
Discourse - chrismealy
http://www.discourse.org/
======
jeremysmyth
I've been playing with this for the last 20 minutes, and there are things I
really like and things I don't like.

The good: It's got a lot of the automatic things that make Stack Exchange a
pleasure to use - conversations slide into place nicely, infinite scrolling
feels nice and new, and updates to conversations happen while you're watching.

The bad: The front page is already very noisy, and it's only in test mode. I
expect that with time, the only way to use this properly will involve creating
"channels" with tagging or filtering.

There are two major problems with this outcome. Firstly, if users select their
own "channels", it becomes a reinforcing cycle where each "channel" (or
"room") is only exposed to its own conversation. This is largely what happened
with USENET (and to a degree what happens with subreddits), and while each one
might be good if it stays small, if it doesn't it'll end up being as noisy as
the front page. If managed well, on the other hand, I expect that the
prettiness of conversations as they are now will follow nicely into each
channel.

The second problem with the noisy front page is that as with every other
general purpose discussion site with a front page, there will be a race to the
bottom, where everything that makes it to the front page will be about grumpy
cats or hot girls.

Maybe my criticisms stem from the very nature of discussion forums (look at
the cycle of slashdot, digg, reddit etc.), but I don't see this tech fixing
that problem like Stack Overflow claims to have solved the Q&A problem. I'd
like to think it will though.

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bengillies
One of the main problems I've found when trawling forums looking for answers
is that the answer's often buried somewhere far down in the thread. I think
Discourse suffers from this same problem and doesn't really do anything to
address many of the issues that forums usually have.

~~~
StuieK
Blatant self promotion -> Thats one of the reasons we built Slant. Summarize
the discussion so you don't have to read it all. Example:

[http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-programming-
language...](http://slant.co/topics/what-is-the-best-programming-language-to-
learn-first/opinions/python)

~~~
eranation
Great, finally a place for all my to-be-closed-on-arrival stack overflow
question I never dared to asked there. looks nice. how come you never posted
it here?

~~~
StuieK
Thanks for the kind words! I actually tried yesterday, may have been some bad
luck with nobody really seeing the post :/ Would love to hear any other
feedback you might have :)

Edit: Please add all those questions! We built the entire site to be the home
for them :)

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karterk
_I greatly admire what WordPress did for the web; to say that we want to be
the WordPress of forums is not a stretch at all._

Going with Ruby (Rails?) is a sane choice from a development point of view,
but a lot of shared hosts still only support PHP and a lot of my web design
friends are comfortable only with basic FTP-ing. I remember reading some
tweets from Jeff from last year, which hinted that he might be stuck with PHP
for his next project (which I believe now is Discourse). Nevertheless, it's
interesting that they did not go with PHP.

Edit: minor grammar

~~~
uses
If Discourse takes off and becomes something people want, more and better Ruby
hosting options will appear.

With a few killer apps, maybe Ruby will become the next available-everywhere
language.

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greenyoda
Prior discussion here: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5172905>

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sgdesign
Interested to know how people think it compares to Telescope
(<http://telesc.pe>), which is more of a traditional HN-clone social news app
(also open source by the way).

~~~
maaku
Social news != forum.

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wylie
Sounds like an open source Branch. It has most of the same features (real-
time, can have separate threads, moderation), but with participation from
anyone.

~~~
zsupalla
The differences between a forum system designed to be implemented on someone's
webpage and a big platform for "social interaction" are significant. Discourse
could be used for a narrow purpose (i.e. creating a developer forum or a
customer service portal), Branch can't. Just because their external appearance
shows similarities doesn't mean they are the same product, or even in the same
market.

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wiradikusuma
Site down? Can't access Try nor Buy (btw if it's open source, what does Buy
for?).

