Lemmy instead of discourse

muppeth commented

2021-11-09 09:38:32 +01:00

Owner

Our discourse is barely used currently as private forum. Most groups are inactive for long time, we don't process new applications and there is not really clear way of doing it nor we actively offer it.
For a while I wanted to suggest switching to loomio because it does allow for self creation and management of groups. However Loomio is designed for specific use case which as we concluded will be limiting for most and it may be as un-used as discourse currently is.

however I think Lemmy is a good potential replacement. It's a reddit like ActivityPub enabled federated platform. It's already quire vibrant and I think we could help promoting it. People can easily create subgroups (currently only public but private ones are on their way also), and groups do federate. It would be a good replacement for current forum. Federated, lighter, and I think better suiting then the current discourse which we are hakcing to make it do what we want it to do (multi forum/group platform) and not even doign that good job (not advertising this feature, not processing ones that ask, not having documentation etc). It would be more beneficial imo for community at large.

Our discourse is barely used currently as private forum. Most groups are inactive for long time, we don't process new applications and there is not really clear way of doing it nor we actively offer it. For a while I wanted to suggest switching to loomio because it does allow for self creation and management of groups. However Loomio is designed for specific use case which as we concluded will be limiting for most and it may be as un-used as discourse currently is. however I think Lemmy is a good potential replacement. It's a reddit like ActivityPub enabled federated platform. It's already quire vibrant and I think we could help promoting it. People can easily create subgroups (currently only public but private ones are on their way also), and groups do federate. It would be a good replacement for current forum. Federated, lighter, and I think better suiting then the current discourse which we are hakcing to make it do what we want it to do (multi forum/group platform) and not even doign that good job (not advertising this feature, not processing ones that ask, not having documentation etc). It would be more beneficial imo for community at large.

👍 3

muppeth added the

Discussion

Community

labels 2021-11-09 09:38:49 +01:00

meaz commented

2021-11-09 15:50:30 +01:00

Owner

I'm ok with the idea, et least to give it a try.
Though it will be for mid-terms as we already have a lot to do at the moment, and are already late for some project (RC for example ;)

I'm ok with the idea, et least to give it a try. Though it will be for mid-terms as we already have a lot to do at the moment, and are already late for some project (RC for example ;)

muppeth commented

2021-11-09 22:36:58 +01:00

Author

Owner

Yes definatelly don't want to rush this one and for now would rather treat it as an extra "fun project" type of thing, unless there is suddenly high demand. I think migration to roundcube is atm the highest priority, followed by social network switch (pleroma if everyone is on board with it).

Also I wonder if this should be deployed as a subdomain of disroot (and if so what shall we call it) or as a seperate domain just to give it more fun name (lately I've been thinking that naming things under disroot subdomain is a bit borring and perhaps using fun domain names for certain services would be much nicer for people).

Yes definatelly don't want to rush this one and for now would rather treat it as an extra "fun project" type of thing, unless there is suddenly high demand. I think migration to roundcube is atm the highest priority, followed by social network switch (pleroma if everyone is on board with it). Also I wonder if this should be deployed as a subdomain of disroot (and if so what shall we call it) or as a seperate domain just to give it more fun name (lately I've been thinking that naming things under disroot subdomain is a bit borring and perhaps using fun domain names for certain services would be much nicer for people).

fede commented

2021-11-11 16:09:44 +01:00

Owner

I'm fine with Discourse replacement (and the Lemmy option) and social network switch (and Pleroma option). Even though I agree with "fun" domain names, I also think that it's much easier to remember a service address under the disroot.org subdomain. Unless we could use a domain name that points to a subdomain address.

meaz commented

2021-11-12 15:55:14 +01:00

Owner

I agree with Fede on keeping the disroot.org subdomain

antilopa commented

2021-11-15 16:25:53 +01:00

Owner

I think the few groups that are using Discourse heavily use the mailing-list option and for internal discussions. Lemmy doesn't look like an equivalent to Discourse to me but more like another different service. I don't know if offering it as a 'replacemnt' to the private forum groups is realistic or if they would have to go look for other solutions elsewhere.

Unless the future private groups feature on Lemmy will work well, we should anyway wait for that to see how it works.

I think the few groups that are using Discourse heavily use the mailing-list option and for internal discussions. Lemmy doesn't look like an equivalent to Discourse to me but more like another different service. I don't know if offering it as a 'replacemnt' to the private forum groups is realistic or if they would have to go look for other solutions elsewhere. Unless the future private groups feature on Lemmy will work well, we should anyway wait for that to see how it works.

fede commented

2021-11-16 02:05:37 +01:00

Owner

I agree with @antilopa that they're quite different solutions (one being a forum -basically- and the other "a link aggregator for the fediverse").

muppeth commented

2021-11-16 11:12:19 +01:00

Author

Owner

Well. it depends how you see it.
From all the few groups using disocurse as private forum/mailinglist we basically have just one that really uses it. I personally think the current 'forum' service idea is not working. I would still run discourse for that group that actually uses it (they use different domain anyway so that isnt an issue). Currently there is no way to create public discourse groups as those would not be by default muted for users that use only the private forum/ml function (hence there are no public groups other then disroot), and for private groups not only we need to process those (not really been doing that),but adverise and create easy way for people to ask for those. Also onboarding people onto the forum group isnt that easy because fo the fact discourse is meant to be more like instance per forum and not a multiforum software. We tried workarounds to make it into multiforum but we have failed to do it in a way that would be easy for others to understand and easy for people to request forums and such (number of times we saw people from private forums accidently posting into main disroot category some stuff including private things like phone number and such).

