Apologies for not responding to this sooner, Jakke, but we have only just recently decided to go with Discourse for our project. It took a while to get several different people to assess it for our purposes.
I also apologize for not nuancing my post a bit better. It was really meant to be more constructive criticism than a random gripe, but I crafted it quickly after one of my devs had exactly the same experience I did (finding it very hard to get oriented quickly). Like you, he and I both created forums in 15 minute, as well. But that was only the beginning of many questions which we then spent several days trying to answer (not very successfully). I feel our experiences, while perhaps not entirely typical, were still somewhat confirmed by several others that I subsequently asked to evaluate Discourse for me, as well.
None of this was too unique for me. After many years of working with open source projects,I’ve learned that devs and communities can take a lot for granted in terms of what new users may or may not experience, grasp or process well—or fast. Many have told me over the years that first impressions matter, and my goal was to express them. I wanted to be helpful, but I can see from my own words and the responses that I just didn’t spend enough time explaining my premises. Your response will help me not make that mistake going forward.
I am now quite impressed with Discourse, and feel it’s the right choice for our large, ambitious, and important project.
I have a growing list of notes, bugs, and issues to discuss as we move forward, and I will try to put much more care into how I express things. I’ve been involved in these sorts of projects for over 25 years, and know that my observations, insights and bug reports are frequently welcomed by most projects and their devs. Alas, not without some regretable early misteps like this one seems to have been. I hope you’ll forgive them 