Two of the earliest participants in setting up the evaluation have a recurring disagreement about the ethics of this undertaking. In a nutshell, the stated purpose of this evaluation is to see if there is an application that has significant capabilities beyond what we now have in Google Groups while still allowing people who insist on participating only via email can still post and reply just as they do now in GG.
Rob Cohen see this as a deceptive undertaking since the email only group will be missing out on any significant improvements offered by the new application. He feels it’s a “bait and switch” since the email only group will have to move beyond email or they will not participate in the benefits of the new system. Jon Lewit sees email only participation as part of the stated requirements of the GG replacement, as presented to and approved by the Board. It will be the choice of the user as to whether they want to continue to limit their participation to just via email or not.
This disagreement keeps resurfacing in other discussions. The purpose of this topic is advise the community of this disagreement, and to have a place for people to discuss this issue.
Hopefully any comments related to this issue will appear here and not scattered across other threads.
The work I volunteered to do is, examine the Discourse platform and identify benefits, costs, and risks of migrating Nonsuch Discussion Group to it. I anticipated that after presenting findings to the board, they would make the decision to either move forward or postpone the migration. If the board approved, I figured, I’d probably help formulate a migration strategy.
As a volunteer, I’d be happy to hear “thanks, but no thanks”, and invest my time in other endeavors. I am grateful to INA and will continue to support our common interests regardless of where we choose to host our discussion group.
Q1 - Do you want written summary of risks and costs that I don’t think have been given adequate consideration ?
Q2 - Does the team want this discussion to take place in the “General” category, or if we should use a different category? Perhaps Site Feedback or maybe Implementation?
I’d like at least 4 of our five team members to weigh in on this.
We can certainly retitle and repurpose the Site Feedback category if that’s what people want (a separate category).
I assume that we want this to be viewable by all. Do we want everybody (all new members) to be able to create topics here and post replies as well?
Everyone on this site has always been able to start a new topic that they felt should be addressed in any open category.
IMHO the Risks topic should include steps to mitigate those risks, or that could be a parallel topic.
IMHO it is early to look into costs since we are just beginning to determine whether Discourse is adequate, but by all means share your findings. I have shared mine in the Site Feedback category. And with an eye towards our final report to the Board, we will need to spinoff a number of other topics that address whether Discourse meets our goals and would be a good fit for our group.
Lets wait to hear what the other team members think. If they want my analysis, I’ll provide it independent of the rest of the discussions, as you request.
I’ll probably create a Google Doc and share it in a post, It is challenging (for me) to follow the progress of our project via the many posts and replies on Discourse.
My preference is not to put in the effort if my input is going to be ignored, so I’ll wait for the other team members before proceeding.
“Thanks, but no thanks” is a perfectly fine answer to my question. I don’t have any ill will our bad feelings toward you. I see our differences as creative tension, which helps me expand my knowledge and understanding.
How INA manages groups won’t fundamentally impact me or my commitment to INA. I participate in lots of volunteer organizations, the thing that sets INA apart is the depth of commitment and generosity of its members. Many of the most highly committed members are older volunteers that are happy with the current group and do the lion’s share of the work to manage it.
I suspect the feelings of some group admin volunteers are similar to mine… Our preference is not to put in the effort if our input is going to be ignored or marginalized.
As you wish. I don’t recall requesting that it be separate, but so it goes.
I just noticed that you intend to share your analysis with the Google Group and not with the Board. The purpose of this effort was to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of Discourse, evaluate the costs and benefits of using it in place of Google Groups, and report our finding to the Board.
As you will shortly see, I am sending an email to the discourse@nonsuch.org mailing list, since this is the way to actively reach people.
Yes, I have also noticed better responsiveness from Bob and Paul on the google Discourse group than on Discourse.
Do you have any theories why that may be the case ? They seem to prefer the Google Group interface to Discourse ( as currently configured ).
How might this observation guide our efforts ?
BTW, everything I have said, has been said to all. The question is still on the table, do we want an independent analysis that provides me opportunity to share my observations without the drama of offending you ? Posting the analysis in either of the Discourse groups is hardly circumventing the board. Presumably everyone in these groups is part of the team working on evaluating Discourse.
The Google Discourse group gets directed emails typically asking for a response. The postings to the site are much more numerous and often don’t require a response. Plus, as far as the site goes, what could more boring than listening to the two of us?
What should guide our efforts is to get back to the task at hand. I have attempted to do that by defining what we should be doing as a project.
I have no idea what you mean by “either of the Discourse groups”. They both have the same members.
BTW - this discussion, virtually all of our discussions, are publicly viewable on this site. Send what you want to whomever you want. Whether it will offend me is based, of course, on the contents of what you send. I don’t see how you can have a reasonably complete evaluation at this point (and you accuse me of not being openminded) but so it goes.
I’m coming back from my shoulder problem and also back in the country, and hoping to have more energy this week.
Would it help to have a Zoom chat about the disagreements? Some things are easier to thrash out talking than writing.
I’m at this point responding to the email posts rather than going on the Discourse site because I’m operating at the energy level of someone 15 years older than my actual age.
Its web interface has more features than I want and its hard to figure out how to access the features that I’m hoping are there. Also, I haven’t figured out how to stop it from proliferating tabs with each link I click, nor how to get back to places I came from. My preliminary opinion is that making it usable for INA purposes may depend on whether we can strip down and simplify the interface to just display the features relevant to our intended uses.
Similarly, because my health problems have turned me from checking several times a day to once or twice a week, I’m finding myself overwhelmed by the volume of messages when I do check in.
Consequently, I’m having trouble extracting what the key issues are and what’s needed to find a way forward.
Sorry to hear that you are still experiencing lots of pain. My Mom has advanced rheumatoid arthritis and experiences chronic pain. Helping her (my parents live next door to Linda and I) has given me some understanding of how debilitating pain can be. Everyone at INA is rooting for you.
Thanks for hanging in with Discourse project. Your advice to work a little harder to find common ground is appreciated and your observations regarding the Discourse interface will probably be similar to other members, maybe we should consider reducing complexity of the interface before the next round of testing?
Jon, Maybe we’d have better luck talking about our differences than we’ve had discussing them on Discourse? I think it’s worth a try. My day is wide open tomorrow, is there a time we could talk on Zoom ? If you are game, let me know a time that works for you ?
I would rather it be the three of us, given the way we communicate.
Bob?
Before we “talk”, I am hoping that you and Bob would take a look at my description of may understanding of this project. If we can agree on what we are to do I believe we will have an easier time focusing our efforts.
NS233
(Bob Neches, Me Gusta, Nonsuch e26U #233)
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I was thinking the three of us would be good.
I’m tied up on Tuesday, but could set up a Zoom anytime Wed between noon and 3:00 pm eastern for Jon/Rob/me + anyone else you think would be good. Is there an hour time slot in that range that works for you folks?