Toll!
Herzlichen Glückwunsch an das Discourse-Team
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Klingt gut, sehr gute Nachrichten.
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Richtig – aber das versteckte Problem ist, dass „kostenlose" Software wie Facebook, Discord usw. nicht wirklich kostenlos ist. Die Einrichtung ist kostenlos und die Installation erfolgt bereits für Sie – aber Sie sind das Produkt!
Open Source funktioniert etwas anders. Es ist knifflig, denn sobald man im Sinne der Schweine auf dem Hof „kostenlos" wird, gibt es kein Zurück mehr.
Wir arbeiten definitiv daran, den Einstieg in unsere YouTube-, Patreon- und GitHub-Programme für kostenlos gehostete Discourse-Instanzen zu erleichtern.
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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Ähm … danke, aber: Ich bin mir nicht sicher, wie du zu dieser Schlussfolgerung kommst – vielleicht hast du es missverstanden? Ich betreibe weder ein Forum noch moderiere ich eines, und ich hätte überhaupt kein Interesse daran! Ich lese und schreibe einfach viel in vier Foren (vielleicht 15–20 Stunden pro Woche). Ich habe Discourse also nicht „ausgewählt", außer um einen Blog darüber zu schreiben – aber das hauptsächlich, weil es Spaß macht, es zu nutzen. Das könnte ich jederzeit ändern, falls die Software der anderen jemals Spaß machen und einfacher zu bedienen würde, aber das ist für die anderen drei ein wirklich weiter Weg. 
Also überhaupt keine Verzerrung durch Selbstselektion. Und der Grund, warum ich hier bin, ist – noch einmal – dass Discourse Spaß macht, und ich möchte mehr davon. Meine Benutzererfahrung bis an die scheinbaren Grenzen … und darüber hinaus … zu verbessern, nicht weil es schwer zu bedienen ist, sondern weil es einfach ist und gleichzeitig auf mehr verweist.
(Natürlich habe ich nicht die geringste Ahnung, ob die Implementierung oder Moderation mit Discourse schwer oder einfach ist; darum geht es mir nicht.)
Ich denke, ich habe in meinem ersten Beitrag oben schon ziemlich viele Beispiele gegeben, die mir viel bedeuten, aber ich könnte noch mehr liefern. Oder einen naiven Nutzertest-Vergleich durchführen, um dich „zu Recht zu bringen" 
: Gib mir noch mehr Herausforderungen, und ich werde sie auf den vier Foren vergleichen (ich habe keine Ahnung, welche Software die anderen verwenden)…
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Hmm, vielleicht hast du das, was „Selektionsverzerrung" bedeutet, missverstanden? Ich entschuldige mich dafür, dass ich davon ausgegangen bin, du seist ein Discourse-Admin, und das lässt mich reflektieren, dass ich diese allgemeine Annahme über die Menschen hier habe – und ich frage mich, wie zutreffend sie ist. Das gesagt: Du bist hier, weil du Discourse nutzt, magst oder auf andere Weise „investiert" bist, was wahrscheinlich auch für die überwältigende Mehrheit der Menschen hier gilt. Das ist die Definition von Selektionsverzerrung: Wenn du fragst, ob etwas gut oder spaßig ist oder was auch immer, kannst du nicht einfach die Leute fragen, die bereits ihre Zeit damit verbringen, darüber zu sprechen, es zu verwalten oder zu verbessern. Sie haben eine bewusste Entscheidung getroffen, Zeit und Energie in diese Sache zu investieren, was eine Präferenz dafür impliziert.
Anders ausgedrückt: Geh zu IPB, vBulletin, NodeBB oder anderen Foren und frage die Nutzer dort, ob sie das Tool lieben, um das es in diesen Foren geht. Wahrscheinlich wirst du mehr Ja- als Nein-Antworten erhalten, genau wie hier. Siehst du, was ich meine?
Ich denke, oft sind es diejenigen, die einen Bedarf an einem Tool haben, es aber bewusst nicht nutzen, die die besten Einsichten darüber haben, wie ein Produkt vielleicht verbessert werden könnte. Natürlich muss dies sorgfältig mit den Bedürfnissen bestehender Nutzer abgewogen werden. Man muss die Nutzer glücklich halten – das ist definitiv Aufgabe Nummer eins! Aber die meisten Unternehmen wollen wachsen, und dafür muss man neue Kunden finden, was in der Regel das Verständnis dafür erfordert, warum Leute nicht gerade deine Produkte wählen.
Das ist jedenfalls meine Perspektive. Hoffentlich charakterisiere ich dich oder jemand anderen in diesem Thread nicht falsch, und ich entschuldige mich nochmals dafür, zuvor bestimmte Annahmen über dich getroffen zu haben.
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Nochmals danke, oshyan. Ich bin tatsächlich mit verschiedenen Arten von Selektionsverzerrung vertraut. Und ich bin immer noch nicht sicher, auf welche Art du dich in Bezug auf mich beziehst…
Wie kommt es, dass mich die Software der anderen drei Foren, in denen ich aktiv bin, sehr ärgert? Bis hin zu „Hass" bei zwei davon. Aber ich nutze sie trotzdem weiter, weil der Inhalt in Ordnung ist…
Wie kann man Nutzer nach einer Software fragen, die sie gar nicht nutzen? (Wie bekommt man sie überhaupt erreicht?)
Warum fragt man nicht jemanden wie mich, der Software nutzt, die er hasst? Die meisten der wenigen Ideen, die ich habe, wie Discourse für mich noch besser sein könnte, sind Funktionen, die Discourse bereits ermöglicht – mein Forum kann sich nur nicht „alles davon" leisten. Und wenn sie mich fragen würden, wie die anderen drei Produkte verbessert werden könnten, habe ich eine Erkenntnis für sie: Sie sollten nichts voneinander kopieren – Gott bewahre! – sie sollten versuchen, Discourse zu kopieren… 
Ah, okay, es gibt eine schöne Sache, die die anderen zwei haben: diversifizierte „Gefällt-mir"-Möglichkeiten (Unterstützung, Danke, Nützlich; oder mehrere Emojis). Aber die Geschwindigkeit der Discourse-Emojis, selbst während des Schreibens, sowie ihre Vergrößerung, wenn sie in einer eigenen Zeile stehen, macht das wett.
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Wahrscheinlich ist es am besten, dies in einem anderen Thema zu diskutieren, indem du die Funktion „Als verlinktes Thema antworten" verwendest.