My main intention behind starting this thread is more to make the 'forum' service being actually used. Out of alternatives we have went through (loomio, maailman/sympa, flarum), although lemmy currently does not support private groups (its work in progress), it allows currently people to easily create public communities where they can discuss things and post things without need from us to create them. It would actually turn 'forum' service into a used one vs the current state. Plus it federates.

Well. it depends how you see it. From all the few groups using disocurse as private forum/mailinglist we basically have just one that really uses it. I personally think the current 'forum' service idea is not working. I would still run discourse for that group that actually uses it (they use different domain anyway so that isnt an issue). Currently there is no way to create public discourse groups as those would not be by default muted for users that use only the private forum/ml function (hence there are no public groups other then disroot), and for private groups not only we need to process those (not really been doing that),but adverise and create easy way for people to ask for those. Also onboarding people onto the forum group isnt that easy because fo the fact discourse is meant to be more like instance per forum and not a multiforum software. We tried workarounds to make it into multiforum but we have failed to do it in a way that would be easy for others to understand and easy for people to request forums and such (number of times we saw people from private forums accidently posting into main disroot category some stuff including private things like phone number and such). My main intention behind starting this thread is more to make the 'forum' service being actually used. Out of alternatives we have went through (loomio, maailman/sympa, flarum), although lemmy currently does not support private groups (its work in progress), it allows currently people to easily create public communities where they can discuss things and post things without need from us to create them. It would actually turn 'forum' service into a used one vs the current state. Plus it federates.

👍 2

muppeth referenced this issue

2022-08-18 11:39:18 +02:00

Discontinuing forum #315

meaz added this to the 12.22 - December milestone 2022-12-02 18:31:52 +01:00

muppeth added this to the 12.22 - December project 2022-12-08 23:31:02 +01:00

muppeth self-assigned this 2022-12-08 23:33:22 +01:00

meaz was assigned by muppeth

2022-12-08 23:33:22 +01:00

fede was assigned by muppeth

2022-12-08 23:33:22 +01:00

antilopa was assigned by muppeth

2022-12-08 23:33:23 +01:00

avg_joe was assigned by muppeth

2022-12-08 23:33:23 +01:00

muppeth commented

2022-12-24 10:01:12 +01:00

Author

Owner

Current blocker for Lemmy deployment is lack of LDAP auth:
https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1241

maybe we could actively try to find someone to implement it?

Current blocker for Lemmy deployment is lack of LDAP auth: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy/issues/1241 maybe we could actively try to find someone to implement it?

fede commented

2022-12-26 04:44:10 +01:00

Owner

I'm not sure about LDAP on Lemmy. I think it would be great, but maybe going through the registration process (and its times) to get an account could put off people interested only on this service. Kind of same situation as Gitea.

muppeth commented

2022-12-27 07:55:46 +01:00

Author

Owner

That could be said about any service which lead me to the whole idea of dropping ldap to only core services. But as I was thinking more and more about it I realized that brings issues on it's own, like the the fact disroot user on cloud could be different person on lemmy or xmpp. So remaining identity across all disroot services is important and I think we should try to keep ldap across the board (including actually gitea). We do have to improve user registration workflow as it's totally not efficient.

With Lemmy actually the situation is that most of the servers out there have manual approval of users switched on. This is beceause there is currently no other way to stop spammers from abusing your instance the moment you put it online and announce it. After speaking with few admins, they actually adviced to either set approval right away or actually work on ldap auth implementation. So if we need to approve both disroot users and lemmy users, I rather go for just disroot users.

That could be said about any service which lead me to the whole idea of dropping ldap to only core services. But as I was thinking more and more about it I realized that brings issues on it's own, like the the fact disroot user on cloud could be different person on lemmy or xmpp. So remaining identity across all disroot services is important and I think we should try to keep ldap across the board (including actually gitea). We do have to improve user registration workflow as it's totally not efficient. With Lemmy actually the situation is that most of the servers out there have manual approval of users switched on. This is beceause there is currently no other way to stop spammers from abusing your instance the moment you put it online and announce it. After speaking with few admins, they actually adviced to either set approval right away or actually work on ldap auth implementation. So if we need to approve both disroot users and lemmy users, I rather go for just disroot users.

👍 3

muppeth commented

2023-01-04 22:14:03 +01:00

Author

Owner

As we are waiting for Lemmy and ldap implementation we have decided to pull discourse already.

muppeth closed this issue

2023-01-04 22:14:03 +01:00

Lemmy instead of discourse #167