Discourse를 소셜 미디어 플랫폼으로 활용하기

[anon73664359]

이 주제에 대해 한동안 고민해 왔는데, 드디어 마음을 먹고 말씀드리기로 했습니다. Discourse가 제대로 된(완전한) 소셜 미디어 플랫폼으로 사용될 만큼 충분히 커스터마이징이 가능한가요?

요즘 스타트업 세계에 발을 들여놓고 있습니다. 온라인에서 사람들을 하나로 묶어주는 최고의 요소들, 특히 기술 애호가와 기술 산업 전반의 사람들을 위해 소셜 네트워크를 결합하는 제 아이디어가 있습니다.

Twitter나 Reddit 같은 다른 소셜 미디어 플랫폼을 관찰하면서, Discourse가 제공하는 것과 같은 편의성이 그들에게는 없다는 사실을 무시할 수 없었습니다. 그들은 매끄럽지 않고, 실시간 토론이나 우수한 검색 기능을 제공하지 않습니다. 무한 스크롤이나 다른 서비스와의 완벽한 통합도 제공하지 않습니다. 또한 액센트 컬러와 라이트/다크 모드 이상의 스타일을 커스터마이징할 수 없습니다. 가장 중요한 것은(개발자 관점에서) 플랫폼을 당신이 원하는 대로 커스터마이징할 수 없다는 점입니다.

반면에 Discourse는 이러한 모든 것을 해냅니다. 외관과 기능 모두 머리부터 발끝까지 커스터마이징할 수 있습니다. 전통적인 포럼의 장점과 소셜 미디어의 장점을 결합합니다. 본질적으로 Discourse는 다른 어떤 것과도 비교할 수 없습니다.

Jeff Atwood의 이 인용문은 그 자체로 말해 줍니다.

나는 Discourse를 사용하는 것이 정말 재미있고, XenForo, vBulletin, SMF, Reddit, Twitter, 이메일 등을 사용하는 것보다 훨씬 덜 재미있습니다. 그리고… 아… 온라인에서 제가 사용하는 것 중 Discourse와 같은 실시간, 주제 기반, 단락 기반의 논리적 토론과 지능형 알림 만족감을 주는 것은 거의 없습니다.

아쉽게도 이 주제는 #community-building:칭찬 을 위한 것이 아니라, 한동안 입에 맴돌았던 질문을 더 이상 참지 못하고 올린 것입니다. 이 생각을 할 때마다 설레고, 이는 제 불건전한 Discourse 집착을 더욱 부채질합니다. 아마도 제가 Discourse를 너무 사랑하는 것 같습니다.

결국 이 주제에서 제가 던지는 질문으로 돌아갑니다. 이론적으로 Discourse를 크게 커스터마이징하고, 특정 기능을 추가/제거하는 등으로 “변형”(더 좋은 표현이 없어서)하면 소셜 미디어 플랫폼이 될 수 있을까요? Fakebook은 훌륭하지만, “소셜 미디어” 경험을 완전히 담아내지 못합니다. 많은 기능과 시각적 변경 사항으로 확장된다면, 저는 정말 좋아하게 될 것 같습니다. 예를 들어, 제가 원하는 환경에는 배지가 잘 어울리지 않을 것 같습니다. Twitter처럼 사용자가 홈페이지에서 바로 게시물을 “좋아요” 하고 게시물을 직접 답글 달 수 있기를 원합니다. 제 생각에 그런 기능은 게임 체인저가 될 것이며, 이미 Discourse로 그것이 가능하다는 것을 알고 있습니다!

어떤 형태의 의견도 크게 환영합니다.

[merefield (Robert)]

There was a lot of discussion on this a while back. See: What would it take to replace Facebook with Discourse?, Community has no boundary: Discourse-as-a-Fabric - ideation & brainstorm and to some extent Facebook Groups - Zuck is coming for us

Personally I think Discourse is designed for small to medium-sized discrete instances, not MASSIVE scale. However many suitable plugins (like our Follow plugin) exist to close the gap.

