# Changing Lanes: Nudging people to move discussions to more appropriate tools

**URL:** <https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-lanes-nudging-people-to-move-discussions-to-more-appropriate-tools/73515>\
**Category:** Community Building\
**Created:** [6 Noviembre, 2017 14:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-lanes-nudging-people-to-move-discussions-to-more-appropriate-tools/73515 "2017-11-06T14:19:45Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
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**Author:** ![mcwumbly](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/meta/user_avatar/meta.discourse.org/mcwumbly/32/103861_2.png) [@mcwumbly](https://meta.discourse.org/u/mcwumbly)\
**Post date:** [6 Noviembre, 2017 14:19 UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-lanes-nudging-people-to-move-discussions-to-more-appropriate-tools/73515/1 "2017-11-06T14:19:45Z")

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_I have this vague recollection of @codinghorror referring to the idea below as “changing lanes” in a post somewhere, but I can’t find it_

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Continuing the discussion from [HTML/RTF pasting](https://meta.discourse.org/t/html-rtf-pasting/55913/14):

> [@HTML/RTF pasting](https://meta.discourse.org/t/html-rtf-pasting/55913/14):
>
> I don’t mind collaborative authorship on Google Docs. I actually encourage it over sending messages back-and-forth (in whatever medium)…
> 
> So we use Google Docs a lot, but its discussion features are very limited. I encourage discussions about documents in Discourse or email. This works reasonably well.

I completely agree. Google Docs is a great solution for collaborative editing. The discussions in the margins _can_ be more appropriate in the doc as well, particularly if they are serving to help push doc itself in a particular direction (suggestions for re-wording, etc).

That often segues into longer conversations in the margins of the docs. We’ve experimented a _bit_ with nudging people to move those discussions to Discourse when they start to happen, but the line between the two types of discussions can be very blurred, so I think this will be an ongoing challenge until there’s some critical mass of people who are out there with similar notions of good practices that can all help nudge each other and the rest.

We’ve faced similar challenges in nudging people to move different types of conversation to and from [Slack](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-and-slack-or-other-group-chat-apps-like-irc-hipchat-gitter-etc/39630) and [email](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-and-email-lists-like-google-groups/39915) as well, of course.

If you’ve done things in particular that you have found help move conversations from Google docs back into a more appropriate medium for discussion, I’d love to hear about them.

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_[View the full topic](https://meta.discourse.org/t/changing-lanes-nudging-people-to-move-discussions-to-more-appropriate-tools/73515)._
