Re: Migrating our IPFire Forum to Discourse

[Michael Tremer <michael.tremer@ipfire.org>]

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Hi,

> On 28 Oct 2019, at 22:21, ummeegge <ummeegge(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
> 
> Hi Michael,
> 
> On Mo, 2019-10-28 at 09:50 +0000, Michael Tremer wrote:
>> Hi,
>> 
>> Thank you for your feedback :)
> your welcome :-) .
> 
>> 
>>> On 26 Oct 2019, at 05:33, ummeegge <ummeegge(a)ipfire.org> wrote:
>>> 
>>> Hi Michael,
>>> great work and nice to see the new infrastructure is growing also
>>> with
>>> new tools for the community and to bring the whole new environment
>>> closer to another.
>>> 
>>> Wanted to give some thoughts, ideas and questions in here.
>> 
>> Yes, the new infrastructure performs a lot better and we have spent
>> so much time on it and built so much automation into it that we are
>> now really saving a lot of time.
> Great to hear!
> 
>> 
>> But it is a thing that is never finished and so we will always update
>> it and add new things :)
> Business as usual :-) .
> 
>> 
>>> On Do, 2019-10-24 at 10:36 +0100, Michael Tremer wrote:
>>>> Hello guys,
>>>> 
>>>> All services that we have (Bugzilla, Patchwork, Wiki, etc.) are
>>>> already connected to it. What was missing is the forum.
>>> 
>>> It might be an idea to line the other platforms out or set links to
>>> them in the forum. Several bug reports but also reguests to
>>> integrate
>>> community development comes to the forum and needed to be
>>> redirected to
>>> the appropriate sections.
>>> 
>>>> What is going to happen next?
>>>> 
>>>> Since this milestone was taken now, we are ready to start our
>>>> migration to Discourse.
>>> 
>>> Is there a ~date for this ?
>> 
>> Yes, I hope that we will be able to launch this next Monday, 4th Nov
>> during our usual telephone conference. I will send invites for a
>> little launch party :)
> Sound is good :D
> 
>> 
>>> 
>>>> The new forum is called “IPFire Community”, because I consider
>>>> the
>>>> word forum to be a little bit dated. I have also done some
>>>> changes to
>>>> how it works: There will be no German section any more, because
>>>> that
>>>> was always a bad idea and has to go. I would like you to help me
>>>> to
>>>> police that as best as we can. Then, I removed the “development”
>>>> area, because I believe that we do not need to have this on here
>>>> at
>>>> all. We have mailing lists for devlopment, bugs should be
>>>> reported in
>>>> Bugzilla, etc. I would like to separate those two things. The
>>>> “configuration” section is also gone, because pretty much
>>>> everything
>>>> on the forum is about how to configure something. It was a non-
>>>> category. Now, I have split this into networking issues with some
>>>> sub-sections for larger topics like QoS, Web Proxy and WiFi.
>>>> There is
>>>> a security section for IPS, Firewall Rules, etc. I considered
>>>> VPNs to
>>>> be important enough to have their own category. Mainly to be able
>>>> to
>>>> split it into OpenVPN & IPsec, too.
>>> 
>>> Regarding the dropped development section, we did there a lot of
>>> testings in the community with regular users but always only a few
>>> developers this was a kind of neat since mostly developers do not
>>> have
>>> the time to test other stuff (which was in first place my
>>> experiences
>>> on the mailinglist) but also another focus/insight to the system.
>>> The
>>> help of the community was there ideal, also reagrding for new
>>> features
>>> or further developments in a project since there was a feedback to
>>> those where all that should belong to at the end.
>>> This was a kind of filter system before patches and new
>>> developments
>>> was send to the mailinglist which saved at the end also time in
>>> finding
>>> bugs but also for explanation since there was mostly also a
>>> reference
>>> to look for not only for the core developer but also for the
>>> community
>>> after the changes has been released and it was not only a four eyes
>>> principal but a multiple eye quality management possible.
>> 
>> Yes, I agree. This is not ideal that this is gone and agree with what
>> you are saying.
>> 
>> However, I believe that this “parallel project” is worse.
>> 
>> In the past, there have been loads of bugs been reported to the forum
>> somewhere. Very often even in a post and not even an extra thread.
>> Nobody has seen those, investigated them and most importantly nobody
>> fixed them. A forum does not track those reports even - at all.
> This is very understandable and have seen it and tried to redirect it
> also many many times. For that, my idea to outline Bugzilla, the
> mailnglists etc. easy to find also in discourse since the community
> portal is mostly the first address (but very often the last one) where
> people belongs to.

That is why it is important that we create an open community where everyone feels welcome and where people don’t hesitate to ask beginner questions - although I expect them to do their research.

