Discourse anuncia inversión de Serie A de $20 millones de Pace Capital y First Round Capital | Blog

[UnicornX]

¡Genial!
Felicidades al equipo de Discourse

[Muhammed_Bawady (Muhammed Fawzy Ali Bawady)]

Suena bien, muy buenas noticias.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Correcto, pero el problema oculto es que el software “gratuito” como Facebook, Discord, etc., no es realmente gratuito… es gratuito para configurar y la instalación ya está hecha para ti… ¡pero tú eres el producto!

El código abierto funciona de manera un poco diferente. Es complicado porque una vez que pasas a lo “gratuito”, en el sentido de los cerdos en el corral, no hay vuelta atrás.

Definitivamente estamos trabajando para facilitar el acceso a nuestros programas de YouTube, Patreon y GitHub para instancias de Discourse con alojamiento gratuito.

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/

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

Apologies in advance for A: my late reply, and B: the length of it (which partly results from A ).

@codinghorror

Well, sure, but this gets into “I really don’t care for country and western music.” That’s fine. Not everybody likes every style of music.

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.

@codinghorror

though we do tend to prioritize feedback from our hosted customers because that is essential to our survival as a business. Just take a look at a screenshot of Discourse from 2013 and compare it with today. So different!

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.

@codinghorror

I’m curious if there are other products you use where you’ve had lunch with a founder, on them, with gifts? I’d say that’s quite an indication of how willing we are to listen.

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.

@angus

When you’re building open source software you get many requests from all quarters, on a regular basis. Some are very thorough and thought through, others are not. In fact, sometimes the level of attention to detail is inversely proportional to the level of insistence from the person requesting the thing. No matter how willing you are to engage with users you don’t have inifinite time or patience.

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.

@angus

In fact, in other contexts, people would find it strange if a business started to adapt its practices based on the feedback of anyone who happened to rock up (and didn’t purchase anything).

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.

@angus

Yes, it’s not the only such open source project in existence, but there are relatively few paired with a successful business model. That model means you can reasonably expect it to be viable for another decade, which is not true of some of the other options out there.

Yes, absolutely! And I’ve echoed that above too, as I’m replying down the thread in linear fashion.

@angus

what we should ask ourselves as part of the community of users, communities and businesses that use it is how we can continue to build and incentivise the non-standard aspects of it which we’ve all benefited from, and will continue to for years to come.

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…

@angus

Yes, lets keep making feature requests, raising PRs and advocating for changes we believe would be beneificial. Let’s do that as diligently as possible, and even more so. Keeping that spirit alive is just as much on us as it is on Discourse.org.

@danielw

It is frustrating to see entrepreneurs in my field praising other, more limited and more expensive community platforms than Discourse! I want Discourse to be more appealing to more people.

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.

@JayCS

Just wanna chime in with @codinghorror and @jord8on in support of Discourse being fun and not just frictionless or simple. I’m a heavy user of 4 forums on the same health topic.

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.

@danb35

You don’t have to guess at any of those commands, you don’t have to adapt them to your environment, etc.–just copy and paste from the docs. It certainly isn’t any more challenging than the “normal” forum setup of “download tarball, extract, create database, configure PHP app to connect to database”. It’s different , but if anything, it’s less challenging–especially since you don’t already need to have a webserver, PHP, and a database all up and running first.

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!

@danielw

My point is, rather, that there seems to be a pervasive mis-judgement around here of how tech savvy most online community builders are. And when someone mentions this – as you say, it’s not just me – there is a tone of incredulousness, even disbelief.

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:

@danielw

I don’t want to keep complaining on a page announcing a great success. Very happy for the team, and I hope the platform goes from strength to strength.

@codinghorror

We are certainly looking at making it easier to get into our YouTube, Patreon, and Github programs for free hosted Discourse instances.

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.

[JayCS]

@oshyan

@JayCS

Solo quiero unirme a @codinghorror y @jord8on para apoyar que Discourse sea divertido, y no solo sin fricción o simple. Soy un usuario intensivo de 4 foros sobre el mismo tema de salud.

¡Tu experiencia es definitivamente buena y útil de escuchar! Al igual que la de Jeff, sin duda está sujeta a sesgo de selección. Es más probable que cualquiera que publique aquí en Meta no sea solo un usuario de Discourse, sino que probablemente esté ejecutando o al menos moderando una instancia de Discourse. Por lo tanto, es mucho más probable que cualquiera aquí lo aprecie. A mí también me gusta, aunque no tanto como a ti y a Jeff.

