Super !
Félicitations à l’équipe Discourse
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Ça a l’air bien, très bonnes nouvelles.
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Exactement — mais le problème caché, c’est que les logiciels « gratuits » comme Facebook, Discord, etc., ne sont vraiment pas gratuits. C’est gratuit à installer et la configuration est déjà faite pour vous… mais vous êtes le produit !
Le logiciel open source fonctionne un peu différemment. C’est délicat, car une fois que vous passez au modèle « gratuit », dans le sens des porcs à la ferme, il n’y a pas de retour en arrière.
Nous travaillons certainement à faciliter l’accès à nos programmes YouTube, Patreon et GitHub pour les instances Discourse hébergées gratuitement.
https://blog.discourse.org/2018/12/free-hosting-for-patreon-creators/
https://blog.discourse.org/2016/03/free-discourse-forum-hosting-for-community-friendly-github-projects/
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Apologies in advance for A: my late reply, and B: the length of it (which partly results from A 
).
So when you made made the claim that Discourse was “at the unique intersection of… being the easiest [debatable], most frictionless [likewise], simplest [hrm, depends how you look at it], funnest way of getting things done…” you just meant for you, and maybe some other people? Come now Jeff, you got $10 million in funding, surely what you were saying was that Discourse is - or aims to be - all those things, right? And not just to you, or a few people, but a lot of people… right?
So I’m just saying, it’s a great goal, but I think there is more work to do in all those areas. I appreciate that you find Discourse fun already, and others do too (sometimes even I do! 
), but it could be more fun for more people and, more importantly, easier and simpler for more people. I fully support those goals. Also, I think @danielw hit the nail on the head with his read of what I was getting at, and his perhaps minor but useful example of usability challenges for some people.
Very true! And I do want to say that I completely understand prioritizing paying customers and the fact that Discourse is a profitable business as well as open source is one of the things I like about it, and one of the reasons I actually recommend Discourse. Sure, there are other open source forum platforms, but how much confidence can you have in their longevity if they’re mostly volunteer-run, and donation funded? You are absolutely taking the right approach here, and this recent funding round certainly speaks to that. 
Hah! Such geographic serendipities are rare, but I’ve had my brushes with other luminaries. Your schwag was definitely the best though. 
You know, of course, that I was delighted to be able to talk to you in-person about Discourse, and the gifts have remained useful and appreciated reminders of your proactive interest in connecting with your community (and you’re right, those are really good pens! ).
That said, surely you can also appreciate that I wouldn’t be a very good critic and advocate for what I see as positive change if receipt of gifts changed what I say and how I speak my mind. I am grateful for the time and open discussion, and remain both a passionate fan, and a hopefully useful advocate for growth in new or underserved directions. 
Yes, I can absolutely appreciate this and have direct experience of it myself, with more than 10 years spent inside a small software company. It wasn’t open source, but we ran into the same issues with feature requests, etc. There were way more request than we could ever implement, and many of them didn’t necessarily belong in the same product. Feedback triage is hard. In fact… I’m curious how, specifically, you feel open source might change that dynamic. I do think there is perhaps something in the free aspect, in that it is often argued that people who don’t pay for something don’t value it, and perhaps thus don’t understand how much effort went into its creation, how challenging it is to change/improve it, etc. We actually had a free version of our software too, it might have caused problems for us, come to think of it. 
Yes… unless you’re considering (as you most often should, at least a little) whether there are adjacent markets that you could serve without a total rethink of your product, and would gain you proportionally greater revenue vs. needed changes in your product. If said business was for example in a fast-moving technology industry with a growing number of incumbents and a rapid expansion of related possible opportunity spaces (e.g. paid courses and communities), it would be smart business to be looking real hard at why people are choosing your competitor more than your own tool for these related-but-different projects, and contemplate - as CDCK did when it created Discourse for Teams - whether you should be making changes to serve these new markets.
Yes, absolutely! And I’ve echoed that above too, as I’m replying down the thread in linear fashion.
Indeed, and I think about this a lot. For now the best I think I can do directly is to talk about and advocate for things I think could be beneficial, for myself, and the communities I work with, as well as the communities I see using other tools that I think Discourse could better meet the needs of with just a few tweaks. In the relatively near future I’m also planning to try paying for development of some plugins of interest to me. But I think the really big impact stuff, federation, and the like, is really going to require some embracing from the core team itself. I realize there is some movement toward that already…
Yes, exactly! (and also fully in agreement with everything else you wrote) My advocacy for changes is driven by a love of Discourse and a belief that it is, in most respects, a better platform than many others out there, especially as a foundation for broader functionality (still centering around community and discussion, of course). I want more people to be choosing Discourse, and when I ask for some new feature, or design change, etc., it is with this in mind. It actually pains me at times when I see people choosing other platforms that feel less well architected.
