Shared topics between multiple discourse instances

[tophee (Christoph)]

Continuing the discussion from Facebook Groups - Zuck is coming for us:

@tophee

I’m wondering whether the discourse team has any plans or visions regarding ways how users can combine multiple discourse instances into a single newsfeed?

I take it that this is not going to be a priority any time soon, but I really like this idea of linking different discourse instances. So here is a more specific feature suggestion: multi-forum topics.

Not sure if and how this could be implemented, but the idea would be that users could request a topic to be shared by another discourse forum, i.e. that the topic would be shown in both forums and members of either community can reply to it.

Use case: @HAWK asked the same question on the feverbee forum and here:

What would you like to see on your Discourse 2.0 Admin Dashboard?

I’m working on a redesign of the Admin Dashboard (found at /admin). It currently displays a lot of data but I believe we could do a better job at providing the right kind of data. i.e. the things the community builders need to know at a glance to monitor health & growth and to diagnose problems. What features would be included in your oh-my-god-this-is-the-best-community-dashboard-ever dashboard? What info do you want to get at a glance?

And this topic of mine would probably also be suitable for both these fora:

Semi-public sub-categories?

My forum is currently a public forum with one category (apart from staff and lounge) limited to a specific group. But I have a feeling that in order to encourage more posts from my users, it might be a good idea to give users the possibility to post semi-publicly, i.e. limited to logged in users. My idea is to do this by creating a semi-public sub-category for at least some of the categories. But I’m not entirely sure where this might lead us and whether it’s really a good idea. So before I pro…

[j.jaffeux (Joffrey Jaffeux)]

I’m curious, can you explain what problem it solves? I don’t see where the use case is explained in What would you like to see on your Discourse 2.0 Admin Dashboard?

[tophee (Christoph)]

What I meant was that the two topics I quoted are suitable for discussion on both feverbee and meta. Currently, these discussions have to be separate (apart from cross-referencing) and if I want to respond to someone on the other forum, I have to sign up there too, even though I may not be interested in the forum otherwise. Multi-forum topics would make those kinds of discussions across communities much easier and better.

Also, from the broader perspective of improving discussions on the internet, such topics would be valuable because they build bridges between communities (or should I say “discussion bubbles”?). I could go on about how this is where innovative ideas are created through synergies and cross-fertilization, but I’ll spare you that part so as not to make this idea seem bigger than it is.

Cross-forum topics would be a small part of any discourse forum (except perhaps a few forums that specialize in cross-community discussions) and Many communities would not have any use for them, perhaps even see them as a threat to their communities sense of “owning” certain topics of discussion (and that’s okay), but I believe in those communities that use them, they would often be among the most valuable ones.

[Ham (Roland)]

I’m interested in this. I was about to launch a new one in the same market as my current one but more niche. I was going to use xenforo for that one but if this was possible Id use this instead.

[j.jaffeux (Joffrey Jaffeux)]

For me internet is built on one simple principle: links. One forum should just agree to discuss this subject on another discourse instance -> “Closed topic: follow discussion at http://xxx” If they can’t agree on this I don’t see them agree on any of the things I will explain later.

This proposal is raising tons of questions which won’t have any easy answer. What if different communities have different moderation rules (who decides if this post should be deleted?) ? what if one user is banned on one forum and not the other? What if both forums don’t update at the same time, it could be a nightmare for us to handle those cases… And I’m not talking about all the technical questions it raises as they could ultimately probably be solved but with much complexity.

I can see some value in the proposal, but as I see it, simply relying on internet principles and keeping it simple is a much better approach.

[tophee (Christoph)]

@Ham

I was going to use xenforo

Are you implying that Xenforo has this feature?

As an aside: if your current forum is on discourse, why would you consider Xenforo? (Maybe something for #comparison)

[Ham (Roland)]

No it doesn’t have this feature. But it has a lot of other features I like for my type of community. I’ve used vbulletin and xenforo before.

This isn’t as easy as xenforo or vb and doesn’t have some of the same security features I liked over there. For example I don’t want to read or know what my members are saying in PMs. And I when I delete a post or pm I want it completely deleted. Not just archived and non viewable.

The rss posting can be made from anywhere with full posts instead of an excerpt and link. I can message all the members anytime I like easier without needing a seperate service like mailchimp.

While the mobile site here is nice I notice a lack in my members activity without having push notifications. on xenforo a dev is selling a native app now for purchase and there’s always the options of tapatalk as well.

[codinghorror (Jeff Atwood)]

Push notifications are available on our hosting, this requires custom setup with Apple and Google to work.

[Muiran (Muíran Shíoraí)]

My long-term goal is using Diaspora* to create a Federated Discourse Plugin which would by virtue of its mission as a social media server bring several options for sharing.

Features
Hashtags give you the freedom to label and follow your interests with ease. You can catch people’s attention by @mentioning them. Reshare posts you love so others can enjoy and comment on them too. And show your love for other people’s work by ing it.

Aspects
Diaspora* pioneered the concept of aspects, which means you can organize your contacts according to their role in your life. This means you can share something just with family members or work colleagues, knowing that no one you don’t want to will be able to see what you post.

Social Media Integration
Use diaspora* as your home base to post to your profiles on other major social services. This way your friends will still be able to keep in touch with what you’re up to, even if they’re not yet on Diaspora*. Diaspora* currently supports cross-posting to your Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr accounts, with more to come.

Diaspora is based on three key values:
Decentralization
Instead of everyone’s data being held on huge central servers owned by a large organization, Diaspora* exists on independently run servers (“pods”) all over the world. You choose which pod to register with, and you can then connect seamlessly with the Diaspora* community worldwide.