Eh… gracias, pero: No estoy seguro de cómo llegas a esa conclusión, quizás lo has malinterpretado. No estoy ejecutando ni moderando ningún foro, y ¡no tendría el más mínimo interés en hacerlo! Solo leo y escribo mucho en 4 foros (quizás 15-20 horas por semana). Así que no he “seleccionado” Discourse, excepto para escribir un blog sobre él, pero eso es principalmente porque es divertido de usar. Podría cambiar en cualquier momento si el software de los otros llegara a ser divertido y más fácil de usar, pero eso es un camino muy largo para los otros 3. Así que no hay el menor sesgo de selección. Y la razón por la que estoy aquí es porque, de nuevo, Discourse es divertido, y quiero más de eso. Mejorar mi experiencia de usuario hasta los límites aparentes… y más allá… no porque sea difícil de usar, sino porque es fácil y, al mismo tiempo, apunta a más.
(Por supuesto, no tengo la mínima idea de si implementar o moderar con Discourse es difícil o fácil; eso no es de lo que estoy hablando.)
Creo que he dado bastantes ejemplos que significan mucho para mí en mi primer post anterior, pero podría dar más. O hacer una prueba de usuario ingenua para “demostrarte que tienes razón” : darme más desafíos y los compararé en los 4 foros (no tengo idea de qué software usan los otros)…

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

Hmm, quizás malinterpretaste lo que significa “sesgo de selección” means? Me disculpo por asumir que eras un administrador de Discourse; eso me hace reflexionar sobre si tengo esa suposición general sobre la gente aquí y me pregunto hasta qué punto es cierta. Dicho esto, tú estás aquí porque usas, te gusta o de alguna otra manera estás “involucrado” en Discourse, lo cual probablemente sea cierto para la gran mayoría de las personas aquí también. Esa es la definición de sesgo de selección: al preguntar si algo es bueno o divertido, o lo que sea, no puedes preguntar solo a las personas que ya dedican su tiempo a usarlo, hablar de él, administrarlo o mejorarlo. Han tomado una decisión de dedicar tiempo y energía a esa cosa, lo que implica una preferencia hacia ella.

Dicho de otra forma, ve a los foros de IPB, vBulletin, NodeBB u otros y pregunta si los usuarios allí aman la herramienta de la que trata ese foro. Es probable que obtengas más respuestas afirmativas que negativas, igual que aquí. ¿Ves lo que quiero decir?

Creo que a menudo son las personas que tienen una necesidad o uso para una herramienta pero eligen no usarla quienes suelen tener algunas de las mejores ideas sobre cómo un producto podría mejorarse. Por supuesto, esto debe equilibrarse cuidadosamente con las necesidades de los usuarios existentes. Hay que mantener a los usuarios felices; ¡eso es sin duda el trabajo número uno! Pero la mayoría de las empresas quieren crecer, y para lograrlo hay que encontrar nuevos clientes, lo que generalmente implica entender por qué las personas no eligen la tuya.

Esa es mi perspectiva, al menos. Espero no estar caricaturizándote a ti ni a nadie más en este hilo, y me disculpo nuevamente por haber hecho ciertas suposiciones sobre ti anteriormente.

[JayCS]

Gracias de nuevo, oshyan. De hecho, estoy familiarizado con varios tipos de sesgo de selección. Y aún no estoy seguro de a cuál te refieres en mi caso…

¿Por qué me irrita tanto el software de los otros tres foros en los que estoy? Hasta el punto de “odiar” dos de ellos. Pero sigo usándolos porque el contenido es bastante aceptable…

¿Cómo puedes preguntar a los usuarios sobre un software que no utilizan? (¿Cómo conseguir siquiera contactarlos?)

¿Por qué no preguntar a alguien como yo, que usa un software que odia? La mayoría de las pocas ideas que tengo sobre cómo Discourse podría ser aún mejor para mí son cosas que Discourse ya permite; simplemente mi foro no puede permitirse “todo”. Y si me preguntaran cómo podrían mejorar los otros tres productos, tengo una sola idea para ellos: ¡No deberían copiar nada entre sí (que Dios nos libre de tal pensamiento)! Deberían intentar copiar a Discourse…

Ah, vale, hay algo bueno que tienen los otros dos: posibilidades de “me gusta” diversificadas (apoyo, gracias, útil, o varios emojis). Pero la velocidad de los emojis de Discourse incluso mientras escribes, así como su ampliación cuando están en una línea separada, compensa eso.