目標は、グループとして何かを理解し、その議論を検索して将来的に改善できるようにすることですか? このユースケースにおいては、私の意見ではDiscourseに競争相手はいません。開発者コミュニティがDiscourseに惹かれる理由はここにあります。例としてRust、Gitlab、Ruby on Rails、Dockerを挙げることができます。
Very happy to see this topic has gotten a good amount of discussion! It has moved quickly, but I’d like to respond to some specific points below, even if the conversation has somewhat moved on since.
Thank you, this is an interesting way of putting it. Can you elaborate more on what you feel “engagement” means?
This is an important point and I definitely do consider it. But remember that a good part of the discussion I am talking about here is taking place among community-building professionals, people whose actual job it is to “build communities”, both in a social and technical sense. Surely those people should know what platforms there are, and what each one is best used for? I know it’s easy enough for me to tell when something is Discourse, even in the best white-labeled implementations, and as a community builder myself (more on the tech than social side), I very often check the platform behind any community I come across that seems to have an interesting design, feature set, etc.
So my remaining question in that context, then, would be: is this a matter of not being aware of Discourse (a problem that could be solved), or of not thinking Discourse is a good solution for their customers/use cases? And in the latter case, are they correct? To my mind the latter situation also deserves more consideration and research. Overall I think there is simultaneously a need to raise awareness of Discourse, and also to make people aware of some of the broader use cases and flexibility of it so that they might see it is indeed an option alongside e.g. Mighty Networks or Circle.
Thanks for sharing your perspective on this! You are probably right that “some” associate “community” in this way, but in the spaces I am primarily thinking of, the definition of community is most definitely not so specific as to length or method of interconnection. It is more about overall “amount” of social connection and activity, which can take a variety of forms, both of communications mediums (chat, forum/async, video/audio) and other things (creating/sharing support resources, liking/sharing people’s content, etc.). Discourse can do a good portion of what people often seem to be referring to when they talk about “community”, at least from a technical perspective, but at the same time it seems less in the conversation. So that’s what’s puzzling me.
What makes you conclude “generally because that is what they know…”? Certainly that is true of many people, most notably I would point to anyone using an old-school forum like phpBB. But most of the discussion I am seeing and referring to here (by way of just a single example, but it is representative of many other instances I have personally seen) is coming from people who are experts at, or trying to become experts at, building community. They are very often in fact investigating, testing, and implementing newer solutions than Discourse (Forem, etc), so to my mind it seems less likely that these people are using “only what they know”, and that brings me back to my focus: if these people are actively seeking solutions to their needs, why isn’t Discourse being considered as much as other options? Is it, as I posited in my original topic title, because Discourse is not the same type of platform (in terms of capability/goals) as these others, or that it’s not “positioned” as such (but is technically capable of similar things), or a lack of marketing/outreach, or what?
When you say it’s “unfortunate… they’re wasting time trying to hack things together when they could be using Discourse”, do you not see that this is a problem you can potentially solve? This is what marketing and outreach are for.
This feels like more of the kind of detail and clarity in terms of positioning and intent that I’ve been hoping for, thank you! I am curious how long you would say it has been since Discourse was “no longer in startup mode”, and if this reevaluation is current and ongoing.
Luma is an interesting example, and it was mentioned in the example Twitter thread I started this discussion with. I did feel like its inclusion in that Twitter discussion kind of muddied the waters and made me question “What are these people actually looking for when they say ‘community platform’?” However at the same time I think looking too much at the Luma example might lead one to believe “Well, these people are looking for something that Discourse doesn’t do and that’s why it’s not being mentioned there.” when in fact many of the other more commonly-referenced platforms, like Mighty Networks, Circle, and others, do make “discussion” a prime focus (even if they may handle it differently than Discourse, e.g. more comment-like a-la Facebook and less long-form).
To me more important than the way that a platform represents “discussion” (or whether they do at all) is the question of: what are these potential customers looking for, what do they mean and want when they are looking for a “community platform”? Sometimes I think even they don’t know, they just have heard that “community” is now a “must” for building a company, so they’re looking for something to “make that happen”. I still think Discourse should be in that consideration though.
