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

I find myself in this space too. Teams can do a pretty reasonable job as a ‘forum’ in a smaller environment (say 100 users or less), but really struggles when things get big - or if other MS tenants are involved.

Well, there is DiscourseConnect for exactly that.

And Microsoft links work perfectly well from Discourse (once you train people to get and post them).

Meetings

Meetings and emails are (like them or hate them) a central facet of corporate life. Discourse can do some elements of them brilliantly, but there are some glaring holes when attempting to apply it to internal corporate environments - especially around meetings.

Personally, I believe that adding a few features to Discourse Calendar (and Event) - #458 by joo would address this and supercharge Discourse for this use-case:

  1. Automatically insert events in appropriate users (email) calendars
  2. Intelligently manage email RSVPs
  3. Allow easy integration with a videoconferencing service
  4. Improved event creation UI
7 Likes

Noting for the record that Discourse-the-company is very happy to have people use the open source variant :slight_smile:

Apart from the philosophical stance that open source is good for the world. In a practical, business sense, having you use Discourse strengthens the ecosystem. It provides social proof. That in turn will almost inevitably lead to paid business for the company.

14 Likes

Curious, if you had a :magic_wand: magic wand, what is one such fun feature you would like in Discourse? (Bonus points if you have screenshots)

12 Likes

well if you are really interested, I have already posted in a few others places about some of these

  • the ability to enable blank posts Allow for empty posts and empty topic body so that people dont always need to “have something to say”, they can just post freely as much or as little as they want
  • multiple emoji reactions on posts Support multiple-reactions per post (Retort style) ; users really enjoy sticking wacky emojis on posts, and they also seem to enjoy working together to create multi-emoji pictograms to create custom reactions to posts :poop: :hole:
  • an idea from other “old-school” forums; allowing “mod hacks”, where a forum admin or moderator is able to use CSS, HTML, and JS embedded in a single topic to change that topic for all users to do things like embed music, embed a video in the background, or change the background, enable crazy shifting text effects, etc. You could basically turn that single topic into a mini party room
  • quick posting; you should be able to press a single key on your keyboard, such as “`”, to immediately bring up the Post box, with it selected and the text cursor inside ready to type, and then be able to hit Tab once or twice to select the Reply button and then Enter to post your message.

some ideas from other platforms like Discord;

  • custom stickers and emojis ; stickers especially are great because you can turn your community’s favorite memes into quick-postable items that can be shared easily, users dont have to contstantly re-upload their favorite reaction pics constantly
  • ability to live stream audio and video from your desktop or phone, similar to Discord’s “voice channels” ; combine this with a Calendar so your users can all have movie night together, stream games together, etc…

obviously, some of these are more work than others. In general, I really like Discourse, but too many times Discourse feels like it is “anti-fun”. If we want forums to persist, the act of simply posting has to be enjoyable and liberating.

5 Likes

I could be wrong, but I believe this one is already a thing, albeit under a different keybind.

5 Likes

If you use j and k keys to navigate posts, you can use r to reply to the currently selected post, or shift + r to reply to the topic (you can also use that last one without having a post selected)

8 Likes

I would like to express my humble point of view as an early fan (since 2013) and evangelist of Discourse (and admin of two communities)

Sorry if I am late to the party, from my perspective, Discourse is a tool full of features and it’s so good for:

  • support community
  • product community
  • open source community
  • tech communities

And it gives its best when:

  • you need advanced moderator tools
  • you have to manage very loooong discussions
  • you want to keep an eye on privacy of your users
  • you need to strongly customize your installation theme/plugins/css/SSO

What could scare people?

  • You have to install/manage it by yourself
  • Text/Markdown editor?
  • If you want to start slowly Discourse hosting is not so cheap (I understand why and I get it)
  • not many many SaaS cheap providers

What I understand from community people It’s not perceived as a simple tool with which you can start a small community; you need to have already a budget/knowledge and maybe time to customize it as well. It almost feels like you’re choosing a cannon when all you need for now is a water gun. This is something you don’t get with alternatives like Circle, Slack, or Facebook, where you can get started with just a few easy steps.

9 Likes

Sorry for butting in. The one cool feature missing here was removed many years ago, iirc, in favour of adding the topic scroll feature. The feature I’m thinking of was the post/thread continuation feature which allowed folks to create a new thread following on from an existing thread. The system would then show in the top right margin that the thread was a continuation of ‘X’, or conversely, iirc, state that this thread continued, for example, here, here and here. I posted about this many years ago, perhaps I should try and find it and relink to the original screen grabs.

I loved that feature because I felt it promoted interest steams allowing the user to follow trains of thought, often created by many different authors, without needing to view a similar posts feature at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, I understand why the team made the change, but still believe after all these years that in doing so it removed one of Discourse’s most valuable features.

4 Likes

You can still Reply As Linked Topic from the Composer and it will create a New Topic with a link to the original in the OP.

8 Likes

It’s very subtle that you can click on that arrow and make things happen.

I think it would be cool if you could long click or right click the reply button to pull down that menu.

9 Likes

Why not just make r reply to the topic when a post isn’t selected? I’m not sure that many users utilise the j/k thing.

5 Likes

I have just learned the newest-to-me, coolest-to-me feature of Discourse; I used r to Reply for the first time to say I LIKE this feature!

8 Likes

I was just thinking about this. Having to do Shift + R is very un-ergonmic and honestly hurts my hands (I type all day)

the version I mentioned, using the ` key, is a lot more ergonomic I think, and its traditionally been used as a shortcut key to bring up the console in other applications so it fits well too, especially since ` is a key you are unlikely to use for other purposes in a web browser I think

3 Likes

Unless if you need to use unusual characters on a Windows machine a bit.

My experience in New Zealand is that I use a regular US keyboard, but need macrons for Māori words sometimes. On Windows, these are accessed by pressing ` and then the letter.

3 Likes

This conjures visions of MySpace and old-timey forums loaded with sig lines, animated gifs, emojis, and animated gif emojis.

Discord induces migraines; Discourse is calm and straightforward. I like how whenever I jump into any Discourse forum, it’s a familiar and consistent environment.

6 Likes

Exactly! - 100% agree.

6 Likes