Soft launch of discussion forum for support.torproject.org

changed due date to August 31, 2021

changed milestone to %Sponsor 9 - Phase 5 - Usability and Community Intervention on Support for Democracy and Human Rights

added Sponsor 9 label

marked this issue as related to #160 (closed)

added Icebox label

added Backlog label

removed Icebox label

added Network health label

In the forum, we will have a relay operators section. We should discuss with Georg how this is going to work. Tagging @tpo/network-health here. Once this task start to move, we can create a specific ticket in tpo/community/relays.

Talk with QubesOS moderators to learn about their experience with Discourse.

We had a great & exciting meeting with QubesOS forum mods. It really opened my mind and gave me some good expectations about having a forum. Their process was documented here:

Overall, Qubes project is pleased with how Discourse improved their community. Discourse has some great features that can accommodate contributors and their existing workflow. For example, after registering on the web forum, you don't need to interact with the web interface anymore. You can receive and reply to everything via email, and all the replies are nicely threaded. The only disadvantage of using the web interface is that you'll need to enable JavaScript.

Some other benefits mentioned that could be helpful for us:

Splitting topics: following the Unix principle of "doing one thing but doing it well", or adapting here: answering just one topic, instead of a chaotic forum like mailing lists.
Quick feedback from the community (+1, thumbs up)
When a user is creating a new topic, Discourse checks if there's a similar topic and won't let you open a new topic if there's another one.
Ability to close topics
It's very easy to integrate on a static blog
Create private groups with some members
Forum pages that could work as a wiki
Gamification
Send a private message to other moderators and users
User trust level: https://blog.discourse.org/2018/06/understanding-discourse-trust-levels/

They also gave some ideas and advises regarding users privacy, like disabling telemetry.

Next steps:

For Community and UX teams

Write the forum moderation policy (need a ticket)
Draft the forum structure. For example: categories, mailing lists (read only), blog comments, user support, localization, etc (need a ticket)
Include Discourse logo on the site footer, like we have for GitHub and other channels (need a ticket)
Add to Support portal the new forum link and other references (need a ticket)
Recruit Community moderators (need a ticket)
Forum Mods training (need a ticket)
Coordinate with Comms team: blog post and social media announcement (need a ticket)

For TPA

Just to keep in our radar that TPA needs:

To set up Discourse (self-hosted or Discourse hosting)
Embed discourse comments: https://meta.discourse.org/t/embedding-discourse-comments-via-javascript/31963
Install Discourse plugins
Set up Discourse onion service

The blog migration to static content shouldn't block Discourse's implementation.

assigned to @lavamind

changed the description

marked this issue as related to #161 (moved)

marked this issue as related to tpo/tpa/team#40183 (closed)

mentioned in issue tpo/tpa/team#40183 (closed)

Thanks @gus for the excellent summary! I attended the discussion as well, and I'm also excited with the idea of providing a Discourse instance for the Tor community. This instance could not only serve as a "blog comments" platform but also play a wider role in the community, for example by providing a pleasant venue to provide and receive user support. I made a checklist in tpo/tpa/team#40183 (closed) to track the technical side of the project, more specifically related to the TPA team.

changed the description

Hi all! Thanks a lot for the lovely meeting the other day.

I add here some corrections / clarifications / ideas:

The need for Javascript

The only disadvantage of using the web interface is that you'll need to enable JavaScript.

I had not tested this in a while and had the wrong idea. Checking now and it seems running perfectly fine (read-only) without javascipt. That's even better :)

Dealing with duplicates

When a user is creating a new topic, Discourse checks if there's a similar topic and won't let you open a new topic if there's another one.

It doesn't actually stop the user from creating a post. It just highly nudges. It shows a little box over the editor saying: "You topic looks similar to... Have you checked those out yet?".

A search banner makes the search bar much more visible and that can also reduce duplication.

Topic splitting is also useful at reducing duplication. It's a workflow in which a moderator can select particular replies and move them to their a new topic or a existing one.

Forum Groups

Create private groups with some members

You can even setup automatic membership based on email address. For example, adding all users who register with an @torproject.org email to the "Tor" group.

Soft launch of discussion forum for support.torproject.org

For Community and UX teams

For TPA

Designs

Child items ...

Activity

For Community and UX teams

For TPA

The need for Javascript

Dealing with duplicates

Forum Groups