This is an insightful point and worth further consideration and discussion. For example, if it’s true that “long-form discussion is not the main building block of many community strategies”, does that simply mean that Discourse is focused on long-form and therefore many people trying to create “community” simply will not and should not be considering Discourse, and this is fine? In other words is the priority of Discourse to be long-form discussion, regardless of where the greater market goes? If so, I’d certainly understand that, though I’d still wonder about long-term viability of that strategy.
Adaptation to market needs is important, but it’s also tricky to navigate this, to avoid losing your focus, not veer for every market trend, etc. And also defining what one’s market is is not trivial. I just think it’s valuable to have these discussions happening in public where possible.
More than anything I think my hope is that Discourse can remain a really strong platform for long-form, and help promote that approach (which I personally find to be more, er, “civilized” ), while also adding features, options, etc. that can help bridge the gap into these other styles of “community” that people are favoring in large numbers. I see the in-development Chat plugin as a prime example of this and I’m very excited for it. With these kinds of developments, can Discourse be a bridge and an “ambassador” to get people who are used to Facebook group style to get better at, more comfortable with, and ultimately more interested in at least some long-form discussion? I think most here would agree this is a generally higher form of “engagement” and discussion.
It’s interesting that you put Circle in this category. Have you ever used it? Has any company or community you are a part of used it? The few Circle memberships I’ve tried have actually been extremely obviously not “disposable discussion”, etc. One was a super active, super supportive community entirely focused on self-improvement, productivity, learning, mental health, etc. Brain stuff! It’s worlds away from most of what I see on Instagram, etc. Have a look if you’re curious to see how Circle can be (and in my experience often is) used in that way: Learning Community - Ness Labs
Main point is really that there is little or nothing intrinsic to Circle, out of that list, that makes it “feel good” or “disposable”, while I’d argue some of the others that is very true of. I’ve even seen some really cool discussion on Discord too, but because of its closed platform, lack of SEO, and poor search and archiving, most of that conversation is doomed to obscurity, i.e. “disposable”, even if the content of the discussion itself has higher potential value. One of the nuances here as well is that the platform and the medium doesn’t inherently dictate the content, although it does influence it. People have surprisingly in-depth discussions in Discord and even Instagram, even though neither is particularly good at doing so. And in fact this is one of the biggest reasons I want Discourse to be more popular and widely used, because I see good conversations being “lost” on platforms that are not built for them!
Yes, I agree, and this is exactly why I want Discourse to be more well-known and widely used.
Excellent!
While I understand the intent of changing the title, I don’t think this has much specifically to do with “social media”. It’s more about what conversations Discourse is in and not in, and whether Discourse is “in” the conversations it “should be”/is intended to be in.
Other than that I really appreciate your response and agree with basically everything you said. And I especially appreciate you asking for help understanding why Discourse may not be in some conversations that it should be.
I am just one person, and I do talk about Discourse fairly often: https://twitter.com/search?q=from%3AOGreenius%20discourse&f=live
I have also advocated for and directly implemented it now with multiple startups and an informal productivity group, and I continue to do so whenever I can.
That said, in that particular Twitter thread the reason I didn’t mention Discourse is because my original question in the topic title here was quite genuine: I honestly was not sure if Discourse is - or is meant to be - used for the same kinds of purposes as. e.g. Circle, Mighty Networks, and some of the other recommended platforms being suggested in that thread. I only want to make a recommendation if it can be a strong one that directly meets the person’s needs and intended use. I suppose it might have been productive to ask for clarification from the thread starter, but I was more interested in understanding why it was not already more mentioned (hence the topic here), than trying to take some small part in changing that fact in this particular instance (which, as I mentioned, I already do more generally).
More broadly what makes me hesitate in recommending Discourse sometimes? I know there are reasons for these, and they are unlikely to change, but since you asked, two of the top (intertwined) reasons are: price and complexity of hosting environment (relative to competitors). These are not new considerations, but I’ll elaborate a bit here:
Let’s look at Mighty Networks as an alternative to Discourse’s hosted offering. Mighty is cheaper and has more features out-of-the-box. Also cheaper are IPB and XenForo, for what it’s worth (looking more directly at the forum root/use case). Now of course you cannot self-host Mighty, but you can self-host IPB and many others, so let’s look at that for a moment. Vanilla is more directly comparable to Discourse in that it’s open source. And here’s where you start to see the big challenges as far as self-hosting.
