In moving a community from a private group on Facebook to Discourse, I’m wondering if there is an opportunity to open up parts of it and make them public. With the move, the community is going to gain structure (see Structuring an active support community migrating from Facebook). The community that “inspired” the one on Facebook is partially public, and I am a big believer in “keep it public unless there is a good reason to make it private”. Public content is more findable, more visible, can help more people, and it also can lower the barrier to joining if you get to actually see what you are joining.
What is making me hesitate is the migration context (see Migrating from Facebook: specific challenges, and some thoughts) – if I were starting from scratch I would certainly be thinking differently, but there, the hope is to manage to “win over” a large chunk of the existing community, and I fear that being “in the open on the internets” will have a chilling effect regarding participation for my community.
I’m toying with leaving certain parts public, but not all. Maybe the welcome area? the “supply closet” space where people can give/sell material they don’t need anymore? how about questions about food, is that really an issue if it’s public? But then, I’m thinking that a community of not very technologically sophisticated users might have a hard time with “oh, here’s it’s public, but there it’s private”.
I guess I should go “all private” for simplicity’s sake, but it hurts my “open web” heart a bit. Perhaps I also need to accept that 2026 is not 2006 anymore, and the internet has changed a lot.
Does anybody else have thoughts to share regarding how to deal with private/public in medical/paramedical (even though here it’s “animal medical”) support communities?
And when migrating, how much should one try to preserve the current community culture, versus change/influence it with the move?
New members will have to find the community – that is what happens now on facebook. Their cat gets a diabetes diagnosis, the sky falls on their head and they search for “cat diabetes” on Facebook and find our group (it’s the “strongest” one on the platform). Sometimes, rarely, they google, and find the facebook group through the website. There are also cases where they post in another cat-related facebook group and somebody points them to us. Sometimes their veterinarian sends them.
Whatever choices we make on the Discourse side, the “acquisition” part of the ecosystem is going to be altered. I intend to find a way to keep the facebook group alive (low-maintenance) to funnel facebook users to the community on Discourse, but I’m also hoping that with a better web presence people will find us that way too. Our documentation will be moved from Google Docs to public pages on Discourse, so that should be indexed (I’m assuming?) and I’ve also been thinking about revamping the website on the TLD for better visibility.
Members often discuss private/personal issues: lack of support from loved ones and even spouses, disagreements/dissatisfaction with their veterinarian (we pay close attention to keeping it civil), information on their work schedules and finances, etc. I don’t see them talking about that in public the way they do now in private, and they are necessary issues to cover in our support group.
However, there are other aspects which would be viable in public. Also, if you have a public community, there might be more of a trend towards nicknames rather than real names, as is the case on Facebook.
Don’t you think there might be a “chilling effect” for non-technical users to have some of what they would have previously discussed in private now be in public? That’s what I’m concerned about (in addition to figuring out what remains private and what we make public). I’m worried it will add another layer of confusion/complexity for them… maybe worrying too much? (possible, when I see some of the public groups on Facebook )
You’ve got valid concerns - I’ve grappled with this ever since my Discourse journey began 7 years ago.
I remember hearing the advice “chose either open or closed, not both!” early on, which I have largely ignored. However, it is useful advice!
The biggest issue is in fact that users seem to really struggle with the fact that a site can be both open and closed at the same time. Discourse is primarily designed as an open discussion space, and the private spaces are quite discreet really. It also works quite nicely as a fully private service too. But users get confused when this boundary is traversed.
Now, the fundamental problem is that there are very strong practical reasons for wanting both on the same site - a single, easily maintainable, user list and a single site to maintain are the primary ones. And somethings are great in public, and others need levels of discretion. Community will always be thus!
Discoverability (which seems very important to you) is indeed vital. I have had many users over the years who simply can’t find our site (despite using it a lot). A google search is often their route back. An open site makes this easy.
To overcome / work around this situation I am currently doing this:
Having the private spaces being primarily Messages and Group Messages
I see the idea but that would work for my community, because we definitely want people posting topics in categories and not using private/group messages. But it’s nice because it’s “understandable”.
In my case, I was toying with the idea of having the welcome/general questions area public, and maybe all the rest private (why not using one or the other solution @Canapin points to above, to help some degree of visibility).
For example, I’m not certain that having the grief support part of the community public would be a good idea – people will want to be able to express themselves “safely”.
Maybe that is the key, actually. Our community on Facebook is very much perceived as a “safe space” by our members, where they can talk about stuff without fear of being judged, and I think the fact it is private plays a big role in that. I’m going to go and look at my structure again with this “safe space” criteria, that might do it.
And that would also be an “easy” way to communicate the nuance between public and private to our members: some of the categories are “safe spaces” in the sense that they are protected, others are not (or less so).
