely transparent about how our thought processes evolve based >> on it. >> >> Thanks in advance! >> >> [0] - https://meta.discourse.org/t/migrating-from-google-groups/24695 >> >> >> Cheers, >> LH >> >> Leslie Hawthorn >> Director of Developer Relations >> http://elastic.co >> >> >> Other Places to Find Me: >> Freenode: lh >> Twitter: @lhawthorn >> >> -- >> You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups >> "elasticsearch" group. >> To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an >> email to elasticsearch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. >> To view this discussion on the web visit >> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/a0c02cd4-231d-4ce5-adb7-7164de76a902%40googlegroups.com >> <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/a0c02cd4-231d-4ce5-adb7-7164de76a902%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> >> . >> For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. >> > > -- > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups > "elasticsearch" group. > To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an > email to elasticsearch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. > To view this discussion on the web visit > https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAH6s0fxJOd8N44sMW92dzXcaQVj2BHkhn5-e%2BhgNCrRTC804Zw%40mail.gmail.com > <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAH6s0fxJOd8N44sMW92dzXcaQVj2BHkhn5-e%2BhgNCrRTC804Zw%40mail.gmail.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> > . > > For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. > -- Leslie Hawthorn Director of Developer Relations http://elastic.co Other Places to Find Me: Freenode: lh Twitter: @lhawthorn Skype: mebelh Voice: +31 20 794 7300 -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "elasticsearch" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to elasticsearch+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/elasticsearch/CAHj2c4Cuer_%3DKb1_BERmnY4u_u%3DZ1W52C2AnBgRcGuAd6DwOmA%40mail.gmail.com. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