>> 
>> I think IPFire could be a lot better because those small bugs which
>> they usually are make the user experience a little bit shit. They are
>> nasty problems, but they are not bad enough that someone really tries
>> to have them fixed. So we need to channel them into the bug tracker.
> This might be an important step if there is a easy way for the regular
> user to find this opportunity but to report it also understandable to
> prevent a forum discussion on bugzilla e.g. the rules of "how-to-write-
> a-good-bug-report" needs then also to be know. Is there a way to line
> this also out via discourse ?

Why is it not enough when this is on the wiki?

How would people find this in the depth of a forum? The wiki is a much better place to be a compendium on how to submit patches and how to get started...

>> 
>> Do I want people to publicly debug their problems somewhere on the
>> devel mailing list? Do I want people to dump a half-baked bug report
>> there? No. Absolutely not. I regard the development mailing list a
>> little bit like an office. There has to be enough information flow
>> that everyone knows what it is going on, but when everyone is sitting
>> at their desks, there needs to be enough quietness to be able to
>> concentrate on something. For example: If we have 100 emails on there
>> a day, nobody will be able to do any coding because we are all busy
>> with reading emails.
> This is exactly my concern above. There do not need to be a developer
> section in discourse for this, i think mostly problems would come
> nevertheless in the appropriate sections in the, should i say,
> "community platform" (sounds still a little wierd ;). The development
> section quota in the old Forum were mostly feature request and in
> second place development topics sometimes with the appeal for help.

Why does “Community Portal” sound weird to you?

> 
>> 
>> So it all has upsides and downsides.
>> 
>> I would vote for trying it this way now and move people to the
>> mailing list and bugtracker and teach them how to use those tools. I
>> think this is key. Many people learned from GitHub that you just
>> throw some information around. A bug, a pull request. And then
>> someone will hopefully handle it. That is not what I want. We all
>> should be playing a small role in this, but nobody should be doing
>> this as an almost full-time job.
> This can be huge in some cases. All the other platforms have a kind of
> specific handling to use them as an appropriate tool for both sides. Am
> currently not 100% sure how to reach also users with not that much
> experience (which is daliy business for others). But may i am wrong
> with my concerns in that manner and all will be go by the time it´s
> way...

It might. And then we have to see it and change things, but I suppose that we cannot foretell the future at this point. This is an attempt to change things and there is always upsides and downsides.

Ultimately I do not expect to lose anyone who wants to report a bug. An account is easy to create. Sending an email to the mailing list is not rocket science. There was someone very recently unable to send an email. If you cannot do that, how can you produce good patches?

I think GitHub makes it too easy to throw patches at a project and what is the use of that?

>> 
>> We have a development area on the wiki: https://wiki.ipfire.org/devel
>> 
>> How is that as a general guide for people to know when and where to
>> report things?
> This guide is great but you will need people on the other side which
> are a little deeper in that dev topic. I can imagine in some cases that
> the obstacle is to high to report also the small things which makes in
> the sum "user experience a little bit shit".

The obstacle must be high, because I expect people to spend some time on figuring out why something isn’t working.

We had loads of reports that said “this does not work any more. Please fix”. There is nothing that can be done when there is no information and it is a waste of time to ask every bug reporter about logs and this and that. They need to collect all the information they have and then report the bug. That is how a bug tracker works.

>> 
>> Do you think that we will lose debate with this approach? I believe
>> that we already have enough places to developers to chat, users to
>> put forward their suggestions… It is all there and we do not need the
>> forum.
> I can not really forsee it, generaly spoken the resonance was different
> on both platforms (dev and community) and in different ways very
> usable. My concern is that the development part in the community will
> lose debate at a first glance, which does not mean it will come again 
> possibly then in another, may better, way ? There comes a lot of
> changes with this (other language, stricter guidelines with more/other
> platforms to use).

I do not think it does. Most of us were not involved in any debate on the forum and that is a problem.

We have to places where we need to bring people together from.

Stricter guidelines are just necessary because the community is growing. It is like a room full of people. Easy to keep order with two, but a thousand people in a room make a lot of noise and everyone does what they want to do. That is why we need rules and that is why we need to make sure that people follow them.

>> Which does not mean by the way that a VPN problem cannot be talked
>> about in the VPN section. I think this is even better than posting
>> everything into “development”, because isn’t it all development?
> Yes in a way it is :D. So why not trying it in that way, may i see it
> all a little too problematic...

