Discourse

Discourse evaluation results

Pro & Contra

Pro	Contra
in use and actively maintained	system is not multi-client capable (recheck Docker Multi Site). But maybe it is not required (because of open and closed circles)
open sourced
SSO with external login supported
can be self hosted Docker install
Can be included in external sites, e.g. WordPress

Technology stack

Languages	Ruby JavaScript
Frameworks	Ruby on Rails Bootstrap jQuery
Databases	PostgreSQL Redis

Conclusion

According to initial assessments, Discourse is suitable for use as a system for Expert circles, but can also be used as a commentary system. It offers an external authentication. Users can be assigned different roles. Contributions can also be moderated only.

What still needs to be checked:

• Can a user have different roles in different threads?

  • See this https://meta.discourse.org/t/admin-vs-moderator-vs-leader/89008

• How can the content be separated between the clients?

  • A possible solution here would be deployments per client

Ideas for usage

• Integration as a module.

  • Integrates with user area

  • no extra sign up for users

  • profile data updating in beabee database

  • Offer several templates/setups of how to use discourse

    • Let people contribute story ideas

    • Create groups for expert discussions

    • open discussion forum

Links

Discourse featuresDiscourse - Civilized Discussion

In the wild

Cable's experiments

The Cable's platform has a simple integration with Discourse, just as an SSO provider. We currently only sync names and email addresses but it does also have the ability to sync groups which would be very useful for giving people different levels of access, e.g. access to an expert circle's private sub forum.

Settings

Discourse has a lot of different settings to customise the experience. Here's some we thought were particularly relevant

• Trust levels There is an automated trust level progression system that is highly configurable, it's definitely worth reading about them (all the thresholds are configurable). We disabled quite a lot of this as our users are already trusted by the time they are allowed in the forum (as our initial use case was specifically expert circles), but there is a lot of possibilities here: e.g. promoting trusted users to moderators.

• Login

  • We disabled user registration and local user logins so users can only access via membership system)

  • User name, email and name are overridden by SSO data, this makes those fields read only in Discourse and ensures membership system is single source of truth

• Badges: A gamification system to encourage users to get involved. We completely disabled this system as we felt it wouldn't have much use in a expert circle context, but again a lot of potential for more broad use cases. Again, definitely worth a read.

Useful features

• User avatars and bios Users should be encouraged to add a photo and a bio so members can get to know each other and reduce feeling of anonymity

• User titles Admins can give users titles that appear by their name, e.g. "Nurse", so other users know a bit more about them

• Groups Add users to groups and give groups access to specific sections, very useful for expert circles

Potential uses

• Expert circles: private sub forums for discussion

• Community noticeboard for members to post things that are happening in their community that they want to share with others

• Commenting and feedback on published stories (members only?)

• Collaborative story research and production: groups for members who are working on a story together, sharing research etc.

• General chat forum: simple technically but lots of questions around moderation, how to ensure both that conversations don't get derailed and the forum doesn't dry up

Other communities

Monzo

A UK based bank, using Discourse to gather feedback, facilitate discussions on the product roadmap, support and more.

Monzo CommunityMonzo Community

Giffgaff

A UK mobile network, members use Discourse to chat and more importantly answer each others questions. Giffgaff's first line of support is members, and they incentivise people to answer questions with a reward system. Basically an extremely cheap alternative to having a large support team.

Find out more:

• https://www.giffgaff.com/help/articles/whats-the-community

• https://www.giffgaff.com/help/articles/whats-payback

Also a good example of a more bespoke theme.

https://community.giffgaff.com/community.giffgaff.com

Civio

An independent not-for-profit media organisation based in Spain (https://civio.es/en/about-us/) . They use Discourse for their community, although it doesn't look particularly active at the moment.

Civio: el espacio de la comunidadCivio: el espacio de la comunidad

Lage der Nation

German Podcast that works a lot with listener input uses Discourse as their forum in their member area. They specifically ask people to suggest topics they should cover. Signed up users, paying or not, get access to the discussions. Everyone can start a new topic.

Talk der NationTalk der Nation