Hi everyone! My name is Marie-Michèle and I co-founded Le peuplier ; a french community about homesteading and ecoresponsibility, using Discourse
Forum is online since April 2018 and community is growing (more than 600 users). I’m also working on a Food Self-sufficiency Festival for 2020!
But, my partner in this cool forum project left, and I have some difficulties with technical issues (One with SSO in particular at this time) I’m good in communications (in french, lol), but not in code…
Forum is running with my own money and time, so unfortunately I don’t have a big budget to pay for help, but if our environment is something you care about, and you would like to give Le peuplier a chance to survive when occasional technical issue arise and I don’t know what to do, please write me! It would completely change my world… Thank you so much!
Psst : If homesteading is one of your interest, I can definitely help you back with a lot of informations and references, and it would be my pleasure!
This is nice! I joined the site and am happy to answer any questions but likely won’t have time to be your main discourse admin. I like some of the decisions you’ve made as well and would be glad to compare notes.
You’re right there’s a weird SSO issue - maybe a wordpress plugin that is not playing nice. I got a few automated emails related to my account but eventually got in.
My general advice would be to try and solve as many issues as you can through the meta community at large, i.e. in public. The more eyes you have on an issue, the more you’re likely to get the right answer faster.
The way to work with the community in this ‘open’ way is:
Do as much preparatory work on an issue as possible, up to the limit of your own knowledge.
Find the right category and topic to post in. This means doing a bit of research on other topics that may cover your issue.
Asking specific questions or for help with specific issues in as clear and structured fashion as possible.
Essentially, try to do as much ‘background’ work as possible to make it easier for folks to help you. The thing to avoid is general pleas for help or long, unstructured descriptions.
In either case (not enough detail, or too much), it requires folks helping you to do a fair amount of “project management” work before they can advise on the nuts and bolts of your issue. Which means some folks who might know the answer won’t respond.
You are right, and it makes me smile because it’s the exact same thing I say to peuplier members
As long as my partner did the " background technical job", I never interacted here, or even really dig into Discourse (great) possibilities.
That’s a wonderful world I just begin to discover!
@tobiaseigen thank you for your kind words! It would be a pleasure to talk with you about those decisions, feel free to ask me
For my next issue (cause, thanks to web, I know an another one will pop some day or another haha) I will present it as clear and specific as I can, in the right category. Is it okay if I tag generous people here who offered to help, in those future questions?
The general etiquette for @mentioning folks is to do it if you know they have specific knowledge or responsibility for an issue.
Even then it is sometimes best to not mention a specific person, partly because it can sometimes come across as a bit pushy (i.e. an expectation / entitlement that the person will help you), but also because there will likely be others who see the post and know the answer, i.e. the “many eyes make problems small” principle.
The way to view this is that your relationship is with “the community”, rather than specific people who are helping you out. You will tend to get helped by certain people, but @mentioning the same people all the time is not always the best way to facilitate that relationship. It’s a case by case judgement.
Feel free to @mention me every now and then, particularly on questions about plugins and other Discourse customisations.
It would completely change my world… Thank you so much!