Why isn't Discourse more frequently recommended as a "community platform"?

[oshyan (Oshyan Greene)]

So nice to see you here @rosiesherry !

@rosiesherry

I feel the lack of mention of Discourse is the audience of that thread. They are people who haven’t necessarily implemented any kind of forum and don’t really have much experience with community.

I tend to agree, but at the same time I don’t think the “low-key” presence of Discourse is confined to just those folks. That thread was sort of the triggering moment for me to start this topic, but it’s a feeling that has been growing for about as long as I’ve known of Discourse, and certainly as long as I’ve been personally implementing it.

On the one hand there are some big and successful installations in particular contexts like software support forums (Figma, Airtable, Coda, etc.). On the other hand its use in a broader “Community” context is where I see a lot less consideration of it, and my original question here was whether that is actually appropriate (i.e. Discourse is not generally the right tool for these people wanting “community platforms” to build with), or whether it was more of a missed opportunity. I.e. Is there notable work to be done in clarifying Discourse’s capabilities and potential in that area? Obviously it’s not the right tool for all those needs, but I think for some, and with the coming integration of chat it will cover even more requirements.

@rosiesherry

Circle does seem to be the default for smaller communities, to me that’s down to the ease of setting up a community as a business and for hosting events. The pay walling of it is made much easier, for example.

Agreed, this is what I see too. And I think the factors you mention are notable, particularly how easy it is to paywall. This is the kind of thing I wonder if Discourse could have more (clear) functionality for. Particularly in its officially hosted instances.

@rosiesherry

When I think of long term investment as a forum, Discourse is still my number 1 choice.

This is definitely good! (and I agree) But what makes someone think “forum”, specifically? I have my thoughts on this, of course. But I’m curious how you think of it. And more broadly, is it appropriate for Discourse to be part of conversations like the one I referenced (and many others like it where it seems, to me, to be underrepresented)? “Community” is a big buzzword and thus a goal for many companies now, so people are seeking tools. Should Discourse be more widely recommended than it is? That, again, is my principle consideration in starting this discussion.

@rosiesherry

Forem seems nice too, but I feel it encourages a different type of kind of content, which is not quite my thing.

Oh, this is an interesting comment! I’m curious how you might define that different kind of content. As a community builder, if you were working with a company or organization that wanted to “build a community”, in what circumstance or with what set of needs/goals might you recommend Forum vs. Discourse?

@rosiesherry

When setting up my new Rosieland Discourse I realised it had some integrations, such as Patreon, that could definitely appeal to the more indie/creator/startup type crowd.

Yes, I think this could be more well-promoted (and perhaps further fleshed-out in functionality?).

@justin

now as the marketing person around here, I’m doing my best to help people learn that we can help with those problems. I love the fact that Discourse isn’t a centralized platform (it’s one of the reasons I work here), and because of that creators can own their community area and not be tied into the shifting sands of mass-market or proprietary SaaS software (though there are solid reasons to use them depending on use case).

Most definitely! And I’m glad you are approaching your role with all that in mind, I’m excited for the future in this regard.

@merefield

If I were to facilitate chat, I can imagine some valuable opinions and subjects being broached on chat, discussed, then lost. It’s not like someone’s going to decide: “oh what I just said was really interesting, i’m going to go on the forum and open a Topic about that” or “Oh what Dave said was really cool, I’m going to go to the forum and start a Topic on that”. Because they already talked about it and have better things to do than to laboriously reproduce and translate their chat conversations into other mediums.

@rosiesherry

However, as a community builder you can lead by example and just start the conversations on the forum yourself, perhaps tag people in. Yes, it takes extra work, but in time other people might do the same.

These are definitely big concerns that to me speak very directly to the problems with the current state of things (e.g. separate Discourse forum and Discord chat, etc.). However I’m excited that the pre-alpha chat plugin seems designed to at least help address some of this, to the degree that a technical solution can solve the problem (short of AI trying to figure out what is good content and auto-move it to a topic ). I’m not sure either of you have experimented yet with the chat plugin, but essentially Staff users (or anyone with appropriate permissions) can select one or more messages from a Chat and copy them into a new or existing topic It’s very quick and easy, actually. I believe with an appropriate permissions config the author themselves could do it as well, at least for their own message(s).

Now this is the technical side of the solution. By itself it’s not going to get people to move their content into a more archived location. But at least making it significantly easier should, I hope, encourage the more dedicated participants to highlight some of their content in that way. I actually think some incentive to do so can come from having the ability to sort of “promote” things they say. They may not set out to post a notable chat message, but at least in some of the communities I am part of (e.g. Obsidian), you will often see these really epic single messages (or set of messages from the same user), that very well could justify being a Topic. So I’m hopeful people might actually use that capability if it’s given to them.

Even if that’s not the case, though, there is good potential for a well-moderated forum + chat setup to have staff that can do this. If a community decides to enable/allow chat, presumably it is with an understanding that there will be some level of moderation (to maintain whatever community standards are already maintained in the forum). This could increase the burden on staff, to be sure, it remains to be seen, and so a rebalancing of staff resources may be necessary in some or many cases. But if that is done effectively, moderators should be there to see and “promote” good content into the appropriate places a good amount of the time. And with Discourse + chat they will have good tools to do so!

Whether or not all that happens, at least having the integration and tools available to very easily and quickly copy content from chats to more permanent content is a big step forward. It remains to be seen whether it will be enough to start some notable number of communities/orgs adopting Discourse as a single platform for chat + forum. But I am hopeful.