Your experience is definitely good and useful to hear! It also, like Jeff’s, is no doubt subject to selection bias. 
It is more likely than not that anyone posting here on Meta is not just a user of Discourse, but probably running or at least moderating a Discourse instance. So it’s much more likely that anyone here will like it. I like it too, just not quite as much as you and Jeff.
My experiences of the past few days directly contradict this. It is extremely difficult for someone who is savvy in a given technical area to understand, specifically, how one could make a mistake or fail to understand something or how the literal copy/paste commands wouldn’t just do the right thing. I say this as a former IT person for 15 years, who often experienced the same frustrated wonderment of how X user managed to misinterpret something in the docs, or mess up something that seemed incredibly simple to me. But… they do it. And I do too, when I’m working in an area I’m not an expert in.
Across 4 separate environments (Ubuntu native, WSL, Bitnami virtual machine, Docker) I ran into a unique set of problems in trying to setup Discourse from scratch. Every. Dang. Time. I have some logs of what came up, if you or anyone at CDCK is really curious to see, but they’re probably not quite detailed enough to be real problem cases for investigation. I do think the docs could be improved though.
Also, I keep writing a reply as I read down this thread, only to find @danielw has already written a better one. Well done sir!
Yes, I experience this too. Although it’s definitely a mix. And overall people are very nice, just… not quite believing or understanding of the problem sometimes (the problem often being someone doesn’t understand the seemingly simple directions or requirements or whatever).
Another thing I want to mention on that subject is that the really important part of community building is mostly not technical. Community builders are connectors, they are people persons, they are enablers, talkers, creators, and much more. But they are not necessarily tech people. What CDCK aims to promote is “civilized discourse”, and there is nothing inherently technical about that. I, for example, have managed to figure out how to do some cool things with Discourse, but it’s been a slog at times, and some things I’ve simply had to give up on. In contrast, I successfully ran at least 4 separate online forums on multiple other forum platforms previously. The one thing they all had in common? PHP. 
Look, I’m not trying to open that can of worms. But I had to say it. 
Sorry, tech stack is a red herring. This is the point: in an ideal world Discourse would be as easy to spin up an instance of as a Facebook group, or at least as easy as Circle (arguably it is with hosted options, but not quite…). I’m not saying free, like Facebook, just easy. But as it stands Discourse is a technical platform to implement. Even if you get a hosted version, it’s kinda complex. In a good way! In the sense that it’s quite capable. But it’s also filled with options, jargon, and inside knowledge, if you’re not already technically-minded.
I say all this as someone who runs 1 open forum hosted on Communiteq, 1 personal “digital garden” also hosted there in a separate Discourse instance, and then my own test instance on Digital Ocean using their Docker image. Then I just spent the past week trying (and mostly failing) to get an instance setup from scratch in multiple environments (outlined above) for yet another project. I’ve tried all the major ways to setup Discourse except the official hosting (for price reasons). And while I have a technical background in other areas of tech, apparently I’m just ignorant enough to encounter some these pain points. I can only imagine how hard it would be for someone less technically savvy than I.
Just as we now have Discourse for Teams, I wonder if there is a place for a “Discourse for Small Communities” or “Simple Discourse” or something. An easier, less complicated, more visually “friendly” (colorful, rounded, etc.) version. Just thinking out loud, but the specific solution is less important than simply understanding and acknowledging the problem: Discourse might benefit from “grandma mode”.
And with that I echo your final statement:
Great to see this (not all of which I was aware of). Definitely glad to see this, and I may have some people to connect with these options now. 
Thank you as always @codinghorror for your engagement around these topics. We don’t always agree, but I do always appreciate your contributions to any discussion I’m involved in. Thank you as well for lunch. If you ever want to get together and chat about these kinds of things in-person (or just have a drink and not talk about work ), I’m not far away. 
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Euh… merci, mais : Je ne vois pas comment tu en arrives à cette conclusion — peut-être as-tu mal compris ? Je ne gère ni ne modère aucun forum, et je n’aurais absolument aucun intérêt à le faire ! Je me contente de lire et d’écrire beaucoup sur 4 forums (peut-être 15-20h/semaine). Je n’ai donc pas « sélectionné » Discourse, si ce n’est pour écrire un blog dessus — mais cela principalement parce que c’est amusant à utiliser. Je pourrais changer à tout moment si le logiciel des autres devenait un jour amusant et plus facile à utiliser, mais il leur reste un vrai long chemin à parcourir pour les trois autres. 