@anon73664359

Like Twitter, I would want users to be able to “like” posts and reply to posts directly from the homepage

You can do this with our Topic List Previews plugin which amongst other things, adds a Like button to each entry on the Topic List.

[awesomerobot (Kris)]

There’s an argument to be made that forums are already social media, but that’s very much a “is a hot dog a sandwich” situation…

@anon73664359

Like Twitter, I would want users to be able to “like” posts and reply to posts directly from the homepage.

what does this achieve? is it about familiarity with mainstream social media? does it make things easier to use?

[JammyDodger]

@merefield

Personally I think Discourse is designed for small to medium-sized discrete instances, not MASSIVE scale. However many suitable plugins (like our Follow plugin) exist to close the gap.

Throwing in a curveball… How about the large-scale version being some kind of ‘Discourse Directory’, which collated lots of different Discourse forums together. From there you could dip into all manner of subject matter, discussed in a more in depth way than regular social media, and then zoom back out and browse something totally different.

It’d also be useful for people interested in Discourse itself, as there’d be lots of examples to help visualise what’s possible/achievable /missing/etc.

I’m not sure how a central log-on could work? But maybe it would offer one-click sign-up to the forums in the directory. Or maybe you could Like and Quote all the forum content, but not reply or create any topics unless you deliberately sign up to that forum? Perhaps some kind of Latest list for forums within a genre/category? Or Follow across all forum activity?

Absolutely no idea if this is nonsense, but it’s what the question made me think of and I thought I’d share.

[merefield (Robert)]

See the links in my post. Federation is covered.

[aschrijver (Arnold Schrijver)]

@merefield

There was a lot of discussion on this a while back. See: What would it take to replace Facebook with Discourse? , Community has no boundary: Discourse-as-a-Fabric - ideation & brainstorm and to some extent Facebook Groups - Zuck is coming for us

Personally I think Discourse is designed for small to medium-sized discrete instances, not MASSIVE scale.

With that I fully agree. I started the second topic a while ago about Discourse + open-standards based federation protocol. The Fediverse is based on this protocol, where a growing number of application interoperate. Examples are Mastodon (twitter-like), Lemmy (reddit-like), PeerTube (youtube-like), PixelFed (insta-like), and soon Owncast (podcasting). See also this project list.

Newcomers to the Fediverse are often full of the notion that Fediverse can be THE alternative to FB, Insta, etc. And they think of massive scale and rapid growth. But arguably this is not the best approach. The traditional social networks may be good at raking in the big bucks, but it comes at great cost to society.

Where Discourse shines, as do Fediverse apps, is in providing the right place - safe space, a home - for small to medium-sized groups of people who share common interests, discuss and collaborate. I.e. communities that provide a ‘sense of belonging’. Beauty of communities is that gradually their member share a common culture, which bind members closer together. That is not to say that communities aren’t linked to other communities, and their members don’t associate to ‘outsiders’.

PS. Lemmy - recently launched - comes close to being a federated forum (it is a link-sharing platform), and people have asked to develop that use case. Of course it can’t match the intricate functionality of Discourse. If Discourse would be federated it would immedately hold position as THE Fediverse forum software.

[anon73664359]

@merefield

Personally I think Discourse is designed for small to medium-sized discrete instances, not MASSIVE scale.

I know of one Discourse instance that is massive, so maybe not?

Developer Forum | Roblox

@awesomerobot

what does this achieve? is it about familiarity with mainstream social media? does it make things easier to use?

Instead of tapping/clicking into the post, it’s one less tap/click. I do like how Twitter does it, but it isn’t about familiarity to me.

@JammyDodger

Throwing in a curveball… How about the large-scale version being some kind of ‘Discourse Directory’, which collated lots of different Discourse forums together. From there you could dip into all manner of subject matter, discussed in a more in depth way than regular social media, and then zoom back out and browse something totally different.

It’d also be useful for people interested in Discourse itself, as there’d be lots of examples to help visualise what’s possible/achievable /missing/etc.

The closest thing you’ll find is this: BuiltWith Trends

@JammyDodger

Absolutely no idea if this is nonsense, but it’s what the question made me think of and I thought I’d share.

