What do you think of discussions?

[chrisjsewell]

Hey all!

GitHub Discussions is a new feature which is in Beta development, of which I am part of the beta testers (we have been using it for a while on https://github.com/executablebooks/meta/discussions).

Personally, I feel it is a lot nicer alternative to our current https://groups.google.com/g/aiidausers forum, offering nicer integration with the repository; it's easier to reference code, issues etc, and you can even transfer discussions to issues and visa-versa.

A key current limitation I see, is that you can not make announcements as easily, to send out to users (like version releases), or allow users to only watch the repo for new discussion posts.
This is already something I have raised with them, and I believe they are working on a solution (https://github.com/gh-community/discussions-feedback/issues/113#issuecomment-668710219).
Of note though, you can spotlight certain discussions (up to 3), as I have done with this one.

So yes, let me know what you think and I so can pass on feedback to them! 😄

Cheers, Chris

[chrisjsewell]

cc @giovannipizzi @sphuber @CasperWA @ltalirz @csadorf @mbercx @yakutovicha @ramirezfranciscof

[ltalirz]

I've been waiting for it to be released to give it a try.
Is there a way to import the content of a google group?

[chrisjsewell]

Well wait no more lol!

Is there a way to import the content of a google group?

Not yet 😞, but there is an open discussion on "Migration from Google Groups"; to quote one of the github team:

We don't have an API available yet but it's going to be one of our top priorities right after we 🚢 the limited public beta as a public beta.

[greschd]

What's your feeling for when something should be a discussion here, vs. on Slack?

Concerning this vs. the Google group - is there any integration with E-Mail? The Google group in my mind is just a mailing list; I think for many "casual" users that don't visit Github on the daily that's still the more accessible medium.

[greschd]

Right - my experience with other "web first" services is just that these features can end up with a less-than-pleasant experience for the users that prefer e-mail.

Formatting can probably work, but e.g. editing a post doesn't really translate. All that's to say, we should probably keep the mailing list around.

[chrisjsewell]

How do you edit properly with the mailing list? Every time I email the mailing list the formatting turns out awful lol.
Obviously different people have different preferences, but personally I find the whole mailing list experience awful, it just clogs up my email with rubbish.
Anyway aren't you meant to be team Microsoft 😆

[greschd]

Plain text, baby.

Point here is, e-mail is already in everybody's tool-set, and you can configure it to your liking (filters, sorting, what have you). Personally, I'd rather live with some less-fancy formatting than having to check 10 different chat apps.

[All opinions are my own, not those of my employer 😎]

[chrisjsewell]

Well, to get the last word in, jupyter-book and jupyter (which uses discourse) have much more users than aiida, and they manage fine without a crappy google mailing list 😝

[greschd]

https://www.python.org/community/lists/ ¯\(ツ)/¯

[chrisjsewell]

This is a reply via email

…

On 16 Oct 2020, at 00:52, Dominik Gresch ***@***.***> wrote: What's your feeling for when something should be a discussion here, vs. on Slack? Concerning this vs. the Google group - is there any integration with E-Mail? The Google group in my mind is just a mailing list; I think for many "casual" users that don't visit Github on the daily that's still the more accessible medium. — You are receiving this because you authored the thread. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4444 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAW32QWWH5JTX2NJO6GASN3SK54MJANCNFSM4SSRSNMQ>.

[csadorf]

Interesting feature. Certainly very interested in trying it out. However, I think we should be careful with replacing the groups, because they have a pretty large reach at the moment afaik.

[giovannipizzi]

I agree, I would make a very careful balance before replacing the mailing list - the use case is different, and the email should remain and be limited to important messages - even if you can probably subscribe to discussions, I already envision them (see also this thread already ;-) ) to become closer to a chat than a mailing list, with the risk of "spamming" non-developers.

[chrisjsewell]

Certainly we should consider the use cases 👍
I would note that you can easily Unsubscribe from individual discussions, which is more difficult with the mailing list

[espenfl]

That is indeed a very useful feature.

[chrisjsewell]

FYI, it is now possible for people to only get notifications for discussions (as opposed to issues & PRs):