Unite forums, OSQA, MLs, ... to a single discourse server?

Well, there are quite some people who would like the old stuff available. And some can be quite stubborn. And there are some possibilities, but i guess these are known already https://meta.discourse.org/t/import-migration-tool-from-fluxbb/51168 and https://meta.discourse.org/t/importing-from-fluxbb/51322

I would prefer set the fluxbb to readonly and move to discourse. That way the old stuff is still available. For the how-to i would suggest, setting up a test-instance, get some key-users from some forums to check it out and explain everything and when that is done, let them explain that stuff to ‘their’ subforum with all the advantages. So everybody gets a heads-up and maybe its possible everybody can check out the new instance. I’M not sure if a transition time is actually seriously needed or good, but thats worth thinking about as well.

IMO, keeping the content available and links working is important. But migrating existing content into the Discourse install would only be “nice to have”. I can think of several features that would have a higher priority, and getting it done at all would have an even higher one in my book. :slight_smile:

Looks like we’re getting somewhere.
I agree with the last comments

I think it would be mandatory to keep the current Forum and create the new Discourse instance as ‘a new branch’.
That is, those who want to continue with the Forum can do so, and those who want to move to the Discourse should consider the Forum as ‘historical material’.

consider me for the tests!

best

An update here: I was able to finish an import of the fluxBB database into Discourse. It seems to have worked ok.

A couple things left:

  1. OSM-based login on Discourse: current forum uses your OSM login/password. I’d like to replicate that for Discourse.
  2. The imported Forum posts don’t have a real email address associated with them. It looks like the fluxBB database user records don’t have email address associated with them (likely because of the way OSM login works).

Woah, thanks for your hard work iandees!

Thanks for that import project! I see it as useful to bring forum posts forward into Discourse; not mandatory but just one less thing to check when searching previous subject activity.

Discourse supports oauth, and several tools already integrates with OSM via oauth. ¿Are you trying to do that?

They support OAuth2 out of the box, but OSM only supports OAuth1.0a at this point. I’ll have to write a custom adapter to support OAuth1 in Discourse.

Having read more about discourse over the last couple of days I am very excited that this gets some traction. I also would like to help with the implementation but I am not really sure what I can do. Please DM me if you have any tasks such as documenting or testing.

I have seen with other communities (e.g. Python dev forum and list) that Sam Saffron from the Discourse team is happy to help with the implementation if asked.

Personally I am most interested in the mailing list integration. I would like to get more involved with the forum and mailing lists but having two channels is not ideal. My main problem with the mails from a list is the signal to noise ratio which was also highlighted on the python discourse. https://discuss.python.org/t/if-mailing-list-mode-were-better/3951

Having an OSM Discourse canary might also be an incentive for some of the OSGEO channels to get a Discourse.

Would it be possible to support OAuth2 in OSM?

There’s an open issue for it already: https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/1408

As general feedback, I would like to strongly support this simplification proposal. Above all, the abolition of the completely outdated method of exchanging information via mailing lists would be very important to me. And to use a modern and contemporary forum software as well.

There is a testing Discourse instance running for a few days, so users can play with it:

https://github.com/openstreetmap/operations/issues/377#issuecomment-1067012174

https://community.openstreetmap.org

OAuth 2.0 is working since 24 Jun 2021 https://github.com/openstreetmap/openstreetmap-website/issues/1408#issuecomment-818992157

As mentioned above, https://community.openstreetmap.org/ is set up and ready for folks to join and participate.

As discussed earlier, ideally we will move off the FluxBB platform altogether (it’s not maintained anymore), archive it, and encourage folks to move over to similar topics on the new Discourse-based site.

Please check out the new forum and give feedback there. In particular, there is a thread asking for feedback about what topics we should start with: https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/welcome-to-the-forum-get-involved-in-the-next-steps-here/219.

I can not speak for other languages … and apart from any technical aspects - I would heavily vote for keeping the very valuable content of the German language. Dumping or “archiving” it to place no longer generating search results in the most recent replacement of the forum would lead to restart discussions solved and agreed years ago.

Furthermore … discussing the topic outside the active language forums excludes many valuable voices from a discussion driven in isolation - not visible to them.

Thanks to Simon Poole to bring the topic up again in the German forum!

BR
tux67

Doesn’t need Discourse (Ruby) much more resources than the lightweight FluxBB (PHP)?

I’m just 31 years but finally getting old: With Discourse I would be over and out for this project.

Hi all,

On the language and location-based spaces, people are bringing very interesting input and ideas on this topic

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/proposal-language-and-location-based-content-and-categories/310

We need you all to be involved, since this is a collaborative effort to get to something that it’s useful for most people collaborating with OSM, and now it’s the time to influence the conversations.

Thanks!

Also, we have opened a topic to discuss about the different options for a transition from these forums to the new ones, it would be great if you can engage in the conversation, thanks!

https://community.openstreetmap.org/t/migrating-content-from-old-forums/446

I know I will not be using the new Discourse thing. Its confusing and I can’t get to grips with it.
You’ll probably loose more of the older guys as well, as learning new things at an old age is not as easy.

So I guess I’ll be sticking to IRC and engage even less…