It seems like an awesome idea (and it definitely isn’t nonsense)! Go for it!

[merefield (Robert)]

@anon73664359

I know of one Discourse instance that is massive, so maybe not?

Facebook has Billions of users … I’m sure ‘Roblox’ is popular but …

[anon73664359]

I don’t expect to have “billions of users” at any given time.

[hellekin]

It has 646869 accounts registered, with about 5-6000 weekly users. But if Discourse instances were to federate, of course these figures would grow dramatically. I wish we could integrate some kind of federated simply to facilitate coordination and organization of like-minded communities. SSO + instances is good when you control the instances and they’re part of a whole, but when it’s a loosely tied community like, say, local chapters of an international organization in different cities, then it makes sense to have some common, federated topics or categories, and each user can post to any instance.

And no, Fakebooz is not great.

[merefield (Robert)]

I personally love the idea of Federation as you know

It is not without some significant technical and functional hurdles though which would require a significant investment in time to overcome.

[hellekin]

I proposed an investment up to 200,000 € to accomplish this earlier, but there were no takers. Actually, @erlend_sh made a proposal on the behalf of the Discourse team, which was accepted by the NGI Zero consortium. Then he left the company and the proposal was left dangling for some time until @rishabh took it over, and there was a new enthusiasm. But then the application was dropped entirely.

The offer still stands. If you’re interested in picking this up, I suggest to pursue the discussion on the SocialHub – it can be developed as a plugin. If you need any additional information about the grant, you can contact me there. See also ActivityPub Implementation for Discourse

[merefield (Robert)]

We almost certainly would be interested in doing something. I’ll PM you and include @angus and @erlend_sh (with whom I’m doing a small bit of work at the moment, as it happens).

[RichardC]

How about Nextdoor (which is increasingly stuffed with ads).

What would Discourse need to replace that?

[anon73664359]

Discourse for Teams might be a suitable replacement.

[merefield (Robert)]

You’d need a sophisticated plugin to replicate that fully on a large scale.

The UVP of Nextdoor and equivalent is the way it groups and targets people by location and distance from each other.

Of course you can always build an ad hoc discourse for your immediate neighbours (I’ve done it and it worked because we were in a single, easily identifiable ‘development’) but that won’t scale.

[anon73664359]

I know for a fact that @nexo tried to do something like this at one point, but I believe it went under. I wonder if he possibly has anything to say about this?

[TGP (Brian)]

@RichardC

What would Discourse need to replace [ Nextdoor ]?

Someone in the neighborhood standing up a forum and dropping a one-pager in everyone’s mailbox with the url and an invite.

Discourse’s mission isn’t congruent with the business models driving social media. FB/IG/LI/etc. Those platforms are designed to manipulate users for control and profit. Discourse is designed to benefit end users

As commercial interests continue eroding trust, I suspect we’ll see the current giants struggle with granularity, as we collectively withdraw into tribes.

Are there enterprise deployments out there bemoaning a lack of performance at scale or some lack of extensibility? If not, I think the bigger question is more a function of human need than how to turn this incredible software into another festering cesspool of wanton consumerism.

That said–and I haven’t had a chance to explore the federation stuff yet–I think some kind of limited, intra-install hooks could be interesting. Like, maybe a section on the dashboard that displayed other (participating) communities you could explore by high level industry, size, and/or age. Pull in the logo and tagline, make a sort of mini directory.

I like the idea of being able to show my community members other good communities. I don’t like the idea of Discourse being associated with the forces that essentially ruined the internet over the last 15 years

Excellent Topic, BTW.

[anon73664359]

Facebook’s evil practices can go suck an egg. I’m talking about the good side of social media.

[Jagster (Jakke Flemming)]

@anon73664359

I do like how Twitter does it

Twitter doesn’t want any discussions. It is made, as every ”ordinary” some-solutions for fast broadcasting. It doesn’t try to hide threads, as Faceboog does with mobile users, though. There is no need because in Twitter is not such thing as threads