I hope I selected the right category for my discussion. Here it is: I want to introduce Discourse at work. I work in scientific research and I feel Discourse can help us organize things better. Before I do, I want to be prepared for inevitable questions about the “use case” for Discourse. Questions such as (but not limited to): Why do we need Discourse? We are using email right now and that keeps people informed. What advantages can we expect from using Discourse? What does it bring that we do not have right now? Doesn’t this introduce redundancy? Like people discussing things in Discourse that are really meant for email and vice versa? If you have arguments for the one over the other then I would be happy to hear them from you. Thanks!

I think the answer is “It depends on how your organisation is using email”. One of the advantages of a platform like Discourse is that it provides what you might call “discretionary pull”, meaning that individual users can choose to pay attention to the full range of topics and categories on Discourse, with as much or as little notification as they see fit. Email is, in comparison, an explicit push technology. I think of Discourse as sort of halfway between Email and Chat, but how useful it will turn out to be will depend on the discipline of your users, and what other central information storage mechanism you use.

Thanks, Andrew. I can think of a possible Pro for Discourse: by cleverly organizing categories into “fields op interest” you get a much better separation and overview of topics. Modern mail clients let you organize topics into folders and/or tag them. But I suspect that a well layed-out list of categories, targeted towards your audience, give a much better and cleaner look and user experience.

I think the key point is the discretionary aspect: With an email system the user has to guess that there might be someone who has information that they might be interested in, then contact that person and ask to be included in the to: list. If it turns out that that information source isn’t what they are interested in, then they need to ask to be removed from the to: list. With Discourse, the end user can see what is going on in the system, and make an informed decision about what categories and topics are available (and to which they have access), and chooses to follow them, or not, and can change that at any time they choose.

Excellent point! This goes especially for scientific research, where students and researchers need to follow several interdisciplinary fields related to their current research. This is a definite Pro for Discourse.

I went through a similar thing, trying to convince my fellow scouting leaders to use Discourse. We were (and still are mostly for now) using e-mail for group-wide communication, leader teams usually use a WhatsApp group or something like that for small talk. My strongest motivations were: Archive-ability (excuse my english) Lots of information simply got lost over the years. Trying to find minutes from meetings held a few years ago? Might as well give up. Lots of resources for (new) contributors are all over the place and nobody has everything, let alone the newest version. Add a search function and life has never been this great. Contact management People come and go in scouting groups, there are always some people missing out on an e-mail being sent. I can imagine this is less of an issue in a company or research group setting, and if you use mailing lists or something similar it’ll be a non-issue. Another pro of Discourse is that new people can find discussions from before their time easily. Flexible private messaging It’s easy to quickly set up a private discussion with certain people or groups, no need to look up addresses or whatnot. Discussion tools Polls, wikis, media integration, uploads and whatnot are simple things in Discourse and a lot harder to implement properly using e-mail. As far as your point 3 goes, do you really need e-mail? In my ideal world we’d use Discourse for everything and only e-mail when communicating to the outside (members, parents etc.) Good luck!

Thanks, steef. This makes an interesting read. I particularly like the point you made in Contact management – new people can find discussions from before their time easily. That is important in scientific research. Once the budget has dried up, people are gone in an instant. Discourse will then prove to be valuable source of information. Thanks again!

I’ll write a more extensive reply to this in a bit, as this is a common question we ought to have a canonical answer for. In the meantime: [תמונה] STiNGER: Doesn’t this introduce redundancy? Like people discussing things in Discourse that are really meant for email and vice versa? Not quite sure what you mean by that. Could you write up a little scenario that exemplifies this problem?

Sure, Erland. In our research facility, people are accustomed to inform each other by mail. We use a couple of mailinglists to sent the same message to multiple recipients. That’s our primary means of communication. People respond to email quickly, and are implicitely expected to do so. It is possible that management objects to Discourse, because it would defer attention from email to Discourse. Also, it introduces the question when to write an email and when to post in Discourse. I am not saying management will object, but I need to be prepared with solid arguments to counter them in case they do. That’s the object of this discussion, to anticipate objections and gather as much arguments as possible. I want to present a “use case” for our facility that leaves one question open: “can we afford NOT to choose Discourse?”

[תמונה] STiNGER: We use a couple of mailinglists to sent the same message to multiple recipients. You can simply have those lists post to Discourse categories and (depending on preferences and such) they’ll get an email. The ability to have access to old archives in a readable format seems pretty compelling. New people can quickly find old reports, announcements, and discussions all in the very same interface that new ones exist. Finding an old discussion in an email archive is nightmarish.

Absolutely, Jay. I have been impressed with Discourse’s search function from day one. [תמונה] pfaffman: You can simply have those lists post to Discourse categories and (depending on preferences and such) they’ll get an email. I am not sure if I understand what you mean. Are you referring to Discourse’s ability to post and reply from email?

Discourse vs. email -- Pros & Cons

Product Support

mcwumbly (Dave McClure) 14 בדצמבר,‏ 2016,‏ 8:28pm 16

I shared some thoughts on this subject here:

נושא		תגובות	צפיות
Using Discourse instead of an email mailing list Site Management explanation	20	20558	15 ביוני,‏ 2023
Discourse and Email Lists (like Google Groups) Community Building	2	4145	21 בפברואר,‏ 2016
Thanks for all of your help with Discourse! Praise	2	2166	17 באוקטובר,‏ 2018
Mailman to Discourse Migration Self-hosting	2	1757	13 במרץ,‏ 2019
Mailing list features Product Support	9	8563	13 ביוני,‏ 2017

Discourse vs. email -- Pros & Cons

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