Try out discourse.org for Community Forums

[flyingzumwalt]

Following up from the discussion here: #69 (comment)

• Look into what would be involved in using discourse.org for IPFS community forums.
• Do a trial run -- be careful to minimize confusion in the community during this trial
• Identify benefits & tradeoffs
• Decide whether to officially adopt discourse.org
• Update documentation, etc. accordingly

cc @RichardLitt

[flyingzumwalt]

@erlend-sh can you help me set up a trial run? Would you be willing to join a call with IPFS maintainers to talk about the possibility of using discourse.org for ipfs community?

[erlend-sh]

Sure! Just sign up on the form here.

I might be able to join a call this week if we manage to schedule something for Wednesday or Thursday. I'm in GMT+1. Find my email on my profile and get in touch!

[flyingzumwalt]

Who wants to help us configure discourse and try it out?
Who is interested in being moderators?
What content should we set up as "seed" data to give this a trial run?

The trial site is up at http://ipfs.trydiscourse.com/

[dignifiedquire]

I'm going to be around and try my best :)

[donothesitate]

I might put a hand or so in it, not all time though. I would like a category in-between commoners and moderators. Moderators give impression that they directly represent IPFS.

As for seed, there should be definitely some categories to keep stuff organized:

• Help
• Coding (so user and coder help is separate)
• How-To(s)
• Bugs
• Announcements

(To be revised when I have more ideas)

[dignifiedquire]

Just added some categories, now seeing your post @donothesitate :)

I have most of them, except for coding. I am not sure we want that category as we still want bug reports etc to go to github.

[dignifiedquire]

@RichardLitt let's sync up when you are around on what important things we should copy/link into there as you have the best overview of currently existing content.

[flyingzumwalt]

We hit the limit of 5 "staff" right away. I emailed @erlend-sh to clarify about this. Here's his helpful explanation (I probably should have just asked him on here!):

Moderators also count as staff, yes. All standard plans are limited to 5 staff. It's usually not a problem, but I made an exception for you and doubled it to 10, hope that will suffice!

[pyhedgehog]

ipfs.trydiscourse.com has following disadvantages:

1. It doesn't support anonymous posting/commenting.
2. It doesn't support https, so it's unreasonable to send email there to register.
3. Anonymous emails (i.e. mailinator) not allowed.

It's vicious circle.

[flyingzumwalt]

@erlend-sh is it possible to enable https? How about anonymous posts?

There are pros and cons to anonymous posts, but it would be nice to have the option of enabling it.

Note: we will still use IRC, so there is still a path for communicating with the maintainers and the community anonymously.

[hsanjuan]

I've seen a few discourses under https. Maybe trydiscourse.com does not offer that option though because it's just a testing site. As a side note, github does not allow anonymous posting either so it's pretty much the same on that front.

[pyhedgehog]

Github doesn't leak user emsils via http.

[erlend-sh]

is it possible to enable https?

Yes, if you start using your own domain we can set that up for you.

How about anonymous posts?

Yes. To enable it search for allow anonymous posting in your admin panel. Of course, for true anonymity you have to take additional precautions.

p.s. I'm signed up to your forum and will be easier to reach through a mention or PM there; I check my email/Discourse notifications more frequently than GitHub.

[flyingzumwalt]

We've finished the Trial (fwiw). Time to decide how to proceed.

Redirecting all "whether to pull the trigger" discussion to #69 so we can close out that long-running issue. Tracking the follow-up work based on those conclusions in ipfs-inactive/docs#7