Much of the features are listed on their site <https://www.discourse.org/features>, but below are some that feel like an improvement to current platforms: 1. Topic categorization, which allows filtering of posts based on things such as *frameworks*, *general discussion*, *code questions*. From a user's perspective they aren't posting into a separate channel, just attaching headers to their topic. 2. Social-based login - users don't have to sign up to the application and can easily just use their own gmail, GitHub, or other social accounts. 3. Modern UI. I feel this is a given but there is something to be said when it comes to first impressions of a platform. Being told that IRC or lispforum <http://lispforum.com/> is where people communicate becomes a hard pass for those that are familiar with Modern Web UIs. With the revamp of https://common-lisp.net/ and creation of https://lisp-lang.org/, it's at least become apparent that to help grow the Common Lisp community there is some change that needs to be made on that front. 4. Open Source - and not just that but an ability to gain these items and more by just talking to the Discourse team and seeing if they would provide a hosted solution for Common Lisp. There are more details on this free hosting here <https://free.discourse.group/>. We may be able to reserve *https://common-lisp.discourse.group/ <https://common-lisp.discourse.group/>*. Should we need to scale up there are discounts for Open source projects, as well as a means to perform migrations to a self-hosted platform. I assume when you refer to a plan to reach "critical mass", you're referring to how we're going to increase adoption of this forum. We would need to make modifications to the aforementioned https://common-lisp.net/ and https://lisp-lang.org/ community pages to include this discourse forum as the forum for general Common Lisp discussion, and advertise its creation in the lang Google Group/Reddit/IRC. I do have concerns on community splitting, as we'd now have a subreddit, google group (wasn't aware of this one), and now a Discourse forum. Though with this requirement being posted in the contributions needed <https://common-lisp.net/contribute> list I'd initially assumed the pros/cons had been evaluated. Altogether though, if adoption fails, Discourse will shut down the forum after two-three months of no usage. On Sat, Jun 11, 2022 at 5:48 PM Daniel Herring <dherring@tentpost.com> wrote:
Hi Chris,
There have been many community forums over the years. comp.lang.lisp, irc.freenode (now #lisp on libera.chat), lispforum.com (locked after conversations stopped), ...
Two questions: 1. Why Discourse? 2. How will you achieve "critical mass"?
Thanks, Daniel
On Sat, 11 Jun 2022, Chris Moore wrote:
Hey folks -
In CL's contribution list one of the open items is for establishing a community forum.
Coming from Elixir, much of the community has fallen under Elixirforum, with Rust, Clojure, and even recently Racket opening their own Discourse forums.
Altogether, I get a lot of use out of it w/ Elixir, and it seems to be a popular solution for establishing a community hub.
They provide free hosted solutions for Open Source projects, which we can infer Racket received based on their URL. I can discuss with the Discourse team what our options are given there is no real Common Lisp open source project. If all else fails I can check out self-hosted solutions as $100/month is pretty hefty.
If no one has already begun work on a community forum, I can take this up. -- CHRISTOPHER MOOREmoore.christopher515@gmail.com
-- CHRISTOPHER MOORE moore.christopher515@gmail.com 501- 842- 5551