The bare minimum cost for hosting Discourse “in the cloud” is a $10/mo Digital Ocean instance, and that’s not much at all. Probably $20/mo is a more fair baseline. But the complexity of it vs. the many PHP-based options is part of the problem. Many web hosts with Cpanel (of which there are tons) even come with Softaculous or something similar, where I can literally see a list of 10+ PHP forum options that can be installed with a few clicks. Further to that the fact that your $10-20/mo server has to be only for Discourse (unless you have the technical know-how to setup multiple containers, etc.), whereas with PHP-based options I can have my simple Wordpress site on the same server (or even shared hosting) as my community.
Now I get this is “small potatoes”, and these are not scenarios you’d recommend (shared hosting, etc.). The way Discourse works sort of enforces more “best practices”, which is to say not hosting a bunch of stuff in a single container or server, etc. Yet I have started and run numerous successful, active, interesting, and useful communities on such inexpensive, shared hosting over the years, and it’s a powerful, legitimate use case.
That said I understand that if some customer considers e.g. $100/mo to be “a lot of money for a community platform”, then CDCK as a company may not be that concerned about winning their business. But I also think pricing and self-host complexity may be a part of what keeps it out of the general conversations around community platforms, where in many cases it might be more suitable, whether hosted by CDCK or self-hosted. In other words price+complexity might be a barrier to general mindshare, which wouldn’t necessarily impact CDCK’s bottom line directly, but certainly I think indirectly.
I know for my part my journey to being a Discourse advocate began as a user, then only because I was reasonably technical I could start up an inexpensive Digital Ocean instance and (through much trial and error) learn how to host it myself inexpensively, and on that basis I could then recommend it. In other words my use cases for personal needs were a key part of becoming a Discourse advocate and recommending and even implementing it in multiple instances since then. For less technical people that path to “advocate” or “recommender” seems more challenging. Is that a problem CDCK needs to solve? Obviously that’s not for me to say, and I also don’t know that I have a clear answer, but I think it’s worth considering.
And before it’s pointed out, I do want to acknowledge the value of CDCK’s open source support, etc., as well as the existence of Communiteq as a lower-cost option. I am well aware of these things, but potential customers seem less well aware. Ultimately the Discourse model, as a platform and/or as a business may simply be different than e.g. Mighty or Circle, and therefore inherently less likely to be compared for or chosen by customers of those systems, but I do think it is worth being aware of and continuously evaluating one’s market positioning and goals as the industry changes. There has been more said here to address those considerations than I have seen in the past, and I really appreciate that insight into what the Discourse team are thinking and working on re: messaging, market fit, etc, etc.
What is “the social media audience”? What even is “social media”, to you? Twitter and Facebook and Reddit as 3 examples are incredibly different in many respects. Two have a “follow” model, but one is “open follow” (Twitter) and largely “open posting”, the other is more “friend”-oriented (Facebook). Reddit is very “social” but largely anonymous and open, yet much more long-form than Twitter. Are all these the same in your view, falling under “social media”? And if so, what about them makes them spaces where you don’t want Discourse to be popular?
It’s been nearly 10 years since Discourse was founded. I see other clear indication from team members in this thread that indeed there is some shift happening in this direction, but aside from discussion in this topic, I have seen little other mention or evidence of it. I am excited for the possibility though, and I guess I’m just curious what makes you feel that it is “very close to finding its golden audience”, and if so, why now?
Thank you again everyone for engaging in this discussion! I am sorry if my replies have been a bit long-winded, but hey, Discourse makes it easy to have long-form discussion.
フォーラムとしての長期的な投資を考えると、Discourseは依然として私の最優先事項です。私たちは数年前からMinistry of TestingのためにDiscourseをセットアップしています。最近Rosieland のためにもセットアップしました。Foremも良さそうですが、私の好みとは少し違う種類のコンテンツを奨励しているように感じます。