Change forum to GitHub Discussions?

Is there any final decision on this?

I've personally never used GitHub Discussions, what are the pros and cons compared to the current forum in your mind? :)

wish I could "like" this message.... oh! wait.....

I just discovered that I wasn't on the first page .. 😅

Is there any final decision on this?

Given the reasonably large amount of negativity on this thread, it doesn't seem worth me spending a bunch of time doing something that'll upset a bunch of people - so I guess we're sticking where we are for now :)

I have a feeling that most people would actually quite like it, but as I haven't heard from them I've got to guess based on the response here...

Large amount of negativity? There were like two people saying they don't like the UI of GitHub. Other big discussion was about data protection rules, but None really said they wouldn't use the GitHub discussion.

More people were in favour of the move then against, especially the first few reactions

That's not how I read it... Looking back:

• @Andreas_Rozek: not every user may want to register at GitHub just in order to participate in discussions around Espruino?
  
• @ChrisS : But people who bought e.g. a Bangle.js 2 for privacy reasons...
  
• @myownself: I don't really enjoy using GitHub Discussions
  
• @Mi: agreed (with myownself)
  
• @rigrig: I'm not a fan of using GitHub at all
  
  

And @Ronin, @Alessandro, @opichals, @Poolitzer and @MaBe were for it. As you say, nobody said they wouldn't use it, but then having 50% of people not liking something doesn't seem like good grounds for changing - especially when it'll take a bunch of time

I wouldn't mind an update to the forum, but to me it would seem a better use of time to upgrade the documentation pages (the layout looks rather dated which sadly reflects back on espruino as a whole), and maybe get a vscode extension going, (something I've personally been tinkering with for a week or two, though I've come to realize that I need to learn more about babel, and perhaps gulp and webpack and how they work together)

Well,

I don't think you should judge your user's opinions just by the posts in this topic.

To use myself as an example: being critical (e.g., in terms of privacy and GDPR compliance) does not necessarily means "dissent" - it's just that I want to avoid running into troubles by not having looked at the consequences of this switch.

On the other side: since I am participating in a GitHub discussion (on the new GitHub "achievement" badges), I definitely prefer the existing forum!

Alternatively, if the forum really does need to be replaced, I think more people may be up for an open-source solution like
Discourse
https://github.com/discourse/discourse

I think it has all the features that are wanted, like likes etc

I know Discourse from Node-RED and can definitely agree.

However, AFAIK, Gordon wanted to avoid having to maintain a forum himself, which is why he looked at GitHub Discussions...

Totally understandable, then it's probably not the best option :)

Obviously missed this discussion / voting / weighing in...

Not sure my comment changes much from point of view of liking or not liking github for discussion. These are the cons for the current forum:

• not mainstream
  
• created for discussing non-code things
  
• no integration with a real repository
  
• difficult, limited search
  
• limited image integration
  
• formatting has changed over time making a lot of my older, markup using entries unreadable
  
  

I don't want to leave it at cons - and that may be reason for many to be content with the current forum:

• easy to use for simple posts
  
• file / image integration usually sufficient
  

Let's imagine a situation: a new non-tech user, bought a Bangle.js and he has a few small questions about the clock | programming, what should he do, create an account on GitHub? Rather, he will go to Reddit's Bangle.js thread or to this Forum.

The forum is more friendly for such situations. For a wider audience coverage, there should be either a Forum or a Discord server. Reddit's Bangle.js thread not so much active. Although I also see the disadvantages of Discord: search engine optimization, problems when you need to create many small disposable topics, backups.

Personally, I would prefer Discord instead of this forum + GitHub in addition. But since there will be no Discord, then let there be this forum + GitHub.

