The thread about Discourse is getting too long (both in user and project lists) and a lot of people's reactions start to repeat.
So I just wanted to summarize so far everything that people have stated so far in a concise manner, and I invite everyone to complete this pros/cons list. (items are in no particular order) pros: ===== - easier moderation (for moderators) - attracts people who are not comfortable with email - easier +1 for polls - easier to split threads - search function returns relevant results - ability to close threads - auto-summarize feature - supposed to attract younger audience cons: ===== usability: ---------- - does not work offline - does not work without graphical environment - does not really work outside of the web browser - does not work work without javascript - Not 100% GPL - some javascript scripts loaded into users browser are not free - moderation abilities exclusively tied to web interface - makes it harder to use for people with limited abilities - makes it harder to use on weak or non-mainstream hardware that can't run modern web-browser - email integration is second-class, including poor support for quoting - requires login - hard to enter long texts due to imperfect web interface - achievements/badges/other gamification of the process - increased context switching (instead of all mail from many projects in one inbox need to visit multiple different websites and your email mailbox anyway) - trust levels are revoked if you don't use web interface often enough to maintain current trust level - learning curve exists and so it forces existing users to learn new tool privacy: -------- - tracks user activity (including time spent on each page/topic) - currently no way to request removal of collected user's data - "trust levels" are earned by spending time on the website and increasing post counts allow gaining moderation capabilities - distributed moderation based on trust levels (amplified by points below) - moderation possibilities allow editing messages of others - 1-to-1 messages are not really private (with email it is direct mta-to-mta vs discourse still is a middleman) - moderation audit log is supposed to be present by I have not found it. - "ease of moderation" is not received positively by end users why yet another tool/service? ----------------------------- - yet another service splits the community - there is already http://forums.debian.net - there is already https://reddit.com/r/debian - similar efforts have failed int the past due to lack of interest to web browser services (shapado.debian.net / ask.debian.net) I want to leave this as is without final verdict. Everyone should make their own. -- Ihor Antonov https://useplaintext.email
