Addressing Bob's Evaluation Criteria

General
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Bob’s post

The version of Thor’s saying that I grew up with was, “You can have it done fast, cheap, or right – pick any two of the three.”

Responding to his good advice about identifying what needs would be met by a change, here’re a few thoughts about features that would attract me to different discussion management tool. These are in the order I thought of them, not any particular priority order:

  • Some way to see if there’s a pre-existing thread to join vs. starting a new one

  • A better search tool than Google’s text search

  • Some way to reorganize threads so that the parts of a thread that are on a different topic can easily be moved and each part can continue separately

  • Some way for people to tag or upvote or pin particularly helpful responses so that others don’t have as much trouble finding them

  • Some way to mark-up pictures that are posted (e.g., if someone posted a picture of their mast and you wanted to say, “Did you notice this little corrosion spot over here?”)

  • An easy way for people looking via email to get their response into the right thread. Right now, those tend to show up as a thread labelled “Discussion Digest”

  • Some notification mechanism to get a particular person or group’s attention. Right now, the closest you can get is to write, “Clem Kadiddlehopper is a real expert on this, I hope they see this post and respond.” And then sit back and hope they’re looking at the discussion board.

Other concerns would definitely be:

  • How easy is it for people to learn?

  • How easy is it for them to move over to it?

  • How much does it cost to set up?

  • How much work and expense would it take to maintain?

  • How likely is the service provider to stay in business?

  • Can it still give access to our past body of information?

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My two cents worth is that the most important thing is that it seems familiar in format but solves the most pressing couple of issues. Buy in will be dependant on comfort level and once accepted, more features can be subtly added over time.
Call this the thin edge of the wedge tactic if you like.
Generally I support this change but I fear it wont be accepted if it appears too “new and improved” and requires effort to learn.

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I agree with your assessment. I was at first afraid that if it was too stripped down it would get a “why bother” response. Now I believe that there is enough to show its value as a simple change and we can demonstrate additional capabilities once people are comfortable with it.

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To me the ability to handle pictures and videos as in my test post and the ability to edit are enough to recommend Discourse as an improvement. Better classifications, better search, etc. are assets but maybe less is in fact more at first.

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I sent the following as a reply to an email from Jon, and realized it didn’t end up where I thought it might. So, I thought I’d copy it into this thread…

FWIW, I’d like to distinguish two types of evaluation criteria for moving over to Discourse:

 Is it preferable for me? (See my page-long list of personal criteria.)

VS.

Is it the right move for INA?

At a first order of approximation, my criteria for that second question would be:

  •   Does it match GDS functionality sufficiently that no one will lose anything?

  •     Can a switchover be clean enough that we wouldn't lose anyone?  (I.e., how close can we get to no one minding if we change?)

  •     Does it offer enough additional functionality that some people will feel they've significantly benefitted?
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These are the tough Questions.

I can take a crack at your personal criteria as I see it / blend them with my criteria in my next posting here.

  • In terms of matching GDS functionality, perhaps Rob should answer that. It is clear that, as a discussion tool, he doesn’t see that we gain anything. In terms of functionality (although I think the ability to edit a post and browse a clean thread are minor improvements), I wonder if he thinks we lose anything.

  • for a main part of that answer, we need to get some email preference people to use Discourse to see if it is functionally acceptable, or maybe even a little improvement. Whether we lose people anyway is very hard to predict.

  • functional benefits will accrue only if we expand into using the new capabilities. I don’t know how busy our current moderators are, or where most of their effort goes. If we build a moderated wiki, even slowly, IMHO that’s a big plus; if we set up regional groups with their own categories and chat channels; if it becomes a habit for people to visit the site and be more engaged in interaction e.g. as people post updates on their project’s progress; if we can keep the Great Ideas topics growing, putting things there instead of Facebook, etc. - - then it would be a win. If not, then not. In honesty, if our current 85-90% lurker ratio doesn’t change, then it’s up to the 75 or so active people to see a benefit. Maybe the change would engage a bunch of new people. I can’t think of any way to predict that.

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[this is interesting - I did a copy of part of the post with Bob’s criteria, and when I started a reply it was automatically pasted in]

I am starting a new post to include my comments on Bob’s evaluation criteria in-line

Some way to see if there’s a pre-existing thread to join vs. starting a new one

= as you type a new topic, there is a background search for a matching topic. you will get false positives if your topic is vague

A better search tool than Google’s text search

= the search tools supports Boolean criteria, and the ability to search just one category, or by tags. whether people will use any of this is subject to doubt. Searching might see better use as people will likely be on the site.

Some way to reorganize threads so that the parts of a thread that are on a different topic can easily be moved and each part can continue separately

= it is relatively easy to split or merge threads (with appropriate permissions)

Some way for people to tag or upvote or pin particularly helpful responses so that others don’t have as much trouble finding them

= the easy way may be to put them into the wiki. we can also use tags (it might be best to moderate/review these postings)

Some way to mark-up pictures that are posted (e.g., if someone posted a picture of their mast and you wanted to say, “Did you notice this little corrosion spot over here?”)

= there is nothing like that except the usual download / markup / drag into new post

An easy way for people looking via email to get their response into the right thread. Right now, those tend to show up as a thread labelled “Discussion Digest”

= you will not be allowed to reply to a digest email - but, from within the digest, each post will have its own REPLY button so your reply will go into the right place

Some notification mechanism to get a particular person or group’s attention. Right now, the closest you can get is to write, “Clem Kadiddlehopper is a real expert on this, I hope they see this post and respond.” And then sit back and hope they’re looking at the discussion board

= Discourse has “notifications”, which means sending an email, so you can easily send an email to the person posting the question with your suggestion

Other concerns would definitely be:

How easy is it for people to learn?

= I think that creating a new topic a reply can be learned relatively quickly, but we need new users to comment on this

How easy is it for them to move over to it?

= they will need to go through the account creation process (set up username and password) and edit their profile - possibly a challenge for a small number of people. Once they are in mailing list mode (if they still prefer that) it should not be that different for people

How much does it cost to set up?

= it is set up

How much work and expense would it take to maintain?

= depending on email use, it will either be $50 or $75/month

= someone will have to keep tabs on vendor update announcements; respond to user questions; possible tweaking of site settings In addition, any work related to getting additional value - setting up moderation if we want; building the wiki if we want, creating groups…

How likely is the service provider to stay in business?

= our service provider is a stable, international company that has been around for a dozen years. The code is open source and we can take a site backup and move it somewhere else should we want.

Can it still give access to our past body of information?

= the guesstimate I got for loading GG content was $1,500, but that is probably subject to whether it’s a PITA or not. We can decide if we want to bring over all of it, leave it in GG (searching it no more difficult than now), or have a few people volunteer to take a look back for topics of current interest and bring things over when it seems like it’s worth it

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Hello AI
We have just experienced a sudden rapid evolution into the age of AI
Probably like the birth of the internet. It even shook the market.
I think we should embrace the tech savvy among us and give them the chance to show their magic.
Brian