In the past, we were using mwForum for Turris 1.x routers primarily for people based in the Czech Republic who were involved in the security research project. Since the first Indiegogo campaign for the Turris Omnia router, we have used Discourse as an open-source Internet forum. These days many communities and companies are using it as it has become popular.
We came to the point when we cannot maintain and use the self-hosted Discourse anymore since we are having issues while upgrading it to newer versions. During the update in the background, it does unknown magic for us, and we can not invest time to know what it is doing or what is necessary to fix. Our DevOps colleagues complained about this process. We need to focus on higher priorities, and we would like to discuss with you what you would like and what you prefer. Unfortunately, we don’t have any dedicated guy for the forum who could maintain and take care of categories and discussions and provide help for users by using non-official support channel, when we provide support by email.
We know that each solution has its own pros and cos and I will try to summarize it a few highlighted points:
might not require a new registration for part of our community
cross-posts across different subreddits
user karma
supports threads
prioritizes upvoted content and makes it possible to use downvotes
cons:
hard to reach users by email
not self-hosted - relying on a third party with all data
older/not upvoted threads are much easier to overlook
For example, it might have a sense as new releases can fix old issues.
Different forum CMS
pros:
less maintenance overhead
cons:
requires a new registration
no data will be migrated as the current solution will be archived
under our control
data in our data center
Stay with the current solution (Discourse)
pros:
no need for new registration
cons:
Many people think that this is an official place where we can support them or they like to revive threads that are 2/3 years old and have similar, not the same issue.
Big maintenance overhead keeping us from delivering new features faster
Does not support threads. Discussions are sometimes quite hard to follow
We need to find someone to investigate issues and fix them to update it
We would like to know what do you think about this and which option do you prefer and why.
Reddit
Different forum CMS
Stay with this current forum
0voters
Vote carefully. Only one option is possible. This vote ends on 10th July 2022.
This is somehow intentional. From our point of view as it means that while it is under our control, we need to take responsibility of it and take care of the maintenance (upgrades, etc.).
So I voted to stick to discourse, because from my end-user perspective it works pretty well and checks all the boxes, like email integration. BUT I understand that in the end you at “team turris” will need to make a decision that fits with your operational concerns as well user preferences, so if you change the forum infrastructure I will probably stick around.
With the likely exception of reddit, their browser based access is IMHO terrible (especially on my phone, and I do not want to install a dedicated app to access essentially a web hosted forum).
Thank you for sharing your opinion. Highly appreciated. Yes, I agree with your last part. That’s good to mention, indeed. Browsing Reddit on mobile can be problematic, and there are some workarounds, but they are not suitable for ordinary people.
@Pepe are you using self-hosted Discourse instance or paid? I’m asking as I would be willing to chip in if it would mean better support and less work for Turris team (more time for core development etc) - and maybe there would be more people like me.
I think a dedicated forum is good (best would have been a shared forum with OpenWrt, but in this case you don’t have control about the forum, which is as good or bad as reddit I believe), therefore make use of key users (there’s already sort of this provided by discourse software) of the forum. Enable them to report on a voluntary basis issues to your git or let them redirect others to your support team.
That way you can more focus on the development but don’t loose the benefits of a forum.
I like features that Discourse offers, like tracking different threads and read/unread parts of threads. The cost (manpower, etc) of the maintenance is indeed an issue if that affects what the team is able to deliver for the routers. Hence I prefer staying with a well selected CMS w.r.t constraints mentioned in OP, possibly provided as a service.
Reddit is kind of ugly compared to features of Discourse that I mentioned. It’s more of a what’s hot about a topic instead of a use-case/issue based tracker which is this forum’s objective in my view. AFAIK the Reddit locks threads that are oldish; I am not sure if that can be changed.
Thank you, Turris team, for looking for ways to getting rid of the overhead to better focus on the project.
I would absolutely understand if you “outsource” to reddit.
there is already a (quite dead atm) sub.
other companies have quite well organized subs there. ASRock or LineageOS are good examples for well done subreddits, I think.
the forum as it is now is far from perfect, imho. and if this means a lot of work for you guys, more than a short leash on the subreddit would mean, than you should consider the move.
I personaly miss support for threads in any forum except Reddit and StackOverflow. We are closing old threads as well as quite often same symptoms don’t mean same issue especially after a long time. But we want to know your opinion before we decide what to do with the forum. Yes, some of us have their favorite in the race, but in the end the forum is meant to serve our community. Therefor your opinion is important.
Yes, I agree with your last part. That’s good to mention, indeed. Browsing Reddit on mobile can be problematic, and there are some workarounds, but they are not suitable for ordinary people.