Freedom
You can be whoever you want to be in Diaspora*. Unlike some networks, you don’t have to use your real identity. You can interact with people in whatever way you choose. The only limit is your imagination. Diaspora* is also Free Software, giving you liberty over how you use it.

Privacy
In Diaspora* you own your data. You don’t sign over rights to a corporation or other interest who could use it. In addition, you choose who sees what you share, using Aspects. With Diaspora*, your friends, your habits, and your content is your business … not ours!

https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/
#ruby, #rails, #social-network, #federated, #distributed, #decentralized

[tophee (Christoph)]

Here is a related topic:

Is there a way to quote something that was said on a different Discourse instance?

Is there a way to quote something that was said on a different Discourse instance? I’m guessing no, but thought I’d ask. I know I can manually quote it, but I’d like Discourse to add the link arrows and have the expand functionality that it present in non manual quotes. I’ve tried searching but there’s a lot of noise when you search for anything involving quotes.

[ChrisBeach (Chris)]

This would be a very helpful feature for me too. I run local forums for different postcode zones in London and I want to expand. Some topics will interest people in multiple postcode zones, and its a lot of work to cross-post to all forums.

There are several different potential solutions to this problem and I won’t prescribe one - but I’ll keenly watch this topic.

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

死帖复活！我没找到任何关于此主题的新帖子，这可能说明大家对此兴趣不大，所以我才选择在这个较旧的讨论中发帖。但我也认为，这或许是一种人们平时不太会想到或想象到的功能，可一旦实现，可能会更受大家欢迎。

我之所以在此发声，是因为这个主题在我参与的各个讨论圈中最近多次被提及。如今，人们对协作知识构建、讨论和社区的兴趣正在复兴，同时越来越希望远离 Facebook。Facebook 之所以受欢迎，部分原因在于它是一个“一站式”平台：它将围绕各种主题的特定兴趣群体聚集在一起，每个群体拥有自己的私密空间，同时又能整合在一个连续的帖子信息流中展示，并方便互动，甚至可以通过“标签”以粗略的方式将它们相互关联。

我在知识和工作/任务/项目管理工具及其相关社区领域非常活跃，经常接触到许多 Discourse 实例。其中许多是特定于软件的，但大多数通常也设有更开放的区域，用于讨论更广泛的知识管理话题。例如，Obsidian 的知识管理板块就是一个很好的例子：

Knowledge management

在那里，与众多其他 Discourse 实例中的某些主题存在大量重叠，例如关于 Zettelkasten（卡片盒笔记法）的讨论。因此，这确实是一个非常适合通过跨 Discourse 主题链接来获益的典型案例。如果有人感兴趣，我可以找出几个示例线程，更具体地说明我的意思。

我意识到在 Discourse 中实现此类功能存在巨大的技术挑战。但与其讨论为什么它“不能”实现，我更希望能探讨在今天，只需付出适度的工作量，它“能够”实现哪些功能。我认为，这里已经提出的许多问题和顾虑，似乎都是针对某种非常具体的实现方式（例如关于内容审核的担忧），而在我看来，在我们有机会讨论并共同理解它究竟“如何可能实现”之前，这些担忧还为时过早。

许多理论上的顾虑似乎很容易解决，甚至可能根本不是问题，这取决于该系统实际如何运作以及如何配置。例如，每个社区可以像往常一样自行审核其帖子，只需互相显示链接，并在某个位置提示其他社区的线程中是否有新帖子（例如，在主题底部提供一个可展开的页脚，显示远程链接的 Discourse 实例中的最新回复）。如果发往其他社区的帖子违反了本社区的规则，可以切断该链接；或者，如果问题不那么严重，可以屏蔽新“远程”帖子的提示，但保留链接。简而言之，让我们思考我们能做什么，而不是为什么我们不能做。

[rjdrost (Robert Drost)]

感谢 @oshyan 重新激活此帖！我也想了解 Discourse 社区或团队是否对允许论坛决定他们想分享的主题有进一步的思考。

我阅读并理解了 @j.jaffeux 在技术和管理员/审核方面提出的问题。所以我明白这并不是一个适合在 Discourse 平台中过于频繁使用或作为核心功能的功能。不过，我所处的领域，关于使用互联网原则和一次只将对话的唯一提示点指向一个论坛的建议并不太适用。

因此，我想知道是否有一种低技术解决方案可以供两个论坛应用，即每个管理员创建一个账户，用于转发对另一个论坛的回复，并设置一个机器人来转发并回复（即包含用户名 + 来自另一个论坛的原始帖子 markdown）在链接的话题/帖子中。是的，时间戳不会完美，因为这取决于服务器和机器人的延迟和策略，但最终会包含所有回复。

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

@rjdrost

因此，我想知道是否有一个低技术解决方案可以应用于两个论坛，每个管理员创建一个账户将回复转发到另一个论坛，并设置一个机器人来转发并回复一个引用的（即带有用户名+来自另一个论坛的原始帖子markdown）回复到链接的主题/帖子中。是的，时间戳不会是完美的，因为这取决于服务器和机器人的延迟和策略，但最终会包含所有回复。

这是一个相当有趣的想法。我想象可以使用API/插件来实现相当不错的功能。但即使没有这些，您是否可以设置两个启用了邮件功能的论坛，让它们互相发送邮件，并允许这些特定用户发帖？有趣的想法。我可能不会去尝试，但我很想看到有人尝试。