Microblogging (the inverted Ask Me Anything?)

Feature
1

(There is an old related topic at Giving each user a unique discourse powered blog but I’d rather start from scratch.)

A mature Discourse community is likely to have highly dedicated contributors who are an interesting reference to others. If they would have a “microblog” in the form of a Discourse topic to share their ongoing thoughts about community topics, others would probably subscribe to it. However, if they would say “Follow me on {Twitter, Facebook, and so on}”… well, that would be a higher level of engagement that only a portion of the same users would follow. And besides, all those community-related thoughts would end up out of the community’s Discourse search reach. Bad for the community, good for the commercial interests of those external social networks.

Discourse has a powerful system of subcategories, permissions and notifications that could just play with each other with a specific configuration. For instance, having all the microblogs in a category whose topics don’t show in the homepage and are silenced by default. People would subscribe to specific topics just like they follow someone in social media. They could Like and reply, just like they do there as well.

The nested replies UX problem is more complex to solve, but it has been discussed several times before. This Microblog feature feels like the inverted version of Plugin: Ask me anything or Q&A format (threaded replies) / Doing an AMA using Discourse :

Feature AMA Microblog
One-level replies :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Topic owner has special permissions :white_check_mark: :white_check_mark:
Who can reply to first post (level 0) Anyone Topic owner
Who can post inline replies (level 1) Topic owner Anyone

AMA

  • First post by Op: Hello there, ask me anything!
    • Level 0 by Commentator: Hi, why are you so cool?
      • Level 1 by Op: I know, right?
      • Level 1 by Op: Just kidding… :nerd_face:
    • Level 0 by Commentator: Do you wear glasses while coding for Discourse?

Microblog

  • First post by Op: Hi, welcome to my little corner where I share some thoughts.
    • Level 0 by Op: Today I was wondering how come I’m so cool.
      • Level 1 by Commentator: As your ex, I could share some ideas here.
      • Level 1 by Op: Where are the admins when you need them!?
    • Level 0 by Op: In other news, is it me or sometimes Discourse takes too long to load?
5 Likes
2

I’ve started modelling this using tags and now have a few others on our forum doing the same thing.

It’s evolved a bit since I last posted on this topic, but that should give you the basic idea for how it works. I’ll update that post shortly with more specifics.

Update: added a topic about this here: How to enable your community to use Discourse as a (micro) blogging platform

5 Likes
3

Is there any progress on this? I just posted exactly the same request in the marketplace category:
[Paid] Create a diary plugin/theme component - #2 by merefield

1 Like