Mailing list as a replacement for CodePlex forums

[yevhen]

At the moment GitHub does not provide discussion forums functionality. Since the project is moving out of CodePlex, consider creating a mailing list (Google Groups or similar) to have a place where people can ask questions, give feedback and get support from the community.

P.S. StackOverflow could be another possible alternative.

[sergeybykov]

Good point. My impression is that StackOverflow is where developers go with most of their questions anyway. So it seems like a good candidate. And it doesn't require a Google account. Should we simply use tag "Orleans" there? I don't see any notion of a group there. And apparently we already have some old questions there - http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/orleans that we weren't aware of.
Other thoughts?

[richlander]

StackOverflow isn't really a forum. You have to have a very specific kind of conversation there, and they are moderated. Not a criticism of SO, just a statement on how it works there.

We've been having conversations in the .NET Foundation forums. You are welcome to use those. Contact @BethMassi if you want insight into how you can make conversations Orleans-specific.

[akoeplinger]

The DotNetFoundation forums were made for this purpose I think, so why not set up a category there?

StackOverflow is a question-and-answer site, it's not really appropriate for the broader discussions that usually happen in a forum. The focus of SO is on questions that have a definitive answer.

edit looks like @richlander beat me to it 😄

[richlander]

NP @akoeplinger. Must be a great idea, then!

[sergeybykov]

Indeed. I'm checking with @BethMassi on this.

[jason-bragg]

I agree with the distinctions made between StackOverflow and forums, though, as mentioned, many developers go to StackOverflow with questions (almost out of habit), so I suspect having a presence there and using each site for what it does well could be a beneficial approach.

[yevhen]

Check out http://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/orleans

[jkonecki]

I've updated SO orleans tag wiki and added a link to GitHub repo.

[deegles]

What about Discourse? It's an open source forum platform by the creators of Stack Overflow. (github link)

It can be installed on Azure easily with Bitnami.

[jkonecki]

How about Google+ community? Do you use G+?

[kspeakman]

+1 for a Google Group. Never had any search result take me to the .NET Foundation Forum.

[sergeybykov]

I personally don't know anyone who uses Google+. :-)
What if we simply stay on the Codeplex forum?

[kspeakman]

I agree about Google+ / Facebook / social media. It needs to be a forum (like a Google Group, which is separate from G+). It would be a bit awkward to have the source here and the forums on Codeplex. I believe that will cause confusion since CodePlex also hosts source code.

[akoeplinger]

Never had any search result take me to the .NET Foundation Forum.

That's somewhat expected given that the .NET Foundation Forum is only ~4months old, so there naturally isn't a lot of content there.

I'd say it's still the best choice for an obviously .NET-centric project like this (staying on codeplex seems awkward to me as well).

[BethMassi]

Hi folks. I’m OK adding a category for Orleans if you want to use the .NET Foundation forums, but I’d make sure that conversations around the source code happen closer to the source. i.e. Use GitHub for Issues & Design docs/gists. Right now we have broad categories on the .NET Foundation forums because the more categories you have the greater chance you have of fragmenting your community. Right now we're small so trying to keep categories to a minimum. I can definitely see adding them if topic areas start to explode (and we can always add and categorize threads later).

[sergeybykov]

Gitter has become the main place for discussions - https://gitter.im/dotnet/orleans.