[associated vote ended on 2023-03-27] Community Plans part 2 - Discourse Forum for project-wide discussion

[GregSutcliffe]

Summary

This is the second discussion space for the community strategy for the year ahead. It's a larger topic than easily fits into a GitHub issue, so rather than summarise it badly here, I'd ask that you read the two posts we've created - State of the Community 2023 and Community Strategy 2023 - before discussing/voting.

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As promised in the post conclusion, this is the second of two proposals, namely that the community should:

• Create a new Discourse forum to use for project-wide discussions (c.f How to better coordinate cross-project discussions on our community-topics #196), support, meeting logs, etc
• Recruit as many parts & functions of the community as possible to get onboard
• Encourage the rest to move over time

If approved, the next step would be for the Red Hat Ansible Community Team to investigate hosting options, and to engage with early-adopters on what their needs are.

Additional Information

No response

[mariolenz]

I can't say if Discourse would be the best choice because I lack the knowledge and experience in this area. But I agree that Discourse or a tool like it might be helpful. Mailing (lists) are a bit out of fashion, a new generation of users might be easier to address with something else. On the other hand, online chat like Matrix isn't a really good place to have a longer discussion. A forum sounds like a better approach.

[GregSutcliffe]

Thanks for the positive feedback so far folks. The second recording from Contributor Summit is now up, so I've added to the top of the second post, but for those that have already read them (and are interested) you can find that here(YouTube)

[maxamillion]

Giant +1 on this!

We're currently super fragmented all over the place and I would love a canonical location of engagement and collaboration for the ansible communities. Discourse seems like the most logical choice I can think of given the current landscape of options available to us today so +1 to that as well.

[ssbarnea]

From the DevTools point of view, I would argue that we are happy with Github Discussions and the way is used by our ~10 projects. That does not create any fragmentation and also allows us to easily convert unfortunate issues into discussions.

So more of a -1 because it avoids adding one extra service/website to run, maintain and update, even if discourse is probably the best DIY forum solution at this time.

[maxamillion]

From the DevTools point of view, I would argue that we are happy with Github Discussions and the way is used by our ~10 projects. That does not create any fragmentation and also allows us to easily convert unfortunate issues into discussions.

@ssbarnea the existence of DevTools as it's own sub-community within the greater Ansible Community is 100% an example of fragmentation.

[pidreher]

I noticed this fragmentation issue very recently myself. As somebody who would like to be more involved with the project as a whole - one thing I can fairly easily do is answer questions, while staying on the lookout for beginner friendly code contribution opportunities.

While a certain understanding of the Ansible ecosystem is required in order to even find the "right" place to ask a question about a certain component (which of course is an issue of itself) - those people active in that repo are not necessarily the only ones able to answer the question. And at the same time it is very tricky for potential helpers to even find those questions to answer across all those repos, chats, Google groups and whatever. And when something is answered somewhere, there is no moderation possibility for people like me in all those different places.

So making helping easier by having it take place in (mostly) one location for sure makes it less frustrating for everybody involved.
I expect this to take some issue-load off all the repo maintainers.

[jillr]

+1 Assuming the other proposal is accepted and we have a clear landing page for the community that can surface a new forum (to prevent even more fragmentation). Better notification filtering/topic subscription in particular is extremely exciting to me.

Also enthusiastic +1 to move our architecture proposals upstream (and async!)

[gotmax23]

I think issue trackers and mailing lists are often better places for development discussions, but I'd very much appreciate a central place to direct users for support and more general discussion. In any case, we'd need dedicated moderators and proper organization to make sure the forums are useful and safe for everyone.

If approved, the next step would be for the Red Hat Ansible Community Team to investigate hosting options, and to engage with early-adopters on what their needs are.

Fedora/RH has an existing relationship with CDCK to host our Discourse Forums.

[GregSutcliffe]

Thanks for the feedback so far folks, good discussions - a few replies inline:

(@gotmax23) I think issue trackers and mailing lists are often better places for development discussions

I would argue that at a core level, a forum and a mailing list perform the same function - async discussion. In that sense, this is about better tooling around that core usecase, as well as meeting new users/contributors in ways they expect. I don't disagree about using Issues for detailing work internal to a specific sub-project, though, it would be lovely to reclaim the trackers for that.

It's worth noting you will be able to interact with this proposal entirely by mail if that is your preferred workflow (caveat one single login to claim your staged account from the mailing list archive 😛)

(@jillr) Assuming the other proposal is accepted

100% this is dependent on that, partly because we'll need a DNS subzone to host it on, but also to have good user pathways. I don't want to prejudge that debate, but it's looking good ;)

(@ssbarnea) From the DevTools point of view, I would argue that we are happy with Github Discussions

@maxamillion already said the key point (possibly slightly more strongly than I might have 😛), but let me just point something out.... in your comment, you said "we are happy", "our ~10 projects", and "does not create any fragmentation" (emphasis mine). It feels like that's exactly the point I'm trying to make - that if we all keep acting at the individual sub-project level, this is going to get worse, not better. I never said DevTools/AWX/etc has fragmentation, I said Ansible does.

You're not wrong about resourcing though, so let me address that...

(@gotmax23) we'd need dedicated moderators and proper organization

Yes, absolutely. Assuming we vote it through, I'll be working on this as my core focus, and I'm keenly aware that it has to be done right. We've obviously got a pile of communities out there already to use for inspiration, and I've been making copious notes about how we can structure it. Detail on this is probably quite a long post in it's own right - I'm happy to do so if people want to see it before voting, but it felt like an implementation detail rather than a core principle, so I haven't added it yet. It will be published in good time, but do say if it's something you'd like to see now.

(@ssbarnea) one extra service/website to run, maintain and update
(@gotmax23) Fedora/RH has an existing relationship with CDCK to host our Discourse Forums.

Indeed we do, and I'll be finding out how much of that Ansible can (re)use. I believe the Ansible Community Team have the budget for paying CDCK, so assuming the vote passes, my next steps will be speaking to Fedora and CDCK to work out what we can do.

[felixfontein]

I thought I already wrote a 👍 here, but apparently I didn't yet. So here it is :)
(Also 👍 for an open source forum software!)