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#off-topic
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2015-11-13
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bcambel10:11:55

@val_waeselynck: It would be a bit redundant to explain what forums are there for but still it would be good to layout why I feel a need to have a community forum ( guess @plexus would also agree ) 1. None of those platforms are forums. 2. None of those platforms are that much beginner friendly. (Clojure GGroup guys are nice don't get me wrong ) You have to know what you gotta ask or you have to be very specific. People might be hesitant to ask. 3. None of those platforms are nice to spend time, learn, and discuss. They aim for once specific thing (and its a good thing ) 4. Categorization of discussions do not exist. I definitely don't think a community forum would be a replacement to those tools but rather an addition.

val_waeselynck10:11:43

@bcambel interesting, what would be an existing equivalent for another community ?

bcambel10:11:39

do you mean a similar programming community ?

bcambel10:11:16

One is Reddit, the other one Hacker News that is on top of head

borkdude13:11:43

is anyone else like this? I feel confident in pretty much anything full stack, except CSS/designer stuff

wamaral13:11:32

I know how (basic) CSS stuff works, I can build basic layouts, but I can't for the life of me make something "pretty"

borkdude13:11:37

@wamaral: exactly, I know how CSS works and I can do some changes here and there, but designing something awesome, meh

plexus13:11:25

@val_waeselynck @bcambel I'm coming from a slightly different angle, that of project mailing lists. I think it's great we have Slack, I also think there's still a place for traditional mailing lists. To make sure you don't miss important announcements, and to have slower, more in-depth long form discourse. I think OSS comunities should host spaces like that themselves (related rant here: https://twitter.com/plexus/status/626441558049574912) and in particular I think Google Groups is a horrible platform for OSS communities. (related rant here: https://twitter.com/plexus/status/642047262332448768). So given that, I turn to open source options. The best open source mailing list currently in existence is Discourse. It's not perfect, but it's a lot better than the second in line, GNU Mailman, and you get the benefit that it also happens to be a pretty decent forum. Clojureverse originated as just a forum/ML for Chestnut, but its structure actually lends itself really well to a multi-group/category/list setup, so after talking to some people I rebranded it as Clojureverse and opened it up to the community at large. It's still in beta, I haven't even announced it yet on the main Clojure ML. In the end the proof will be in the pudding. There's still a lot more work to be done to get the work out and get some traction, and I haven't been doing a lot of that the last few months. However I do intend to have Clojureverse around for the long term. If it benefits just a few projects than that's already great. We also use it for ClojureBridge Berlin, there are a few private groups on there that aren't publicly visible.

mpenet13:11:35

Seems fine to me, maintaining such a platform is a hassle. And google groups/reddit are not bad at all for this. In the end it's better not to have the "community" spread everywhere imho

colin.yates14:11:42

@plexus +1 - I really miss the explicit ‘discussions’ in the ‘stream of messages’ format. Channels are too coarse grained and the stream of messages I think encourages greater collaboration, but I wish there was something between a ‘walled discussion’ format and a ‘linear stream of text' format.

colin.yates14:11:30

@borkdude yes -me. I don’t think CSS/HTML was designed to be built the same way as we model programs - different paradigms. I find CSS much more liberating when I dial down some of my ‘engineering analities’ simple_smile. I also think most programmers intuitively think without a visual UI, and therefore aren’t natural visual designers. They can be, but I think the two skillsets are almost at odds.

colin.yates14:11:08

or maybe I just suck at UI and am projecting to make myself feel better simple_smile.

bcambel15:11:12

@plexus: well then, we have a nice combination of ideas. I will shut down my discourse instance, and join you guys with some energy next week and layout all the stuff that I want to do/achieve.