Donc aucun biais de sélection. Et la raison pour laquelle je suis ici, c’est parce que — encore une fois — Discourse est — amusant, et j’en veux plus. Améliorer mon expérience utilisateur jusqu’aux limites apparentes … et au-delà… pas parce que c’est difficile à utiliser, mais parce que c’est facile et qu’en même temps cela ouvre sur plus.
(Bien sûr, je n’ai pas la moindre idée si l’installation ou la modération avec Discourse est difficile ou facile, ce n’est pas de cela que je parle.)
Je pense avoir déjà donné pas mal d’exemples qui comptent beaucoup pour moi dans mon premier post ci-dessus, mais je pourrais en donner d’autres. Ou faire un test utilisateur naïf pour te « prouver que tu as raison » 
: donne-moi d’autres défis et je les comparerai sur les 4 forums (je ne sais pas quel logiciel utilisent les autres)…
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Hmm, peut-être avez-vous mal compris ce que signifie le « biais de sélection » means ? Je m’excuse d’avoir supposé que vous étiez administrateur de Discourse ; cela me fait réfléchir au fait que j’ai cette hypothèse générale à l’égard des gens ici, et je me demande à quel point elle est fondée. Cela dit, vous êtes ici parce que vous utilisez, appréciez ou êtes autrement « investi » dans Discourse, ce qui est probablement vrai pour la grande majorité des personnes présentes ici aussi. C’est la définition du biais de sélection : lorsque vous demandez si une chose est bonne ou amusante, ou quoi que ce soit d’autre, vous ne pouvez pas simplement interroger les personnes qui consacrent déjà leur temps à l’utiliser, à en parler, à l’administrer ou à l’améliorer. Elles ont fait un choix de consacrer du temps et de l’énergie à cette chose, ce qui implique une préférence en sa faveur.
Autrement dit, allez sur les forums IPB, vBulletin, NodeBB ou autres, et demandez aux utilisateurs s’ils aiment l’outil dont parle leur forum. Vous obtiendrez probablement plus de réponses « oui » que de « non », tout comme ici. Voyez-vous ce que je veux dire ?
Je pense que ce sont souvent les personnes qui ont un besoin ou une utilité pour un outil, mais qui choisissent de ne pas l’utiliser, qui ont les meilleures idées sur la façon dont un produit pourrait être amélioré. Bien sûr, cela doit être soigneusement équilibré avec les besoins des utilisateurs existants. Il faut garder les utilisateurs heureux, c’est certainement le devoir numéro un ! Mais la plupart des entreprises veulent grandir, et pour cela, il faut trouver de nouveaux clients, ce qui implique généralement de comprendre pourquoi les gens ne choisissent pas la vôtre.
Voilà, c’est mon point de vue en tout cas. J’espère ne pas vous caractériser incorrectement, vous ou quiconque dans ce fil de discussion, et je m’excuse encore d’avoir fait certaines hypothèses à votre égard précédemment.
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Merci encore, oshyan. Je connais en fait divers types de biais de sélection. Et je ne suis toujours pas sûr de quel type vous parlez à mon sujet…
Pourquoi suis-je si irrité par le logiciel des trois autres forums auxquels je participe ? Au point de les « détester » dans deux cas. Pourtant, je continue de les utiliser car le contenu est plutôt correct…
Comment pouvez-vous demander aux utilisateurs leur avis sur un logiciel qu’ils n’utilisent pas ? (Comment même les contacter ?)
Pourquoi ne pas demander à quelqu’un comme moi qui utilise un logiciel qu’il déteste ? La plupart des quelques idées que j’ai pour améliorer encore Discourse sont déjà rendues possibles par Discourse lui-même ; c’est juste que mon forum ne peut pas se permettre « tout cela ». Et s’ils me demandaient comment améliorer les trois autres produits, j’ai une seule idée à leur offrir : qu’ils ne copient rien les uns des autres — loin de moi la pensée ! — mais qu’ils essaient de copier Discourse… 
Ah bon, il y a une chose agréable chez deux autres : des possibilités de « like » diversifiées… (soutien, merci, utile ; ou plusieurs emojis). Mais la rapidité des emojis de Discourse, même pendant la rédaction, ainsi que leur agrandissement lorsqu’ils sont sur une ligne séparée, compense largement cela.
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Il vaudrait probablement mieux déplacer cela vers un autre sujet en utilisant la fonctionnalité « répondre en créant un sujet lié ».