Because it is a support forum. Do not attempt to use it as a devel platform :)

> 
>> 
>>> I can understand that you want to prevent a kind of parallel
>>> project
>>> development but this is only one side of the whole in my opinion.
>>> 
>>>> The challenges ahead
>>>> 
>>>> The whole migration is risky, we all need to do our best to keep
>>>> the
>>>> conversation going and invite people over. Blocking access to the
>>>> old
>>>> forum will probably make people rather angry than anything else.
>>>> This
>>>> has to happen, sooner rather than later, but we should try to
>>>> make it
>>>> as smooth as possible.
>>> 
>>> I think so, especially a english only platform will be a problem
>>> for a
>>> lot of people not sure where this leads to.
>> 
>> Yes, but we have talked about this 1000 times before. The motion was
>> put forward, a conversation was being had over weeks and a decision
>> was made. There were no objections that were valid enough to change
>> the mind of the group.
>> 
>> I hope that we will be all very disciplined about this and help other
>> people to follow this rule.
> Let´s try it.
> 
>> 
>>>> There will also be the problem to fight spam accounts, which we
>>>> now
>>>> have to implement ourselves. We will have to see how this goes,
>>>> but I
>>>> cannot imagine this being even worse than what we have right now
>>>> with
>>>> our forum.
>>> 
>>> This is a main problem i think since ecspecially in the last
>>> weeks/months there needed to be deleted several thousands of spam
>>> accounts in only a few days in the forum. This problem have the
>>> potential for an own employment if there is no good automated first
>>> line of defense and even if, there needs to be more then one or two
>>> people which regularily checks the posts but also irregularities in
>>> the
>>> registrations but this might be then a people.ipfire.org problem
>>> and
>>> have not that much to do with the administartion of the community
>>> platform ?!
>> 
>> Would it make sense to have some notifications being sent to a group
>> of moderators that will then delete an account if it looks
>> suspicious? What makes an account suspicious? We only have a name, an
>> email address and potentially an IP address. All of this does not
>> really tell you if someone is a spammer, or does it?
> In 80% it does. Names like e.g.:
> 
> » RonaldSat, Bonnieeromi, AndrewIrork, charmdateoqd, charmdateevf,
> Michaelweept, charmdatezyu, EdytheJ3, Brettthire, KiaSuisy,
> charmdatebsy, charmdatejxa, charmdatekmz, Shaneinhix, charmdateubr,
> MiaSuisy, charmdatehqy, hydrskymn, Kevinlof, charmdatetlc,
> uaserialprofi, AnnaSuisy, Fannieexime, charmdatehdx, RonnieSadly,
> KimSuisy, Sloche, NickSuisy, CalvinRiz, charmdatevly, oxacejuhedux,
> Rodneybup, charmdateqji, RobertDaw, charmdatentt, charmdateitt,
> EvaSuisy, charmdategjj, charmdateanu, Yqlrxya, JudySuisy, CarlSuisy,
> CharlesSuisy, MilanRoy, RamonVuple, charmdateaoe, charmdatepod,
> AmySuisy, charmdatejbl, Serieszpl, charmdatefxd, TedSuisy,
> charmdateykm, charmdaternl, BillyDar, DennisEvall, charmdatebtj,
> charmdatenpi, SueSuisy, charmdatevyu, AlanSuisy, KennethRek,
> WarrenDyews, charmdateuod, Annden, JaneSuisy, FrankDrifs, KeithTup,
> charmdateesg, EyeSuisy, Walterhew, AndrewUnure, Bennygoacy, MarySuisy,
> charmdatevfa, charmdatezeg, JackSuisy, MarkSuisy, EmmittMix,
> charmdateibc, Stewartbig, Rafonamvar 

Yes, those looks not okay, but how can an piece of code find this?

> can cleary be launched. Not sure how clear is this for others but after
> a little while it gets clearer and clearer 8-\ ... but in such cases it
> won´t make sense to clean this garbage (sorry for that may a bot might
> have also feelings :) by a moderator group cause stay ready for
> thousands of them (hint --> phpBB inactive users). It would
> nevertheless make sense to send notifications to a moderator group to
> check the cleaned up rest since the rest of the ~ 20% comes
> nevertheless into which left interesting links to unintersting sides
> (viagra and such). Last but not least, to prevent camouflaged
> advertising a check of posts needs also to be done... there is more.
> 
> In short, a moderator group is great but the daily business is more
> then only moderate.

I set up a moderator group on LDAP and I will send a separate email about it tomorrow.

You are in it. We need you :)

> 
> 
>> 
>>> Some thoughts from here.
>> 
>> Greatly appreciated. Looking forward to hear your answers to my
>> questions.
> Hope there are some usable things in it. Am happy but also tensed with
> the new upcoming changes :-)

Always. See? Mailing lists work for conversations…

Who says email is dead?

Good night,
-Michael

> 
>> 
>> Best,
>> -Michael
>> 
>>> 
>>> Best,
>>> 
>>> Erik