Well,

as someone who "runs with the hare and hunts with the hounds", I came in contact with many discussion forums in the past few months. My personal conclusion - from a user's point of view(!):

• this forum is not that bad - in fact, its among those I like most: it is not crowded with icons and colors, provides a good hierarchical overview of topics, let's readers search for what they need and offers enough "gamification" options to keep post authors in line
  
• I hate "discord" (which may be good for real-time chatting, but serves badly as a searchable forum) and avoids it whenever possible
  
• I also don't like GitHub discussions, as GitHub injects technical hints and reports (such as "this issue was mentioned by ..." including badges with the state of their own issue) which may be good for developing in a team, but is just disturbing in a forum. Not mentioning the detail, that it is not shown, if a later post is a direct answer of an earlier one. And that it informs me about any changes in any thread I ever posted in - diluting the relevance of the notification badge which informs me about new issues in my own repositories. I'm working with GitHub almost every day - but I always try to avoid GitHub discussions...
  
  

On the other hand, "discourse" looks like a noteworthy alternative as it provides a clear user interface not unlike this forum.

With greetings from Germany,

Andreas Rozek

From my point of view, this forum seems 'good enough' - I'm not sure there'd be a great benefit from moving to Discourse?

@Serj I'm not sure it's a huge deal to create a GitHub account? After all, you kind-of have to create an account for any forum, and the chance of a Bangle.js user having a GitHub account is reasonably high I'd imagine.

Interesting about the GitHub 'hints' - I can see it being good in a way (it helps with the whole issue I have where problems get reported once on github and once on the forum, often by the same user).

Personally I really like the idea of GitHub, but it seems to me there's enough negativity here that it's not really worth me spending the considerable amount of time it'd take to port the contents of the forum over, just to annoy half my users :)

Move to github discussions sounds positive to me. Improving searching would be a big plus. Lower admin also a plus.

@Gordon how much time does it take to administer this forum? Not answers to questions, but specifically service? Let's say if you replace this forum with github discussions, how much time will you save in future?

I do sometimes wonder if people haven't found the "Title matched search terms" filter and turned it off when searching this forum. I see people saying "I searched the forum for something and didn't find anything", and when I go and search for the same thing I will often find more than one conversation mentioning or even answering the specific question they were asking.

Maybe something to consider, @Gordon: make "Title matched search terms" filter be unchecked by default?

@Serj realistically I won't save much time in admin, it doesn't take much time at all (however I'm unable to assign others as admin, so I can't have anyone else helping out).

But I do wonder whether having better search (and specifically Googlability - the current forum rarely ends up in Google search results) would help users and maybe even sales.

Maybe something to consider, @Gordon: make "Title matched search terms" filter be unchecked by default?

That's a great idea - thanks! (edit: just fixed it I hope!)

To be honest even with that, I often find I can't even find my own threads - which makes me think its unlikely others can find the info they need either :)

Not saying it is elegant or solves the problem, but if someone find it useful:

Google search limited to forum.espruino.com (replace "search term", keep quotes or remove them as you wish)

EDIT: Now if I search with the lower, thread specific, search box to the right, "Title matched search terms"-filter is unchecked. But if I search with the upper, general, search box it is still checked. Maybe that's how it should be. Just wanted to point it out.

Just pulling this back up - microcosm, the forum system I'm using for Espruino, is shutting down in March because the UK's Online Safety Act makes it a nightmare for the one person that currently runs it to comply. More info at https://www.lfgss.com/conversations/401475/

So I'm going to have to migrate to a new forum, one that I don't host (or I'll fall foul of the OSA too).

Right now, the obvious choice appears to be GitHub Discussions and looking back I think the general consensus is it's ok? Maybe not ideal for those that dislike Microsoft/GitHub but it's probably better privacy-wise than most other forums systems that'll insert a bunch of ads.

In the new year I'll look at trying to export the contents of the forum - I'm not 100% sure how I'll handle users but maybe I can get compile a list of forum users -> current GitHub usernames so at least for those users I can keep the ownership of posts the same.

I'm fine moving over. Will miss this incarnation of the forum though!

Zulip could be another option to look into.

They give free plans to open source projects (https://zulip.com/for/open-source/) and "communities" (https://zulip.com/for/communities/) and I think this forum basically meets those requirements.

"Open-source projects, including projects with a small paid team."
https://zulip.com/help/zulip-cloud-billing#free-and-discounted-zulip-cloud-standard

GitHub Discussions is fine for me. Is there a sensible way to migrate away from GitHub Discussions if the need arises?